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Week in Review: Brrrrrrrrrr

Ali Lincoln

Happy New Year! 2018 is off to a pretty frigid start for many of us, with this bomb cyclone that has brought historic low temperatures across the nation. Stay safe and bundle up! In addition to copious amounts of blankets, soup, and hot chocolate, we’ve got the hottest higher ed news to keep you warm. Scroll down for the latest.

What’s new this week:

Roberto Pedace, professor at Scripps College, made The Conversation’s roundup of its favorite charts from 2017 with his research on Hollywood’s diversity problem.

Amid growing signs of disenchantment with higher education, AGB President Richard Legon argues that trustees need to step it up and do more to change that in a Washington Post piece.

This week on Inside Higher Ed’s Call to Action blog, check out a post on the importance of investing in good leadership to help build culture, not break it.

What we’ve been talking about:

As we kick off 2018, Cristal took a look back at some of our highlights and our top media placements of 2017.

Erin shared some helpful media resources for communications professionals.

From Massachusetts to DC to Virginia the TVP Comms team is managing to work and have a little fun during the East coast bomb cyclone. @cristalsteuer @aflinc09 @erinhenn

A post shared by TVP Communications (@tvpcomms) on

What’s next on our calendars:

Teresa will lead a crisis communications session and case study review for the Dean’s Section of the American Association of Law Schools in San Diego, CA on January 6, 2018.

On Feb. 9, 2018, Erin will present “Finding—and Using—Your Voice: A Communications Toolkit for Advocates,” part of Mount Holyoke College’s Advocacy in the Public Domain event series.

Teresa will be at the National Conference on Trusteeship for the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges in San Francisco. She will run the Crisis Management: What is the Role of the Board? Workshop on April 22, as well as facilitate the master class Fake News, Social Media, and Your Institution’s Reputation on April 23.

What we’re recommending:

Ali Lincoln
I love cookbooks, and typically have a pretty strict three-recipe test trial before I decide to buy one. But for Smitten Kitchen Every Day, I bought it without even thumbing through it. (I gave Deb a pass since I love her first cookbook and use recipes from her website at least twice a week.) I’ve been reading and drooling on it all week, and the few recipes I’ve tested out so far have been solid—loaded breakfast potato skins and broccoli, cheddar, and wild rice fritters. I’m dreaming of breakfast biscotti and roasted tomato soup and pretzel caramel linzers for this weekend. Yum!

Teresa Valerio Parrot
I missed this piece when it originally posted, but I discovered it in an international print version of The New York Times over the holidays. The words piqued my interest enough to make me find the original piece and I’m glad they did. The New York Times ran a beautiful piece on the effort to return bodies of dead Mount Everest climbers to their families and added in some of the most breathtaking photos I have ever seen. I wish I had the stamina to even consider a climb of Everest—but the terrain in the photos and the stories of the climbers were a somber reminder that Everest will never be my goal.

Cristal Steuer
Living in the Northeast, I’m used to snow, blizzards, and ice storms in the winter. But when I heard the word bomb cyclone all over the news this week, I wasn’t sure what to think. This Wired piece does a great job of explaining what a bomb cyclone is (not literal like a sharknado) and why they aren’t as uncommon as you might think.

Kylie Lacey
I’ve always been fascinated by the morality behind monetizing certain goods and services. This piece by The New York Times investigates how two different sources made money off of substance abuse rehabilitation services—one in an effort to build up an empire, and one in attempts to bring it down.

Also in the news: “Sharks are literally freezing to death!” was a catchy and click bait-y headline engaged by quite a few media outlets in the past week. However, as this piece points out, it’s not quite accurate. Frigid temps are pushing large numbers of Cape Cod thresher sharks to seek warmer waters, but are not actually turning the creatures into “sharksicles.” Always be careful of what you read, believe and spread!

Erin Hennessy
Like many others, I was happy to wave goodbye to 2017 on Sunday night. But I also spent some time that night remembering my own personal highlights from a year that felt very, very heavy, including my summer vacation down the shore and the purchase of my first home. Thanks to the folks at Quartz, here are 99 other great things that happened in 2017.

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Here’s a look at what we were tweeting this week:

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