Senate Bills, Data Vaults, & Climate Classes: Edu News for February 2025
This week’s news headline roundup covers the following stories:
- Proposed Ohio Senate Bill 1 higher education legislation targets DEI initiatives, faculty rights, and funding, sparking fierce debates across campuses.
- New research warns that leaning on generative artificial intelligence tools might be eroding our cognitive muscles, raising questions about AI tools in educational contexts.
- A NY Climate Change Education Bill would embed age-appropriate climate change lessons in K-12 curricula.
- Partially in response to recent data deletions, Harvard Law School’s Library Innovation Lab steps in to preserve over 300,000 federal public datasets for future research.
Sources & Resources:
How Did The Month Of February Get Its Name?.
AI Tools in Society: Impacts on Cognitive Offloading and the Future of Critical Thinking
Microsoft Study Finds AI Makes Human Cognition “Atrophied and Unprepared”
AI Tools in Society: Impacts on Cognitive Offloading and the Future of Critical Thinking
A fourth bill supporting climate change education in New York
NY students would be forced to learn about climate change under proposed bill
Ohio Senate passes higher ed overhaul bill less than a day after eight hours of opponent testimony
Ohio GOP makes good on plan to fasttrack higher ed bill | NBC4 WCMH-TV
Ohio higher education bill fast-tracked at Statehouse | NBC4 WCMH-TV
Senate Bill 1 | 136th General Assembly | Ohio Legislature
Ohio Senate passes bill to ban DEI and faculty strikes at public colleges | Higher Ed Dive
As health data disappear from government websites, experts push back | Harvard University
Harvard Law School Library Innovation Lab Launches U.S. Federal Data Vault | News
Researchers rush to preserve federal health databases before they disappear from government websites
Preserving Public U.S. Federal Data | Library Innovation Lab
Announcing the Data.gov Archive | Library Innovation Lab
The Book Loft of German Village
Katie’s Book Stack:
- All the Beauty in the World by Patrick Bringley: Story of a man who became a security guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC for more than 10 years. Chelsea and I had the chance to visit The Met a few years ago and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. I’m very excited to get a “behind the scenes” tour from Bringley. I believe that in another life I would have been a museum docent, so this is my chance to live out that dream vicariously.
- One True Loves by Taylor Jenkins Reid: Look, I’ve been obsessed with Taylor Jenkins Reid ever since I read The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and then immediately reread it because I couldn’t get enough. I also really loved her book Daisy Jones and the Six. I have no thoughts on this book, I grabbed it because she wrote it and that’s all it took for me to buy it.
- Tales of the City by Amistead Maupin: this book was published in the late 70s so I’m very late to the party, but I’m very excited to read a book about a very vibrant neighborhood in San Francisco. It is part of a series, so I’m excited to see if I continue the series or not.
- The Atomic City Girls by Janet Beard: a piece of historical fiction set during WWII, which is a special interest of mine. Had not heard of it, I saw it on a top shelf and required Chelsea’s assistance in retrieving it. Seems to be about a group of women who were working to support the Manhattan Project during the war, but didn’t quite know to what extent or what specifically they were doing. Historical fiction can be hit or miss for me, but I really enjoyed watching Oppenheimer and am hoping to piggyback off of that learning.
- Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel: this book has been out for more than ten years and I see it on everyone’s lists and all over the place and I’m feeling left out which is why I finally purchased it. Also, I kept finding it at The Book Loft and decided it was a sign and I had to throw it in the basket to buy. It’s about a flu pandemic, meh, but I’m still interested and I’m actually more interested in reading about a pandemic happening prior to Covid to see what it reads like.
- A Fever in the Heartland by Timothy Egan: this book has so many awards I was overwhelmed. I read the back and saw “deathbed confession” and knew I had to take it home with me. The cover reads “The Klu Klux Klan’s Plot to take over America, and the Woman who stopped them.” Easy pick! Can’t wait to read this.
- The House of Dudley by Joanne Paul: This is a book about the history of Tudor England. I love learning about Tudor England. It will likely be dense, but I am excited to chug through it and also I have thoughts of building a unit around the Tudors and this may be a good source in the future for my students.
Chelsea’s Book Stack:
- Axiom’s End by Lindsay Ellis: I knew nothing about this one, saw it in the sci-fi section, and picked it up based on the blurb and the first couple of paragraphs. It’s about a government coverup of contact with extraterrestrial life. Neat!
- Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler: I bought this one because it’s being banned widely in the U.S., and I wanted to have a copy on hand to lend out.
- Both Flesh and Not: Essays by David Foster Wallace: Social commentary and acerbic wit, probably. DFW is a canonically broken dude, and there’s something about his particular brand of brokenness that resonates in the current sociopolitical moment. Bought this one to try to unearth some understanding about how we ended up here; do not know if it will deliver in this respect, but we shall see.
- The Crime Without a Name: Ethnocide and the Erasure of Culture in America by Barrett Holmes Pitner: An examination of race, culture, and language’s role in ethnocide in America. I think I’m most excited to read this one.
- Handprints on Hubble, by Kathryn Sullivan: I grew up in John Glenn’s hometown and became a NASA nerd when I was quite young. This one is about the Hubble Space Telescope told from the point of view of one of the astronauts who helped maintain it.
- Set of 3 Notebooks: They are covered in van Gogh art, and I couldn’t resist.
- Gumption by Nick Offerman: A few years ago I read Paddle Your Own Canoe, an autobiographical romp written by Offerman, whose TV personas have entertained me over the years. Offerman himself is an interesting fellow with humble roots in America’s heartland, and he mostly sticks to non-ostentatious, feel-good inspiration and rumination on the meaning of life. Felt like this might be a good “pick me up.”