For decades, the UC Davis College of Engineering has consistently ranked in the top 35 engineering programs in the nation. That’s definitely good, but not remotely good enough for new engineering dean, Jennifer Sinclair Curtis, who took over the post last October. We recently sat down with the highly accomplished chemical engineer to discuss her vision for making the program even better.

Things are slowly getting better for women in engineering and other STEM fields, but let’s just say they’re not exactly working with a tailwind at their back. To be blunt, engineering is still a damn sausage fest. And the reasons for that go deeper than one might think.

In Sacramento, school cafeterias don’t have the equipment or capacity to store and prepare fresh, local food. They’re designed mainly to warm frozen, processed food, some of which is full of additives and preservatives.

When Chris Treiber left the Navy in 2011, he set sail on uncharted waters. His 10 years of service offered no natural path into a good job. He’d spent his last five of those guarding prisoners and had no civilian job experience. He had a GED, having dropped out of high school in 10th grade. And at age 32, he had a wife and five kids to provide for.

Dependent students at for-profit colleges have about 50 percent less family income than students attending community colleges and four-year public or private nonprofit colleges.

We hear a lot about the bad news: Fewer than 8.2 percent of eligible voters ages 18–24 turned out in the 2014 general election; most Americans cannot name the three branches of government; many young people do not think their civic involvement is worthwhile. But there are pockets of good news all around us. More schools are building on the old adage, “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.” We call this “action civics,” and we know it works.

In March, the first group of American high school juniors will sit for a newly overhauled Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) that features more time for fewer questions, among other changes. But even with a makeover, the test, administered by the College Board, may have lost some of its power to determine a student’s academic future.

For the past four years, Star Academy in Natomas didn’t look like a regular school. Due to overcrowding,  elementary kids went to class in a commercial building that faced a major street and had warehouse space in the back. Last year, when the moratorium was lifted, the district considered building the new charter school through a lease-leaseback deal. But the method, once a popular way for struggling districts to acquire new facilities, has come under legal fire in recent years.

While other B-schools work to expand their reach and shed their old boys’ club stigma (with some success—Bloomberg data show that the share of women in business schools has increased six percentage points since  2007), Presidio resembles the school they say they’re trying to become. Its current MBA class is 56 percent female, and ninety percent of Presidio graduates work in sustainability posts, according to Presidio’s president, William Shutkin. 

The University of California at Davis and Moffitt Cancer Center in Florida have suspended a planned drug trial sponsored by KaloBios Pharmaceuticals Inc. following the arrest of Chief Executive Officer Martin Shkreli on securities fraud charges.

To certain young adults, the rising sun is no longer just a metaphorical promise of a new day, but rather a literal chance for a new start in life. The very light the sun provides is working as the harbinger of opportunities and career skills for students who have been in the dark.

It will take women MBAs a year longer than men to pay back their student loans, according to our analysis of Bloomberg data, gleaned from our annual ranking of MBA programs.

For the first time since 2006, California’s governor and Legislature will provide the California State University the funding its Board of Trustees had sought for this academic year. Of course the level of funding does not approach what it was before the great recession, but it does provide an opportunity for the largest system of higher education in this state and country to meet the continued demand for education sought by thousands of potential students.  

In the past, debt collectors could autodial borrowers only on the phone number they provide in their loan agreements. The new rules could allow the companies to repeatedly call any phone number associated with a student loan borrower—including family members’ cell phones or any number once held by the debtor.

California State Senator Holly Mitchell can be an imposing figure. While most people presume that term evokes physicality, it is Mitchell’s intellect and passion for defending those she believes have little or no voice in the political process that make her such a formidable figure around the Capitol. We talked with her about her effort to turn that passion into policy.

Traditionally, the path from law student to full-fledged lawyer has been fairly straight-forward: A student starts out with a summer internship at a law firm, graduates and passes the bar exam, then gets hired at a law firm. In a secure and supportive work environment, law graduates can make good money, meet professional mentors and learn the skills required to be a real lawyer. This is the standard route, the one most students embark on every year. But more graduates like Alexandria Goff are choosing to buck tradition in the name of independence.

Make no mistake: The Capital Region boasts some of the nation’s finest colleges and universities. Many a regional leader is a proud alum of UC Davis or Sacramento State. Yet in 2015, it might behoove us to ask some scary questions: Does a 4-year college degree guarantee a good job? If so, can that good job be reconciled with the staggering debt that currently accompanies a college diploma.

Working to pay for college doesn’t work. Despite the fact that 40 percent of undergraduates work at least 30 hours per week while in college, tuition is too high for those hours to make much of a difference, a new report shows.

Business owners looking for new hires might want to keep on eye on Meristem. Twenty minutes east of Sacramento, the new school opened in September with a mission to help young adults with ASD or other developmental differences find jobs. Developed in the U.K., this postsecondary transition program uses practical courses to teach transferable work skills such as problem-solving, teamwork and communication.

Before coming to Sacramento, Nelsen was instrumental in turning around the struggling University of Texas Pan-American — growing enrollment, raising revenue and boosting the university’s role in the community. We sat down with him recently to discuss his vision for California’s only true capital university.