Oak Park’s Broadway throbs as bass bumps from one car and another’s engine belches. Someone honks their horn. Other cars buzz by well above the speed limit. This is urban living. But it doesn’t have to be. Thanks to Oak Park Sol, a newly-formed nonprofit serving as an urban land trust, this neighborhood is bringing nature back to its city-dwelling folks.

Bright bursts of yellow flowers amid a sea of rolling green grass are an easy find in April at Mather Field. But just months ago, these dramatic swathes were completely swamped with water, and later this summer their beds will be bone-dry and baking hot.

For decades, the UC Davis College of Engineering has consistently ranked in the top 35 engineering programs in the nation. That’s definitely good, but not remotely good enough for new engineering dean, Jennifer Sinclair Curtis, who took over the post last October. We recently sat down with the highly accomplished chemical engineer to discuss her vision for making the program even better.

Things are slowly getting better for women in engineering and other STEM fields, but let’s just say they’re not exactly working with a tailwind at their back. To be blunt, engineering is still a damn sausage fest. And the reasons for that go deeper than one might think.

In Sacramento, school cafeterias don’t have the equipment or capacity to store and prepare fresh, local food. They’re designed mainly to warm frozen, processed food, some of which is full of additives and preservatives.

When Chris Treiber left the Navy in 2011, he set sail on uncharted waters. His 10 years of service offered no natural path into a good job. He’d spent his last five of those guarding prisoners and had no civilian job experience. He had a GED, having dropped out of high school in 10th grade. And at age 32, he had a wife and five kids to provide for.

Dependent students at for-profit colleges have about 50 percent less family income than students attending community colleges and four-year public or private nonprofit colleges.

We hear a lot about the bad news: Fewer than 8.2 percent of eligible voters ages 18–24 turned out in the 2014 general election; most Americans cannot name the three branches of government; many young people do not think their civic involvement is worthwhile. But there are pockets of good news all around us. More schools are building on the old adage, “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.” We call this “action civics,” and we know it works.

In March, the first group of American high school juniors will sit for a newly overhauled Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) that features more time for fewer questions, among other changes. But even with a makeover, the test, administered by the College Board, may have lost some of its power to determine a student’s academic future.

For the past four years, Star Academy in Natomas didn’t look like a regular school. Due to overcrowding,  elementary kids went to class in a commercial building that faced a major street and had warehouse space in the back. Last year, when the moratorium was lifted, the district considered building the new charter school through a lease-leaseback deal. But the method, once a popular way for struggling districts to acquire new facilities, has come under legal fire in recent years.