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Who Decides Which Stories Children Get to Read?

As book bans surge nationwide, Jan Lacina — professor at Texas Christian University and Interim Director for Starpoint and KinderFrogs Schools — explores the benefits of diverse children's literature in her new textbook for educators, "Children's Literature to Read Our World: Text Selection and Strategies for Critical Reflection (Routledge, 2026). The research-grounded guide aims to help teachers intentionally select books for their students, centering age-appropriate books that present Black, Latinx and Asian culture as wellsprings of understanding. It also highlights titles that explore complex issues such as homelessness and poverty, and those that can help educators teach about historical topics like the Holocaust or the Civil Rights Movement. One chapter explores how scented books can be used as a vehicle for multisensory literacy development. Lacina's book arrives at a critical moment, in a critical state. Texas ranked second in the nation for school book bans during the 2024-25 school year, with 1,781 instances of censorship, according to PEN America's latest report. Jan was recently featured in The 74 article "Who Decides Which Stories Children Get to Read?" by Mark Swartz, which explores why access to diverse literature matters and how her new textbook helps educators respond to rising censorship. Read the full article here. We can look back through history and see that there's always been censorship, and I think books have historically been targeted over a long period of time for anti-intellectual censorship efforts. Books are primarily a source for people to learn new ideas and to critically think about a variety of topics within our society. "Books are powerful, and that's what scares people," Lacina said. Reading helps children identify with the protagonist — with their feelings, with their actions — and it's important to read about experiences that are similar to our own, whether they're positive experiences or challenges we might face in life, Lacina said. Lacina is available to speak with media on literacy leadership, children's literature, early childhood and elementary education, and teacher preparation — timely topics as school districts nationwide navigate rising challenges to classroom books. To arrange an interview or request a comment, click through to Jan Lacina's profile below.

The Real Risk of AI in the Classroom Isn't the Tool, It's the Shortcut

Artificial intelligence has moved from novelty to daily habit in classrooms across the country, and the debate over what that means for learning shows no sign of slowing down. Some schools have built AI into their curriculum. Others have banned it outright. Caught in the middle are students trying to figure out where the technology actually helps and where it quietly gets in the way. Trent Kays, PhD, an assistant professor and Director of Professional Writing and Rhetoric at Augusta University, has spent time researching exactly that question, and he recently sat down with FOX54 News to talk through what he's seeing firsthand. Kays, who also serves as a faculty affiliate in Women's and Gender Studies and specializes in digital rhetoric and machine writing, says students are already using AI for far more than quick homework help, from brainstorming and studying to building out entire lesson plans on their own. The bigger concern, according to Kays, isn't misuse in the obvious sense. It's what he calls cognitive offloading, students handing the thinking itself over to the machine. "Students are essentially using AI to do their thinking for them, which is not something that they should do," he said. It's part of why he keeps AI out of his first- and second-year courses entirely: those early classes are where students build the critical thinking skills they'll need before a tool can actually help. "They have to be able to think critically first before they can ask a tool to help them." Accuracy is its own problem. AI tools have gotten sharper, but Kays points out they still fabricate information regularly, including sources that were never real to begin with, something students are far less likely to catch than an instructor who actually reads the citations. None of this means Kays thinks AI belongs outside the classroom. He describes it as a potential process partner, something that can push a student's thinking further rather than replace it, as long as the structure around it is clear. As he put it, what schools need now is to "craft clear guidelines and structures for students to follow so that they know how to use it and how to use it well." Read the full interview and FOX54's coverage here: AI in the Classroom: Augusta University Professor Explains the Benefits and Risks Dr. Trent Kays is available for interviews on AI in education, digital rhetoric, and responsible AI use in academic settings. If you're covering similar stories, click on this icon to schedule time with him.

Can President’s Visit Sway LI Voters in Governor’s Race?

Lawrence Levy, associate vice president and executive dean of Hofstra University’s National Center for Suburban Studies, was interviewed by Newsday about President Donald Trump’s planned visit to Long Island on August 14 to show support for local law enforcement and boost Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman’s gubernatorial campaign. “Nothing has been more damaging to Blakeman’s campaign, especially to his ability to attract moderate suburbanites, ubiquitous on Long Island, than President Trump’s plunging approval ratings,” Levy said. “So unless the president comes with bags of money for Blakeman’s underfunded campaign, it’s hard to imagine how the visit will be a net positive. If Blakeman doesn’t have his MAGA base already secure, he’s in more trouble than even the polls suggest.”

CMU Startup Week 2026

Pittsburgh's about to get loud. CMU Startup Week is back September 14-18, and this year it's bigger than ever, over 2,000 founders, investors, researchers, students, and alumni converging on campus for five straight days of building, pitching, and connecting. It's a multiday celebration of entrepreneurship, innovation, and frontier tech, with a lineup that highlights founders from every stage, researchers, and community partners across the whole CMU ecosystem. Expect AI and robotics innovations, research and investor connections, recruiting opportunities, and events across the entire university. The lineup so far: Tuesday, September 15, 2026 CMU Lab to Market is an exclusive look at Carnegie Mellon University’s bleeding edge research and promising research-driven startups. This day-long event spotlights breakthrough ventures emerging from CMU labs, including those led by CMU faculty, PhDs and postdocs—advancing the frontier in AI, robotics, cybersecurity, healthcare, and beyond. Meet the next wave of deep tech founders translating world-class research into transformative companies. Wednesday, September 16, 2026 AI & Robotics Venture Day: A showcase of CMU's most investment-ready startups building at the frontier of AI and Robotics. Presented in partnership between the CMU Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation Works, the event brings together investors, founders, university leaders, and the regional startup community to spotlight high-potential companies building in AI, robotics, autonomy, and embodied intelligence. The event will feature a select group of startups, including VentureBridge companies, and is one of the flagship events of CMU Startup Week 2026 and StartUP PGH. Thursday, September 17, 2026 CMU SPARK: Join us for CMU SPARK 2026, a high-energy evening connecting Carnegie Mellon students with startups and emerging companies hiring across technology, design, product, and business. The evening opens with a keynote from Boris Sofman, Co-Founder and CEO of Bedrock Robotics and former leader at Waymo and Anki. Boris will share lessons from building ambitious robotics and autonomy companies and offer students a firsthand look at what it takes to create and scale frontier technology. Following the keynote, startups founded by CMU alumni will take the stage for rapid-fire tech talks about what they are building and the roles they are hiring for. The evening concludes with a career fair where students can meet founders, executives, and hiring teams directly. Friday, September 18, 2026 CMU S4 CMU Swartz Student Startup Showcase (CMU S4) is an interactive exhibition event showcasing what's coming next from CMU student founded startups as a part of CMU Startup Week. Attendees will have the opportunity to engage directly with the founders and learn about the incredible innovations they are building and critical problems that they are solving. Over two dozen different companies will be presenting at this event including companies funded through the Bruce S. Gebhardt Sandbox Fund, Beyond 2% Fund, and the Project Olympus Spark Grants. The big news this year: CMU Startup Week is anchoring StartUP PGH, a new city-wide push bringing 15+ regional partners together for a full week of entrepreneurship and innovation across Pittsburgh. It's a signal that Pittsburgh's startup scene isn't just growing, it's organizing. When: September 14-18, 2026 Where: Pittsburgh, PA More details are dropping soon, but you can lock in your spot now. RSVP to get updates as the agenda comes together. Click the button below. Media: Pittsburgh Business Times  Power move: Academic, public and private sectors align for StartUP PGH Looking for a specific expert to interview? Explore the hub to find the right expert for your story → Explore the Startup Week Hub

Why Flash Flooding Is of Increased Local Concern

Jase Bernhardt, associate professor of geology, environment, and sustainability, was interviewed by Newsday about the increased risk of flash flooding on Long Island. The article explains that flash flooding is caused by heavy rainfall in a short period. It’s often caused by thunderstorms in the summer, when there’s more moisture in the air than in cooler months. It can happen anywhere across the region, as opposed to storm surge flooding, which mostly impacts low-lying coastal areas. Any change in the frequency of flash flooding on Long Island is also a function of the way water moves on the ground and ultimately of urbanization, Dr. Bernhardt said. “Poor drainage, sewer systems” and impervious surfaces like “parkways, parking lots” and other types of development all play a role.

The Tipping Point: How Gratitude Grew into a Guilt Trip (and How to Get Off It)

My dog Dottie is, and I say this with love, a con artist in a fur coat. She has trained me to hand over a treat every time she sits, spins, or simply exists in my general direction, those big brown eyes fixed on me. If I hesitate even three seconds, she tilts her head and stares at me as if I have personally bankrupted her. I always fold. It turns out that I am not the only sucker for this routine. These days, entire industries have figured out that if you make a person stand there long enough while a screen stares back at them, they will fold too. Except instead of a milk bone, they want eighteen to twenty-two percent of your bill, and instead of a good girl, you get a receipt. Welcome to modern tipping culture, where a simple thank-you has somehow become a math test administered under duress, with a cashier watching as you decide, and somewhere behind the screen, a very deliberate mind has already worked out exactly how to nudge your answer higher. A Short History of Guilt with Percentages Tipping began as a compliment, not a demand. Historians trace it to a Tudor England custom called a vail, in which a noble slipped an extra coin to a servant for going above and beyond (Blueprint Financial, 2024). North America initially wanted nothing to do with it, meeting tipping's arrival in the late 1800s with the kind of suspicion usually reserved for chain letters. Americans who travelled to Europe came home grumbling about being nickeled and dimed by porters and waitstaff, and in 1884 the New York Times ran an editorial calling English-style tipping downright un-American (Mentzer, 2013). Between 1909 and 1915, six American states banned tipping outright, but it did not work. Tipping also has a less charming cousin: bribery, extra money paid in advance for special treatment, a jump on the waitlist, or a better table, not a reward for service already rendered. That is also roughly where the phrase "nickel and dimed" comes from, back when tipping meant tossing a server the smallest coins in your pocket. These days, the phrase seems to describe the opposite, a whole system of small additions that always land in the business's favour. Researchers who study why people tip find that the reasons run deeper than economics. One ethnographic study of servers and diners in Vancouver found that people tip for good service, to follow the social norm, out of sympathy, to signal status, or to lock in a preference for next time. Tipping has never been just a transaction; it has always been part performance and part quiet social contract, which is probably why opting out feels so uncomfortable. Then Tipping Went on a Growth Spurt Fifteen percent used to be the polite standard and twenty percent was for showing off. That range has crept steadily upward. Canadians now commonly tip eighteen to twenty percent at restaurants, bars and at hair salons. Even coffee shops and fast-food counters are edging toward five to fifteen percent as digital prompts normalize the ask (Blueprint Financial, 2024). Nearly two thirds of Canadians say they feel pressured to tip more than they used to, and the share tipping twenty percent or higher has more than doubled in under a decade (Blueprint Financial, 2024). In the US food industry alone, tipping adds up to an estimated forty-seven billion dollars a year (Azar, 2011), proof that this habit is not shrinking on its own. The Power of Suggestion (and the Screen That Stares Back) Once you know the tactics at play, it becomes easier to push back without guilt. The first is plain old anchoring. When a screen offers eighteen, twenty, and twenty-five percent as your only real options, your brain quietly narrows its sense of what is normal to fit that range, even if fifteen felt generous a few years ago. The second is assumptive closing, a sales trick in which, instead of asking whether you would like to tip, the screen assumes you already said yes and only asks how much, with the highest number often listed first or made visually larger. The third is technology itself, which makes the ask frictionless in places it never used to be, a tap and a swivel where someone just handed you a bag. And the fourth is old-fashioned shaming, the discomfort of picking a lower number while the cashier watches your thumb hover over the screen. If this sounds suspiciously like how Dottie gets her treats, that is because it is the same playbook. Offer a limited set of flattering options, stand there expectantly, and let the silence do the persuading. Research shows this tip-screen genuinely works, boosting tips by fifteen to thirty percent compared with a plain jar on the counter, largely because people gravitate to the middle option and nobody wants to look cheap in front of an audience (GlobalTill, 2026). One Toronto bakery owner told CBC that customers get visibly upset just being asked, even with signs posted that tips are not expected (CBC, 2022). University of Saskatchewan professor Marc Mentzer called the whole system a human rights catastrophe we are simply stuck with (CBC, 2022). None of these four tactics are about rewarding good service. They are behavioural design, and once named, they lose a surprising amount of power over you. Then the Pandemic Showed Up and Ruined Math for Everyone It is worth remembering why this all accelerated, because the original impulse was genuinely kind. When the pandemic hit, restaurant workers were being laid off and dining rooms were closed. Tipping generously was in solidarity, meant as temporary help during a crisis. Except it did not stay temporary, and that part was not really an accident either. Once businesses saw customers would tolerate a higher default tip during a crisis, many kept it in place long after. What began as compassion got hardwired into the software as the new normal, with no memo ever announcing that the emergency measure was now permanent. And Then Delivery Apps Moved the Tip Jar to Before Dinner Even Arrives Just as the tip screen had already rewired one part of the routine, delivery apps quietly rewired another. With services like Uber Eats and Skip the Dishes, you are asked to tip before your food has even left the restaurant, a bit like tipping a movie based on the trailer. The gratuity is baked into checkout, so what used to be a reward for good service becomes a pre-negotiated cost of doing business from your couch. Drivers often rely on that upfront tip because base pay per delivery is thin, meaning customers are subsidizing wages before a single doorbell rings, tipping blind. Wait, What? Are We Tipping the Government Too? If the delivery app section left you feeling like every corner of a transaction has been quietly monetized, buckle up, because there is one more layer nobody warns you about. Tipping etiquette has always technically called for calculating your percentage on the pre-tax total, but the machine does not know or care about etiquette. It simply applies a percentage to whatever total is on the screen, tax already included. So, the moment you tap one of those preset percentage buttons, you are effectively handing your server a tip on the government's cut of the meal too, not just on your food. The good news is the money itself still goes straight to the server, not to the government (phew). A flat twenty percent tip, calculated the way the machine calculates it, works out closer to twenty-two percent in provinces with a combined sales tax around thirteen percent, a touch less where the tax rate is lower, once the tax already baked into that total gets factored in (ouch). Let that marinate for a second. You went in planning to leave twenty and walked out having left twenty-two. When There Was No Service to Begin With And then there is the increasingly common experience of being asked to tip somewhere where no actual service happened. The dry cleaners. Seriously? You hand over a bag of shirts, come back two days later, and someone hands you the same shirts on a hanger, and now there is a tip screen. Insert the mother of all eye rolls. Nobody brought anything to a table; nobody checked on you twice. The job was already priced into what you paid. This is the moment tipping stops being gratitude and starts being a business outsourcing payroll onto customers who never agreed to it. Let's Talk About What This Does to Seniors This part matters to me personally, since I spend my days helping retirees stretch every dollar with intention. Tipping fatigue hits seniors differently and being asked to add another eighteen to twenty-two percent to everyday errands can feel less like generosity and more like an unplanned pop quiz. I have heard from clients who now avoid certain errands or choose a drive-through, specifically to sidestep the awkward prompt. Seventy-three percent of Canadians already believe tipping lets employers get away with underpaying staff, and fifty-nine percent would rather see fair wages built into prices than keep gambling on tip guilt (Blueprint Financial, 2024). If tipping anxiety is nudging older adults toward staying home instead of enjoying a coffee with a friend, this so-called social norm is quietly chipping away at connection, not what any of us want for our golden years. This is not strictly a seniors’ problem either. Many people across every age group now quietly admit to choosing pickup over dine-in, skipping a small business altogether, or simply going out less, purely to avoid the awkward math of a screen and an audience. The difference for seniors is that the squeeze lands on top of a fixed income and a lifetime of budgeting habits that never had to account for an eighteen percent surcharge for saying yes to a friend's invitation. Maybe It Is Time for a Cash Tip Movement Here is an idea worth trying and sharing with your friends. The next time the screen swivels toward you, select no tip (usually tucked into the custom tip section rather than sitting out with the percentage buttons), pay the bill, and leave whatever cash tip you want directly on the table or in the jar afterward. To be clear, this is not about skipping the tip; it is about choosing how and when you deliver it. The server still gets paid fairly, just without a screen and an audience deciding for you. That one move sidesteps the anchoring, the assumptive question, the audience, and the algorithm quietly nudging the suggested amount upward. You decide the amount in private, hand it over with a genuine thank you, and walk out having tipped exactly what you meant to, power fully intact. If anyone asks why you skipped the prompt, just smile and say you do not tip machines; you tip people. This is also a great excuse to talk about it with your people. Ask your friends what they tip and why and figure out together where you all want to draw the line. Strength in numbers works on tipping the same way it works on everything else. Taking Back the Tipping Wheel A couple of practical notes before the cheat sheet below. Most screens that appear to offer only percentages hide a custom tip option that lets you enter zero or a flat dollar amount. It is worth finding, since a flat five dollars does not creep upward the way twenty percent does as prices rise. What to Tip, By Service Tipping Around the World Check Please! At the end of the day, tipping culture can feel like a money furnace, quietly burning through your paycheque, one percentage point at a time, while insisting the whole thing was your idea. And when the topic is your own money and your own life, also known around here as YMYL, letting action absorb anxiety beats letting anxiety run the show every time. Decide your numbers ahead of time, carry a bit of cash, ask a friend what they think, and stop apologizing for wanting a system that rewards real effort rather than clever design. Dottie has never apologized for expecting a treat, and to be fair, she earns hers. A screen swivelling toward you over a bagel has not. Tipping began as a genuine thank-you for genuine effort, so keep it simple. Decide your number before the screen decides it for you and save the big percentages for those who earned them. Next time that screen stares you down for twenty-two percent, channel your inner Dottie: sit, stay, and reward only the performance that deserves it. Don't Retire…ReWire! Sue My Book is Now Available for Pre-Order I hope you will consider pre-ordering a copy of Your Retirement Reset for you, a friend or loved one. It's available September 29, 2026 published by ECW Press - You can now order at Indigo or Amazon. And if you love supporting Canadian booksellers, please also check with your local independent bookstore. Most can easily order it for you.

Could President Trump’s Approval Ratings Rebound?

Newsweek interviewed Meena Bose, professor of political science, executive dean of the Public Policy and Public Service program, the Kalikow Chair in Presidential Studies and director of the Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency, about President Donald Trump’s falling approval ratings due to voter frustration over the economy and inflation. Dr. Bose told Newsweek that the long-term consequences of a president’s leadership and policies are “most significant” in determining their legacy. “A president’s long-term legacy for leadership and policy making is most important for determining historic favorability. The passage of time and the assessment of the totality of a presidency also can lead to more favorable ratings, or at least split ones in different policy or political areas, but this is no guarantee,” she said.

Experts on earthquake response, community recovery and building safety

The shaking from a major earthquake may be over in minutes, but its consequences will last for years. University of Delaware experts can address emergency response, distributing aid, assessing damaged buildings, helping vulnerable communities and planning for long-term recovery. Their expertise is particularly relevant as communities across Latin America respond to major earthquakes, including the deadly magnitude 7.4 earthquake in Colombia. Tricia Wachtendorf, co-director of UD’s Disaster Research Center, offers expertise on how governments, nonprofits, emergency responders and community groups coordinate following a major disaster. Her research examines the role of spontaneous or “emergent” groups, humanitarian aid and donations, and how communities and organizations respond in the aftermath of disasters. Jennifer Trivedi, associate professor of anthropology and Disaster Research Center faculty member, specializes in disaster vulnerability and why some communities are more severely affected than others. She also addresses the long-term recovery needs and planning that emerge after the immediate crisis. Michael Chajes, professor of civil and environmental engineering, provides expertise on the structural damage caused by earthquakes, why some buildings collapse while others withstand the shaking and how engineers assess damaged structures and improve earthquake resilience. To arrange an interview with one of these experts, visit their profiles and click on the contact button. Interested reporters can also email MediaRelations@udel.edu.