As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, The Hunt Institute is hosting numerous webinars each month to explore different topics across the birth through postsecondary continuum. Below, find full recordings of our webinars from July, along with links to learn more about each of them.
Early Childhood Philanthropy Amidst COVID-19
Emphasizing the centrality of early care and education to the American economy was a key theme during the first installment of The Hunt Institute’s new series, Early Childhood Philanthropy Amidst COVID-19. The series will explore the priorities being set forth by early childhood grant makers during a period marked by not only the pandemic, but an economic recession and nationwide protests over racial injustice.
During this first installment, The Hunt Institute sat down with Megan Wyatt of the Bezos Family Foundation, Gerry Cobb of the Pritzker Children’s Initiative, and Marica Cox Mitchell of the Bainum Family Foundation, for a conversation about the most pressing challenges in early childhood, as well as working with grantees to create innovative solutions.
Read more about this webinar here.
State Leaders in Higher Ed Talk COVID-19
In the first installment of State Leaders in Higher Ed Talk COVID-19, The Hunt Institute sat down with Kim Cook of the National College Attainment Network (NCAN), Mike Krause of the Tennessee Higher Education Commission and Tennessee Student Assistance Corporation (THEC/TSAC), and Dr. Kim Hunter Reed, the Commissioner of Higher Education in Louisiana. The experts discussed how states are responding to the challenges facing higher education during the pandemic and how states are marketing the value of a postsecondary degree in a time where many students and families may be rethinking their higher education plans.
Read more about this webinar here.
Supporting Innovation in Education: Removing Barriers to Postsecondary Success
Throughout our series of webinar conversations with education policymakers, a common refrain has been that the COVID-19 pandemic has magnified many of the inequitable aspects of our education system that have persisted for years. That theme came up again in the most recent episode of our Postsecondary Pathways webinar series, where our guests – MC Belk Pilon from the John M. Belk Endowment and Amy Kerwin from Ascendium – talked about barriers that can prevent students from transitioning into higher education and completing their studies.
Read more about this webinar here.
Homeroom with Education Leaders: Reopening School Buildings
Four months have passed since state governments issued their first widespread responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, ordering schools, institutions of higher education, childcare centers, businesses, and public gathering spaces to be shut down in order to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, formerly known as the novel coronavirus. Schools were among the many entities in public life forced to pivot on a dime as districts transitioned immediately from in-person to remote instruction, and the impact of such shift on students’ academic progress and well-being has and will be immense. In the past two weeks, the debate over reopening public schools has dominated public discourse, with some arguing for a full reopening of school, some arguing for a continuation of remote learning, and many arguing for an integration of both approaches in the fall. As this debate heats up, The Hunt Institute sat down with Oregon’s Deputy Superintendent of Public Instruction, Colt Gill, California’s State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tony Thurmond, and Dr. Lynne Holden of Mentoring in Medicine about the debate regarding reopening, thinking about how schools buildings could reopen, and what needs to change for that to happen.
Read more about this webinar here.
