My co-author, Noah Pickus, and I published a recent article in University World News entitled “Startup Universities inject new energy into the HE system.” The article opens with a story of how Noah and I came together to begin our book project, and how the global journeys that Noah and I took in our lives helped us experience some of the excitement of starting new universities and helping create new models of higher education in Asia and how these new universities give alternative and novel approaches to learning that are so much needed in today’s world.

The article describes how these new universities in some cases help students in countries like Ghana, India and Vietnam receive a top-quality liberal arts education at a small fraction of the price that it would take to travel to the US or Europe, and by staying within their home country or region, are more likely to then be retained as leaders and scholars within those regions to help advance their economies and cultures. The article also describes new approaches to staffing, and how many of these new universities have been able to avoid granting tenure (using long-term contracts instead) and creating competing department, and how this approach has reduced costs and increased campus unity and coherence.

The article also gives examples of many of the innovative advances provided by these new universities. To provide a brief quote, here is a section from the article about these innovations:

Examples include the four-year leadership curriculum at Ashesi University in Ghana, which allows students to integrate lessons from the classroom with their lives as students as they become the type of ethical entrepreneurial leaders that Ashesi hopes will promote a ‘renaissance in Africa’.

Also, new courses in Vietnamese studies developed at Fulbright University Vietnam, which explore the many dimensions of Vietnam’s culture, politics and economics as it has evolved after the ‘American War’ of the previous century.

Many start-ups, by abandoning disciplinary departments, can also structure their degree programmes along interdisciplinary lines of inquiry that strongly incorporate experiential learning.

Examples include the African Leadership University, which has several immersive internships and real-world experiences as part of the curriculum in entrepreneurship, and the project-based learning curriculum at Olin College of Engineering, where students begin designing new inventions in their first year of study, and continue through all four years to even develop designs for their own companies as part of the curriculum.

(From our article, “Start-up universities inject new energy into the HE system,” June 3, 2024, University World News).

We are grateful to University World news for the speedy publication of the article, and for the help it gave us in reaching an important new audience for our book.

On May 29, my co-author Noah Pickus and I gave a talk for the Open Society University Network (OSUN), which is led by the courageous and innovative leaders at Bard College in New York, and the Central European University in Vienna, Austria. The network includes nearly 30 member universities across the world, in a range of countries and territories including Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Bangladesh, Ukraine, Palestine, and Taiwan. The network also includes Ashesi University, one of the institutions we wrote about in our book, the New Global Universities. The image below, from the OSUN website, shows the scope of this global network.

The announcement for the talk included a nice blurb about the book, and we had a global audience of attendees who asked very good questions. We are grateful to Gray Rinehart for the invitation. Among the attendees were representatives of universities such as Parami University, based in Myanmar, and led by Kyaw Moe Tun, who asked some good questions. Parami University has been part of many of our discussions within the Pacific Alliance of Liberal Arts (PALAC), a group based at Soka University of America, that I founded along with Thomas Schneider, who is now leading the Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU).

We especially valued the chance to think about how new universities can help engage students and communities within countries that are struggling to gain greater freedom, and we believe that high quality liberal arts education, with academic freedom to explore deep questions that affect all of us as common members of humanity, provides the greatest hope for peace and a better world. Our new universities we write about are helping to build this better world, along with the universities built and led by the members of the OSUN group.

With a collaborator from Penn State University, we brought our little Nieves Observatory of the Soka University of America into its first published astrophysical paper. The project was to use our 0.3-meter telescope to confirm the detection of an extrasolar planet that was earlier detected by the satellite TESS. The light from the star is dimmed when the planet crosses in front of the star (or transits), and this allows measuring the size of the planet by comparing the radius of the planet with the star’s radius, which is derived from the fractional amount of light blocked during the transit. Our telescope was used remotely from PSU, and the data helps us learn more about the planets in these systems.

The paper was entitled “TOI-3984 A b and TOI-5293 A b: Two Temperate Gas Giants Transiting Mid-M Dwarfs in Wide Binary Systems” and was published in the Astronomical Journal in 2023. The paper confirms the existence of two gas giant exoplanets, TOI-3984 A b and TOI-5293 A b, orbiting M dwarf stars identified by TESS. These planets are notable for their relatively cool temperatures and their presence in wide binary systems, each with a significant stellar companion. The study utilizes a combination of TESS photometry, ground-based observations, speckle imaging, and high-precision radial velocity measurements to characterize the planets. TOI-3984 A b has a mass of approximately 0.14 Jupiter masses and an orbital period of 4.35 days, while TOI-5293 A b has a mass of 0.54 Jupiter masses and an orbital period of 2.93 days. The findings highlight the potential for these systems to provide insights into the formation and migration of gas giants around M dwarfs and their atmospheric compositions.

This paper contributes significantly to our understanding of exoplanetary systems, particularly in the context of gas giants orbiting M dwarf stars. Traditionally, gas giants have been found around more massive stars, making these findings around M dwarfs relatively rare and valuable for comparative planetology. The study of TOI-3984 A b and TOI-5293 A b offers insights into the diversity of planetary systems and challenges existing models of planet formation and migration, especially in the less massive protoplanetary disks around M dwarfs. Additionally, the characterization of these planets expands our knowledge of temperate gas giants’ atmospheric properties and potential habitability. The methodologies employed in this paper, combining space-based and ground-based observations with high-precision spectroscopy, set a precedent for future studies of similar exoplanetary systems.

(note: this summary was made with the assistance of GPT 4o).

With my former Yale-NUS student Jerrick Wee and former collaborator from Caltech Nadeja Blagorodnova, we studied an erupting nova known as V906 Car in optical and infrared wavelengths, using remotely operated telescopes in Chile. Two of our Soka University of America students, Taiga Morioka and Jeff Facey, contributed to the work. The paper was published in the Astrophysical Journal in 2020.

The paper was entitled “Multi-wavelength Photometry and Progenitor Analysis of the Nova V906 Car,” and presented an extensive observational study of the classical nova V906 Car (also known as Nova Car 2018 and ASASSN-18fv), discovered by the ASAS-SN survey on March 16, 2018. We provided detailed optical and infrared photometry data, highlighting the nova’s evolution over 126 days. The nova’s light curve showed a steep decline with a decline rate parameter ∆m15(B) = 0.88 and negligible host galaxy reddening. High-resolution spectroscopy estimated the extinction towards the nova as AV = 1.11+0.54−0.39. The progenitor system analysis suggests a white dwarf mass of < 0.8M☉, and a donor star likely being a K-M dwarf with 0.23-0.43M☉. The study contributes valuable data on novae’s light curves and spectral energy distribution, enhancing our understanding of their physical properties and progenitor systems.

The study of V906 Car provides critical insights into the broader astrophysical understanding of nova systems. By capturing the nova’s early rise and detailed multi-wavelength photometry, the paper contributes to refining models of nova outbursts, particularly the shock-powered mechanisms suggested by correlated optical and γ-ray emissions. The accurate measurements of extinction and distance further validate the use of classical novae as standard candles for cosmic distance calculations. Additionally, the analysis of the progenitor system enriches our knowledge of white dwarf accretion processes and the role of donor stars in nova systems, which are essential for understanding stellar evolution and binary interactions.

(note: this overview provided with assistance from ChatGPT 4o).

As part of my work at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), where I have been based this year as a visiting scholar, I was able to present a talk on April 25 based on our book The New Global Universities – Reinventing Higher Education in the 21st Century at HGSE for their students. The talk was entitled “Building a University from Scratch” and was with HGSE faculty member and former Macalester President Brian Rosenberg. We discussed the institutions that Noah Pickus and I wrote about in our book, as well as Brian Rosenberg’s experience at Macalaster and as a board member of ALU, which was one of the institutions in our book. We had a good discussion with the audience members, and it was great having a chance to present the book at HGSE as I wrap up my sabbatical year, and begin some new projects at Stanford toward the end of the academic yearl. The book talk is available as a zoom recording online at HGSE. I hope you enjoy it!