Letters from our Executive Director

What it Means to Appreciate Teachers

What it Means to Appreciate Teachers

Like many people I know, I spent many hours as a child “playing school” in my basement. Occasionally I had to be the student while my younger sister bossed me around, but mostly, I was the teacher. Looking back, there were a shocking number of unruly imaginary...

Letter from the Exectuive Director : March 2024

Letter from the Exectuive Director : March 2024

Dear Friend: We are in an extraordinarily challenging time for higher education. In 2020, the pandemic helped shed light on the issues we have long known are true: the increase in the price of college for students and the accompanying rise in basic needs insecurity...

July: Letter from our Executive Director

July: Letter from our Executive Director

“Ensuring a diverse student body in higher education helps everyone, not just those who, due to their race, have directly inherited distinct disadvantages with respect to their health, wealth, and well-being.” –Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson

April: Letter from our Executive Director

April: Letter from our Executive Director

Last week, I had the opportunity to be with a small group of our new Changemaker Fellows and some FAST Fund leaders at a convening of the University Professionals of Illinois, the union representing faculty and other academic support professionals on seven of the state’s public universities.

March 2022: Letter from our  Executive Director

March 2022: Letter from our Executive Director

“I can’t afford the parking decal.”

This comment from one of the students seeking emergency aid struck me, because when I was a student, I too was short of the funds for the parking pass, and so walked the mile between my apartment and campus every day. Like so many of our students, I didn’t consider myself “basic needs insecure,” I just thought I was living a romantic “broke college student” life.

But as we know, today, the cost of college has spiraled out of control.

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