Author Archives: Line

Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) online Master’s degree

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Last week, Dean Bridget Long announced HGSE’s difficult decision to deliver a fully online learning experience during the academic year 2020-2021, due to the continuing and anticipated effects of the COVID-19 crisis on residential learning. As you may be aware, HGSE has also made the unprecedented decision to continue to recruit students through July 13 for the first-ever, fully online Master’s in Education (Ed.M.) , enrolling fall 2020. Making the Ed.M. available online, with full-time and part-time options, is an immense opportunity for HGSE to expand access and to make the program available to applicants who might otherwise not have been able to relocate to Cambridge and/or leave their current jobs.

Visit HGSE’s website to learn more about this program.

15 chaines de podcasts pour progresser en anglais

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Le podcast est un format en plein boom. Pourquoi ? C’est simple: rien à regarder, rien à lire, on n’a qu’à écouter, et on peut les picorer au fil de nos envies car en plus ils sont gratuits.

Les podcasts pour apprendre une langue ont les mêmes avantages : se former facilement, où que l’on soit et éventuellement en faisant autre chose en même temps. Régalez-vous donc, dans votre voiture, dans les transports en commun, en faisant votre jogging, en sortant votre lessive, en cuisinant, ou tout ce que vous voudrez !

Et par rapport aux autres outils d’apprentissage linguistique qui manquent souvent de contenus audio, les podcasts ont le mérite de vous faire travailler la compréhension orale, et d’écouter différents accents anglophones.

L’inconvénient ? Un podcast est facile à enregistrer et tout le monde peut créer son contenu et le proposer gratuitement sur une plateformes hébergeant des podcasts. Le résultat n’est donc pas toujours de grande qualité, beaucoup de séries fleurissent pour aussitôt être arrêtées, et il n’est pas évident de repérer ceux qui vous rendront accro et vous feront donc réellement progresser. Pour vous aider, nous avons sélectionné 15 chaines de podcasts vraiment intéressantes, pour tous les niveaux. SUITE

‘We Were Curiosities’: One Of ‘The Last Negroes At Harvard’ Shares His Story

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Kent Garrett Sr., 97, still remembers how proud and happy he was when his son was admitted to Harvard in 1959. “I invited everybody over for dinner,” he recalls with a laugh.

Garrett was a subway motorman who worked a second job waxing floors. His son, also named Kent Garrett, was among an unprecedented group of 18 black students accepted into the class of 1963.

Garrett chronicles what that time was like for him and his fellow black classmates in the new book The Last Negroes at Harvard, co-authored with his partner, Jeanne Ellsworth. MORE

USA – Information About the Presidential Proclamation Suspending Entry of Certain Immigrants

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Yesterday evening the President issued a proclamation suspending the entry of immigrants for a period of 60 days.  The measure was first announced in a tweet sent out by the President on Monday night. Because we know that many of you are concerned as to whether and how this may affect you, we want to provide the following summary of the proclamation.

WHO:
The proclamation suspends entry of those seeking immigrant visas from outside of the United States.  It DOES NOT affect individuals that are in the United States and applying for adjustment of status.  It also does not apply to those seeking entry as non-immigrants, such as visitors (B-1/B-2), employees of intergovernmental organizations (G-4), students (F-1/J-1) and temporary workers (H-1B).  There are several EXCEPTIONS to the proclamation for:

  • Lawful permanent residents 
  • Physicians, nurses, or other healthcare professionals coming to perform medical research or other research intended to combat the spread of COVID-19; or to perform work essential to combating, recovering from, or otherwise alleviating the effects of the COVID-19 outbreak and their any spouses and unmarried children under 21 years old
  • EB-5 Immigrant Investors 
  • Spouses of a United States citizen
  • Children under 21 years old of a United States citizen
  • Members of law enforcement
  • Members of the United States Armed Forces and any spouse and children of a member of the United States Armed Forces
  • Special Immigrant Visa holders in the SI or SQ classification,and their spouse and children 
  • Anyone whose entry would be in the national interest
  • Individuals who have already been issued an immigrant visa

WHAT:
The proclamation is a temporary suspension on entry.  It is anticipated that application and processing steps that occur prior to the issuance of such immigrants will continue.  Once the proclamation is lifted or expired, those individuals will be allowed to enter the United States.
It should be noted that most US Consulates have already been closed and unable to conduct interviews due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

WHERE:
As noted above, this affects only those who are outside of the United States.

WHEN:
The proclamation went into effect at 11:59 PM April 23rd and is set to expire in 60 days.  It may be continued if deemed necessary.

  • SOURCE – https://bromberglaw.com/

Living dangerously – Bethesda native and award-winning journalist Christina Goldbaum found her calling covering conflict in Africa

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Early one morning in April 2015, Christina Goldbaum was pounding on locked metal doors at the mostly closed Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi. She was trying to find an airline with a flight that would take her to the Kenyan city of Garissa, where terrorists had killed more than 145 people and wounded dozens more at a local university.

After hearing sketchy news reports of the attack, she had driven three hours to the airport from the small town where she had been working on a documentary for a nongovernmental organization. As she drove, she frantically emailed an editor she knew at Agence France-Presse (AFP) and learned that the international news agency did not have another freelancer available to cover the mass shooting.

With the few flights to Garissa already full, Goldbaum was able to snag a spot on a four-seat charter flight booked by a South African news crew. When she arrived in Garissa, she got to work, shooting video while under curfews and dealing with regular power outages and unreliable internet access.

“It was so important that journalists be there on the ground to show that those killed were so much more than statistics,” says Goldbaum, now a reporter for The New York Times. “People hear about terrorist attacks and they don’t connect” to the victims.

While it’s common for American journalists to start their careers by covering local news, Goldbaum, now 27, found her journalistic footing overseas. The Bethesda native, who graduated in 2010 from St. Andrew’s Episcopal School in Potomac, got her first reporting job at the Cape Times in Cape Town, South Africa, at the age of 22 after graduating from Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. She then spent four years in Africa as a freelance foreign correspondent and field producer for outlets including AFP, The Atlantic and Foreign Policy, shooting her own photos and video as she covered stories ranging from political upheaval in Burundi to a massive truck bombing in the Somali capital of Mogadishu in October 2017 that killed more than 550 people and injured more than 300. MORE

Harvard University – President Bacow – Testing Positive for COVID-19

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Dear Members of the Harvard Community,

Earlier today, Adele and I learned that we tested positive for COVID-19. We started experiencing symptoms on Sunday—first coughs then fevers, chills, and muscle aches—and contacted our doctors on Monday. We were tested yesterday and just received the results a few minutes ago. We wanted to share this news with all of you as soon as possible.

Neither of us knows how we contracted the virus, but the good news—if there is any to be had—is that far fewer people crossed our paths recently than is usually the case. We began working from home and completely limiting our contact with others on March 14 in keeping with recommendations to adopt social distancing measures. In line with standard protocols, the Department of Public Health will be in touch with anyone with whom we have had close contact over the past fourteen days.

We will be taking the time we need to rest and recuperate during a two-week isolation at home. I am blessed with a great team, and many of my colleagues will be taking on more responsibility over the next few weeks as Adele and I focus on just getting healthy. Thanks, in advance, for your good wishes. Thanks also for your understanding if I am not as responsive to email as I normally am.

This virus can lay anyone low. We all need to be vigilant and keep following guidelines to limit our contact with others. Your swift actions over the past few weeks—to respond to the needs of our community, to fulfill our teaching mission, and to pursue research that will save lives—have moved me deeply and made me extraordinarily grateful and proud. I hope to see as few of you in our situation as possible, and I urge you to continue following the guidance of public health experts and the advice and orders of our government officials.

The world needs your courage, creativity, and intelligence to beat this virus—wishing each of you good health.

All the best,
Larry

Lawrence S. Bacow
President
Harvard University

H-1B Cap Season 2020

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First of all, though USCIS has announced numerous operational changes (including a temporary reprieve from the requirement for wet ink signatures, and the – not unexpected – suspension of premium processing) at this time they have not announced any changes to the cap lottery and filing timeline. 

Here’s what you can expect:
March 31: Date by which USCIS intends to notify selected registrants.
April 1: The earliest date that FY 2021 H-1B cap-subject petitions may be filed.
Registration Selection Notifications USCIS intends to notify registrants (employers) and their representatives (attorneys) with selected registrations via their USCIS online accounts no later than March 31, 2020. A registrant’s USCIS online account will show one of the four following statuses for each registration:
Submitted: A registration status may continue to show “Submitted” after the initial selection process has been completed. “Submitted” registrations will remain in consideration for selection until the end of the fiscal year, at which point all registration statuses will be Selected, Not Selected or Denied.
Selected: Selected to file an FY 2021 H-1B cap-subject petition.
NotSelected: Not selected for this fiscal year.

  • Please note that a registration will not reflect a status of Not Selected until the conclusion of the fiscal year. In the event that USCIS determines that it needs to increase the number of registrations projected to meet the H-1B regular cap or the advanced degree exemption allocation, USCIS will select from registrations held in reserve to meet the H-1B regular cap or advanced degree exemption allocation.

Denied: The same registrant or representative submitted more than one registration on the beneficiary’s behalf for the same fiscal year. All registrations the registrant or representative submitted on behalf of the same beneficiary for the same fiscal year are invalid.
H-1B cap-subject beneficiaries, including those eligible for the advanced degree exemption, must have a “Selected” registration notification in order for a registrant or representative to properly file an H-1B cap-subject petition for FY 2021. Registrants and representatives will not receive non-selection notifications until the conclusion of the fiscal year. Until that time, the status of registrations not selected as part of any initial random selection process and not denied will remain as “Submitted.”
As always, feel free to contact us with any questions, to schedule a consultation, or to initiate an H-1B filing.

MBA – The prestigious Wharton business school’s new dean will be first woman and black in its nearly 140-year history

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Erika James has a knack for making history.Five years after she was named the first African-American woman to be named dean of Emory University’s Goizueta Business School, James was named as the new dean at the University of Pennsylvania’s the Wharton School of Business.She’ll be the first woman and person of color to head the top business school in its 139-year history.”Erika is an award-winning scholar and teacher and a strong, proven leader who serves as dean of the Goizueta Business School at Emory University,” University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann said in a news release.”A passionate and visible champion of the power of business and business education to positively transform communities locally, nationally, and globally, she is exceptionally well prepared to lead Wharton into the next exciting chapter of its storied history,” she said.James was credited with growing Emory’s school faculty by 25% by the end of her first year, where she built an innovation and entrepreneurship lab that opened to all students. By last year the school had one of the most gender-diverse faculty populations in higher education, it said.”This is an exciting time to be in business education,” James said in the release. “The scope and platform of the Wharton School provides an opportunity to create far reaching impact for students, scholars, and the business community.”James served as the senior associate dean for executive education at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business prior to becoming the dean at Emory. She has a Ph.D. and master’s degree in organizational psychology from the University of Michigan, in Detroit and received a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Pomona College of the Claremont Colleges, in California. James will succeed Geoffrey Garrett, who became dean of the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business. MORE