By Colleen Flaherty. The University of Illinois Board of Trustees on Thursday approved a series of sexual misconduct policy recommendations from a systemwide task force.
The recommendations, which will eventually become formal policies, include prohibiting not just consensual sexual or dating relationships where there exists a supervisory relationship between parties, but all faculty-undergraduate relationships and relationships between professors and graduate students in the same academic unit. More...

By Colleen Flaherty. First study on the effects of mindfulness on graduate students says it has significant benefits. More...

By Colleen Flaherty. Graduate student's suicide at UW Madison is a devastating cautionary tale about abusive lab environments. More...

By Colleen Flaherty. Karen Swallow, a longtime professor of English at Liberty University and vocal critic of President Trump, is leaving Liberty over concerns about academic freedom, according to The News & Advance. Swallow said that Liberty increasingly has a “business model of education” involving standardization of the curriculum and more oversight of instructors. More...

By Colleen Flaherty. A group of Hispanic faculty members and administrators at the University of Texas at San Antonio says that the institution does not live up to and has not embraced its identity as a Hispanic-serving institution. A petition by La Raza Faculty and Administrator Association urges the university to become a “Hispanic-thriving institution” by making various changes. More...

By Colleen Flaherty. The University of California system’s new union for academic researchers (such as project scientists, specialists, professional researchers and coordinators of public programs) reached a tentative deal on a first contract. More...

By Colleen Flaherty. Saying that their English department treats race and critical theory as an afterthought, students call on their peers to steer clear of most program offerings. More...

By Colleen Flaherty. Antonello Bonci resigned as scientific director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, part of the National Institutes of Health, where employees were told via email that Bonci would be running an addiction institute in Florida. But Science reported that Bonci left the NIH after an investigation into an internal complaint that he sexually targeted a trainee and directed resources to second trainee with whom he was having an intimate relationship. More...

By Colleen Flaherty. Facing internal and external pressures to streamline the general education curriculum, Wichita State University’s Faculty Senate approved an amended proposal to trim the institution’s program from 42 to 36 credits. The original proposal was 33 credits -- just shy of the Higher Learning Commission’s 30-credit minimum (with some qualifications) for gen ed programs. More...

By Colleen Flaherty. Twenty-three scientists who met last year in Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y., to discuss a major report on sexual harassment in their fields have published a paper on their findings and recommendations in Science. More...