LUND Apr 29, 2020 (Thomson StreetEvents) -- Edited Transcript of Immunovia AB (publ) earnings conference call or presentation Tuesday, April 28, 2020 at 2:30:00pm GMT

Hello, and welcome to the Immunovia Q1 Conference Call. My name is Jas, and I'll be your coordinator for today's event. (Operator Instructions) I will now hand you over to your host, Mats Grahn, CEO, to begin today's call. Thank you.

Yes. Good afternoon or good morning wherever you are. It is a pleasure to welcome you to this quarter 1 report from Immunovia. And we will, today, after this slide, also go through the agenda, which is the first quarter highlights, of course. It's our response to the ongoing pandemic. We'll talk about the remaining steps to launch of IMMray PanCan-d, our test for early detection of pancreas cancer; touch on the commercial launch preparation activities; the prospective studies; and then there will be some short information about the upcoming AGM; and we'll finish up with questions.

So the first thing is the highlights that we have had in quarter 1. And we -- the most important thing is, of course, that the verification study of IMMray PanCan-d proceeds as planned. We did receive all the required blood samples and actually more from our key opinion leader network for the verification study.

The commercial team also worked hard with preparing the detailed plans for the launch, particularly during January and February. Then when the pandemic hit in March, these plans had to be adopted significantly to accommodate the situation. I will touch upon that later in the presentation.

And of course, what happened was that in-person activities has had -- such as conferences and patient organization meetings, both very, very important for awareness and knowledge about the tests, were canceled and now has been turned into digital activities in a successful way.

Furthermore, an important step in quarter 1 was that we welcomed our new Senior Vice President of Sales for North America, Mike Pettigrew, to the team. And also, we proceeded with our discovery study in lung cancer even after the partner on pharma side decided not to continue. We have all the control of our samples and continues as planned for the -- and we'll be reporting that in quarter 2.

Shortly on the -- before I move on to the COVID-19 situation in the Q1 report, you can also see that our cash flow for the quarter was about SEK 40.5 million. And more -- most importantly, we have SEK 223 million at hand, which means we have over a year with the current business plan going forward, which is great in these times of corona unrest on the market.

So let's move to the response to the pandemic. This is, of course, extremely important for all companies right now. And I'm happy to say that we are pretty well off, and I'll talk about the impact that then has happened.

We have, of course, work-at-home policies introduced for the employees. Even if you're healthy and you can work from home, they are doing so to minimize the risk of infections. If people have symptoms, cold and so forth, and then it's, of course, mandatory to stay at home. This leads to some reshuffling in tasks, of course, when people have to stay at home and so forth, but we have been able to manage that well this far.

When it comes to activities that require that staff is at -- in place, the R&D labs in Sweden, the clinical lab in Sweden and the production facilities, still fully operational. So we have managed very well during this first period of the pandemic, thanks to the loyal and flexibility of the staff, which we are really happy about.

The COVID-19, also for the ones who are not familiar to the local situation, in South Sweden hasn't had any major impact yet as opposed to the Stockholm area, for example. So in that sense, we're also fortunate to be located here in the south of Sweden. None of our employees are infected thus far here or in U.S. or elsewhere.

We, of course, constantly follow the guidelines and changes or orders from authorities in the geographies where we are active. And particularly focusing on U.S. in the right corner of this slide, the clinical lab is well prepared for -- with detailed plans for sales part. However, as we reported, first of April, the state went into a shutdown and stay-at-home orders for all people 1st to April 7. That has -- during, let's say, last weeks have been prolonged to May 4. And that, of course, is a challenge for us, where our staff in the lab cannot -- are not allowed to go to work and has to stay at home, and we'll touch more upon this later in the presentation.

When it comes to other activities to mitigate COVID-19, we were successful during Q1 to stock reagents, consumables and chemicals required for our work leading up to the launch and also having all instrumentation in place and installed the last things right before things got a little bit difficult. So we are very well equipped on that side and have been able to continue to fill up with what we need. So that is fully under control.

Moving forward then to our clinical collaborations with all the hospitals across the world. They are, of course, following their national guidelines and local guidelines and regulations, which means that many of our sites or most of them actually have stopped clinical trials in general, including sample collaboration. And this is because they, of course, have reallocated resources, clinicians and staff to COVID-19 care.

Some places even -- it's not even possible to get into the hospitals to pick up, for example, collected samples that are there. So -- and also individuals that are in the clinical programs, even if they would like to, they may not be able to travel or come to the hospital given the situation. That's why the sites are affected in that sense.

However, there are also a good situation for us because we managed to get all the samples we needed and even more for the verification studies delivered to our site in Lund before any of this shutdown. So we are in a good situation compared to many others there. And we are working hard in various ways to also secure the last ones for the validation, which we'll come back to as well during the presentation.

Let's move over to the remaining steps to launch and the details of some of the challenges we have and how we work with them. As you are aware, we are at the verification study. That is important to verify the functionality and the performance of the locked test in IMMray PanCan-d, both the signature and algorithms and so forth. This is done on the known samples, and we are working hard to complete that one that then leads over to this next step, the validation study. And we have come this far. And we have, over the years, overcome numerous obstacles. And now finally, we have to overcome the corona situation as well, and we will. We will be the first to market with this test that no one else has been able to do before. So we are still on the same path here. We are working hard to overcome the last hurdles caused by the corona. And everybody else is affected by that as well. So I'm very confident that we'll be the first to market.

Let's look into a little bit of the details of what's happening in Massachusetts, specifically where we are located outside Boston. This is now our main time risk, so to say, for our plan for the launch in Q3. And that is because the lab, as we have stated in the press release and also in the updates of 1st of April, is fully ready with the plans, what needs to be done from now until launch, including accreditations and sales starts and practical setups and so forth. However, since as of today, Massachusetts has extended this statewide mandatory closure or what they call nonessential to COVID-19 businesses and also stay-at-home guidelines all the way until May 4. This -- losing more than a month of practical work there is a challenge, which meet by doing replanning for different scenarios. We are reallocating tasks between Massachusetts, well, the lab in Marlborough and our team here in Lund, as far as possible. We are -- reallocation samples that are required and everything that is possible. It is a critical activity, and we need to get the lab opened, but we are in the hands of the authorities there. It's still possible to move to the targets, but it's the main risk, and I want you to be aware of that.

And looking a little bit into the detail here on these 2 last steps, the validation study and the -- verification study followed by the validation study. The validation is done on locked signature and algorithms on blinded samples, and we have most samples in-house but specific for the U.S. launch, and we are focusing to secure transfer of some samples that are already collected but are at hospitals where we currently can't get in. We are -- although in -- confident that we will be able to access them as soon as things ease up a little bit just in -- especially in U.S. hospitals. And then we are also getting positive feedback on collection of remaining samples, mainly for the CE marking that will happen in parallel. So we also, of course, use the mitigation of excess samples for the validation collection and reallocate it as much as possible to the activities in validation. So this is important to understand, and we are working really hard to meet this.

And I also want to make sure that you understand that the subset of the studies, particularly the validation, has to be performed in the CLIA/CAP laboratory in Marlborough for the U.S. accreditation to CLIA/CAP. And we are, of course, doing everything we can to minimize the impact that is closed down and are ready to go as soon as possible after the opening as soon as our people get into lab. However, we have worked hard on reallocating tasks, and our team in U.S. are actually doing a great work from home even though they can't be in the lab, even supporting with digital tasks, the people in here in Lund facilities and vice versa. So for example, doing important work on results coming from the scanners overnight, so they are ready when the people here in Lund come to work in the morning and so forth. So it's a constant replanning, reshuffling. We've been successful this far, but it is very tight, and we really need the authorities to open up the ability to go to work in Massachusetts.

Okay. Let's move over to the commercial side and talk about the commercial launch preparation activities. We mentioned -- I mentioned in the beginning here that the prelaunch activity that was planned in detail and ready to go had to be replanned in March because of important clinical conferences, which are really important to meet the key opinion leaders, the clinicians, the gastro people and so forth to introduce the test and make them really aware in a broader sense than we have now when we are closing in to launch. That is not possible face-to-face because the conference have been canceled during foreseeable months here of the launch.

Same thing, we have had the last year's extensive collaborations with the patient organization and taking part in numerous, what they call, walks or patient meetings in all the major cities basically in U.S. And since these ones were also canceled because we can't gather thousands of people in that way either, digital plans have been put in place, and we have also increased activities in a very, very innovative way from our launch team and our commercial organizations. Example of these are net conferences where we will present are now step by step getting turned into digital conferences. The latest example here is that the big and very important -- most important key opinion leader meeting in Europe called EPC has been decided -- that was planned to be in Paris now will be a digital full meeting where Immunovia is presenting the test and those things. So that's now set in stone, and it will happen.

Even more important in collaborations with one of the major patient organizations, the patient meet -- patient organization meetings that normally take place physically in different cities, there will be -- was a plan for a huge one outside U.S. in London summer. That one has now been turned into a virtual digital walk. And we have, I think, today announced it on our home page when and how it will happen. And that means that even U.S. investors are interested in the company, and the test will be able to take part in that one that way. So this is something we worked on our initiatives on our team with the patient organization in U.K. And it's first of its kind ever globally, and we believe this is a great concept that we will try to move further into other countries, as well in other languages. So if you are interested to take part in the virtual walk patient organizations, check it out on our home page, and it will happen in June.

Right. That was some examples. When it comes to the sales preparation and launch preparation activities that are maintained that relates to, for example, setting up the sales system, building the sales training packages for people they are on-boarding right now, completing sales tools and do a lot of target mapping, meaning that we, in detail, continue to map up each individuals in key hospitals and gastro centers that we want the sales force to pay visit to and target. So they are -- will be extremely well prepared and targeted to maximize the use of their time. So that's short about the commercial launch preparations, been a lot of work to reshuffle, but we believe we are in a successful path in this area.

Next slide is about the prospective studies. I mentioned in the beginning here that -- the sites, the hospitals that take part in this, and there are many, as you know, in the 3 studies we run. We run the PanFAM for the hereditary/familiar risk group, we run the PanDIA for the people who are over 50 and gets the first diagnosis of diabetes and PanSYM for differential diagnosis and rollout of pancreas cancer. All the 3 ones have been running, as you know. The one that is affected by this situation the most is the PanFAM because risk people have difficulties or cannot come to the hospitals for their checkups or leave the blood sample right now and/or the hospitals are reallocating resources to the COVID-19. That means that the PanFAM one will be postponed even interim and least to next year, 2021, Q1, Q2. That's for sure.

However, PanDIA, the big study that we run here in Scandinavia, in Sweden particularly will not be affected as this sample collected -- collection is very well advanced already at this stage. And actually, it's still ongoing, has not been closed down since it's running here in the south of Sweden, where the infection of corona has been very low this far.

When it comes to PanSYM, we are confident that the intervention phase that will -- which is planned to start early '21 is -- will be planted accordingly and move on there. So it's really only PanFAM that is affected. This is a much, much better situation than any clinical trials, for example, in the pharma side, which is very difficult if it's interrupted. So this is also, under the circumstances, under control.

Next area, and this is just a summary of the slide of the 3 prospectus studies as you have known them from before, and it's the ones we just talked about.

Finally, here now, the AGM announcements and details. And for that, I will leave the word to Julie Silber, our IR Director.

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Julie Silber, Immunovia AB (publ) - Director of IR [3]

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Hi, and thank you again for joining us. This is Julie Silber, the Director of IR, and I wanted to just do a brief announcement on our Annual General Meeting. As previously announced, the AGM will take place on Thursday, May 7, 2020, at 4 p.m. Details can be found for this on the press release for the AGM that was dated April 3 as well as on our website.

I wanted to take this time to just assure people that we are taking every precaution necessary in accordance with COVID-19 safety requirements and that the meeting will be kept as short as possible. No refreshments will be served, and seating will also accommodate the COVID-19 safety requirements.

Shareholders, agents and/or assistants who feel the slightest bit ill or have a relative that are sick or belong to the COVID-19 risk group should not attend the meeting. Shareholders should consider voting by proxy. The company, if necessary, may actually take further precautions at short notice depending on what is happening with the pandemic. We urge you, all shareholders, anyone who is interested in attending this meeting, to follow the company's website at http://www.immunovia.com for any updates to this information.

And now I will turn this back for Q&A.

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Mats Grahn, Immunovia AB (publ) - CEO [4]

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Right. And just before we start the Q&A, I will just have a few summaries on this one.

So actions taken successfully to date to combat the situation with the pandemic. We are on a critical time line but still on the time line, and we remain focused on the launch of IMMray PanCan-d. We will be the first to market. And we have, of course -- we are ready to adjust to unforeseen circumstances, and we know there will be more of that going forward, of course. Specifically, the Massachusetts closure is the current main risk, and we will work hard on that and update you as soon as we have a clear picture of what that means.

We will be the first-to-market solution for early detection of pancreas cancer. And this -- don't forget about it, it's a major market opportunity exceeding USD 4 billion over time. And this is a great place to be in, and we are sure we will take the chance to meet the remaining obstacles to get to that position.

So with that, I'd like to open up for questions.

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Questions and Answers

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Operator [1]

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(Operator Instructions) And we have just had a question come through, and this comes from the line of [Michael Loffman].

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Unidentified Analyst, [2]

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I was just wondering about the discovery studies of RA and lung. Are they still on schedule for Q2?

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Mats Grahn, Immunovia AB (publ) - CEO [3]

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Right. I suspect that I would get that question, so we actually prepared a slide for that as well, which you hopefully can see now. This is the general path of all studies, all the way from very early stage, all the way to commercialization. As you know, we are at the end of that now for IMMray PanCan-d.

And when it comes to lung cancer, it's in the analysis phase actually. We have run the samples that we did achieve from our previous collaborator and that are now in our ownership and use. So we will conclude that, as we have announced earlier in Q2.

When it comes to RA, we have the samples at hand. We have the clinical date. However -- and we -- but I can't be 100% sure when, so we will announce it when it's ready. And the reason for that is that we are now really allocating all the resources we have to the PanCan-d to make sure that we meet our objectives and targets on the PanCan-d side because the key value in the company right now and for the foreseeable future is to succeed and to capture the pancreas cancer diagnostic market here and really meet the time lines on this one. So we will need -- we are doing a lot of reallocation of people just to meet the effects of the corona and so forth for different tasks day by day. And at any case, we will not -- we will always prioritize PanCan-d. That's why I cannot be sure to promise when the RA data will be ready.

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Operator [4]

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The next question comes from the line of [Oskar Milner].

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Unidentified Analyst, [5]

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Last year around this time, you -- I think you estimated that Immunovia had connected with some 24,000 people via different patient organizations. Could you give an update on where you stand in numbers and so today?

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Mats Grahn, Immunovia AB (publ) - CEO [6]

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Yes. 2000 -- and that was -- the figures you referred to were 2018 approximately, what I can remember. And 2019, we had even more meetings. I believe it was around 35,000 people that attended these meetings, in U.S. particularly. So we spent the last 2 years in close collaboration with the patient organizations, and we visited and informed and met people and took contact details of people who wanted to be on our waiting list and information list and so forth from this one. So it was about 25,000 in 2018 and 35,000 in 2019.

We had planned for this year even more on these visits, and we did some of them this year as well before the corona shut all of them down. That's why we now have this initiative. We're doing digital walks, and it's actually our idea that our commercial team has come up with them and worked with the first patient organization here to run the one -- the big one in London. And we also hope that the U.S. side will jump on to that train, and we can continue with digital ones this year. This is important to continue to build awareness and demand from the self-pay group of -- particularly the hereditary/familiar group.

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Unidentified Analyst, [7]

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Yes. Great. I have a second question. A term I hear often is golden standard when it comes to these tests. Could you speak a little bit about what that is, what that means?

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Mats Grahn, Immunovia AB (publ) - CEO [8]

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Oh, yes. It's very nice to do that in this area. The problem with pancreatic cancer is that there is nothing really that functions when it comes to a blood-based test or a simple test for early detection. There is one single marker called CA19-9, and you measure one thing, which is a standard test. That's actually most often -- it's actually in the guidelines only used -- should only be used for recurrence monitoring, but it's anyway measured on many patients. I wouldn't call it a golden standard. It's the only thing that's there, and it's not really working very well by itself.

The other golden standard, you can say, in this area would be imaging then, which is the current way to diagnose -- only way to diagnose pancreatic cancer and will continue to be important. And that consists not only of CT, the standard CT, but it's more MRI and endoscopic ultrasound.

So in other areas of diagnosis, there may be golden standards of other blood-based or simpler tests and so forth. But in this area has been unmet clinical need, and that's one of the strategic reasons why we picked this one as a target for our first product.

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Operator [9]

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There are currently no questions in the queue. (Operator Instructions)

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Julie Silber, Immunovia AB (publ) - Director of IR [10]

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We do have some questions that have come in via the web section of this call, and I can actually ask some of those at this moment while we're waiting for more call-in question.

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Mats Grahn, Immunovia AB (publ) - CEO [11]

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Great.

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Julie Silber, Immunovia AB (publ) - Director of IR [12]

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The first one is, is the EU launch postponed? Or when do you expect the EU launch?

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Edited Transcript of IMMNOV.ST earnings conference call or presentation 28-Apr-20 2:30pm GMT - Yahoo Finance

Its something youre looking for, right? How couldnt you be? Everywhere you go on the Internet someone telling you that you need to be successful in life. Or, risk wasting it! But heres the thing, what isPERSONAL SUCCESS? Or, more importantly, what is success to you?Without knowing the answer to that question, youre never going to be successful. No matter how hard you try. Because although you may be working hard, you might not ever be working in the right direction.

In this article, I want to help you find out what it means to be successful. Not to those around you. Not in the eyes of your parents. But so you can look in the mirror and know youre on the right path.

Lets get started, shall we?

Picture this.

1. Take 10 of your friends, relatives and colleagues and stick them all in a room. 2. Ask each of them, individually, to write down what success means to them on a sheet of paper and give it to you. 3. You put all the sheets in a hat, mix them together and then open them up to read whats inside. What are the chances all of the pieces of paper say exactly the same thing?

Slim to none. Because personal success is always different. They might read:

Each person views success differently through their own eyes. So, the question behind this article is simple: What does personal success look like to you?

Success, It Has Nothing To Do With Money Or Status

When I was younger I had a really close friend and mentor called Tom*. He was a few years older than me and was studying medicine. But I knew him through training in the Gym. Tom loved playing around in the gym. Whenever he was coaching, teaching or helping someone, he was happy and full of purpose. There was a light in his eyes that was filled with passion.

A light that went out whenever he had to think about his studies. When it came toward the end of his time at Medical school, Tom lost a lot of weight. He wasnt sleeping, he hardly ate and he was always on edge. Turns out it was time for him to accept one of his job offers as a Doctor. Something he had worked his whole life for, but now, didnt want.

After weeks of thinking about it, Tom decided to go with his gut. He turned down all the offers for being a doctor. Some that would have eventually paid him more money than he could ever have dreamed of. But would never have made him happy. And it didnt fulfill what he felt was his purpose.

Now he runs his own gym, works with international athletes and uses his medical skills to educate doctors on proper nutrition. And hes never been happier.

Through traditional eyes, Tom wouldnt be successful. He stopped himself from becoming a:

But none of those meant anything to him. Even if he had become the worlds highest paid neurosurgeon, he would never have felt successful. Because that job would never have made him happy.

NOTE: *Tom isnt his actual name, its been changedto conceal his identity.

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.~ Albert Schweitzer ()

So, what do you learn from Tom not becoming a doctor?

That money, status and things dont mean anything when it comes to personal success. There is only oneimportant metric behind it HAPPINESS. If what youre doingdoesntmake you happy then you shouldnt be doing it at all. End of story.

There are two types of happiness for you to focus on, when you come to think of it:

The two are notmutually exclusive. Because when youre helping the right people, it will directly affect the things that make you happy.

In this next section well look at defining your own success, both for you, and helping those around you.

When you start looking at your own success its common to look at justoneaspect of your life. Things like:

Because its easier to focus on that one aspect of your life than it is everything else. But thats why you often see a lot of successful people with poor relationships, broken homes or severe depression or anxieties. Their focus on that single element became so strong that they let the rest of their life slip to reach the top of that mountain. Which is fine, if thats what you want. But wouldnt you rather raise the experience and success in all parts of your life, than in just one area? After all, its better to have a smaller house filled with love, than a mansion all on your own, right?

So in this next section where well look at defining your own success both for you and helping those around you remember that you dont need to look at justoneelement of your life. Instead, think ofallthe places in your life that you want to breed success.

As you climb the ladder of success, check occasionally to make sure it is leaning against the right wall.~ Anonymous ()

This next step is going to need a little self-reflection. And a pen and paper. Or the program you use as your defacto brain.

Ask yourself these questions and see what comes out for your personal success goals.

A Quick Note

In this article Ive banged on that money, status and other things dont matter when it comes to success.

And they dont.

Unless they will make you happy.

If earning $40,000 a month, being your companys next CEO or owning a hot tub will make you happy then crack on with them. Just dont feel that they are what youre expected to want, if they wont make you happy.

That being said, lets get on with the questions

It doesnt matter what it is. Write down everything you can think of. Whatever comes into your mind.Remember:

You can repeat this question as many times as you want before moving onto the next step.

You should have a list now full of ideas. And, no doubt, theyre all things that will make you happy. But nows time to filter it down to what you really want to do. For this were going to try and old trick of Warren Buffets.

Youve narrowed your list down. But that doesnt mean you should attack all five right away. Instead choose the one that you feel that you can start on right now. It could be:

Congratulations, youre already ahead of about 95% of the world. Youve narrowed down what personal success means to you. But heres the fourth and final question.

What are you going to do about it? Whats that first step youre going to take to make sure this happens?

I recently watched a TEDxTalk by Adam Leipzig who outlined a wonderful exercise to kick-start your personal success and happiness. So, why reinvent the wheel, when its already been beautifully made?

The first step to looking outwards is to look inwards. Who are you?

What are you good at, and how do those skills impact those around you? What abilities do you have that can make the world (or life) a much better place?

Now you know your skills, who do you want to help? This doesnt have to be charity though thats the first place your mind will go it can be anything at all.

What is it that they are truly looking for? Do you need to:

Anything that these people need, write it down.

What impact does all of the above have on their lives? Do they:

Outlineall off these things. Because when you know how they change, this is where your own happiness comes from.

The 7 Rules of Personal Success

You know what personal success means to you, but dont know how to get started? Follow these rules to start on the right foot and forge your own path. Read more

The 7 Point Checklist For Personal Success

Personal success is the most important kind of success. Read on to find the little things that you need to do every day to make sure you stay on the path to personal success. Read more .

5 Daily Habits of Highly Successful People

Follow these simple yet powerful habits of highly successful people to find that elusive success in your life. Stop standing still. Use your time wisely and better yourself! Read more

More here:
What does Personal Success Mean to You - The Ultimate Guide

Measuring personal success is not just a matter of examining how much money, fame or power you have. Personal success is marked by signs of emotional growth that manifests itself in various signs and signals. This means that there is not really a standard for how far you have come in life, but rather it is about recognizing how your own personal approach and attitude towards growth in life and work have made you successful.

Examine the amount of influence you have when helping others achieve their goals. Are you able to help others achieve their goals without fear of them becoming more successful then you?

Ask yourself the following questions: Do you look at life with a positive attitude and hope for the future? Are you able to stop blaming others for any downfalls you may have experienced over the years? Can you examine the past and garner what you have learned as experience for the future instead of blaming the past for your lot in life?

Evaluate your ability to take a risk and leap out into the unknown without fear of failing. Being able to understand that failure is actually a stepping stone to all success and then not caring what others think of you for attempting the feat go a long way in discovering yourself and your personal success.

Determine how much your friends, family and coworkers respect you by distinguishing between being respected because of money and fame and being respected because of the amount of trust and honor you have earned.

Record your goals in order to keep track of what you have accomplished over time. Being able to visualize what you have done and what you still need to do can be helpful in determining and evaluating your personal success.

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How to Measure Personal Success | Career Trend

The person who gets the farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore. ~Dale Carnegie ()

Early last year, I found myself sat on the balcony of an apartment in Malaysia. The view in front of me was amazing. There was a crystal clear ocean; palm trees dotted all over, a cold beer in my hand and my favorite music in the background. I took a sip of my beer, soaked it all in and realized something powerful I had made it professionally!

Six months earlier, I had set myself the target of running a location free business. I wanted to write and travel the world. Malaysia was the first stop for all of that. Which brings me full circle to this article. And how it can help you decide what you want both professionally and personally.Because that might sound like personal success to you; but its truly a professionalsuccessgoal that I set.

Let me explain

The two are not mutually exclusive which Ill come to a little later on but on a base level it breaks down like this

Think of them this way what you want to achieve at home andwhat you want to achieve at work.

Now your professional goals are always personal to you; which is where it can sometimes get confusing, and the waters get murky.

But your goals can only ever be personal to you. Because, well, theyre your goals.

Now I just said that the two are not mutually exclusive. And, theyre not. They have a direct impact on each other. The crossover is what professional success allows you to do in your personal life.

Let me use my Malaysia example as a reference point:

Personally, I always wanted to go to that part of the world. It was somewhere Id never been, and it was high on my bucket list of places.

Professionally, I never could. Getting time off work or having the money to do that sort of trip wasnt feasible at all.

So when my professional situation allowed me to go there, I was able to hit my personal goal of being there too.

You probably have things in your life right now where this crossover will occur:

You might be dying to get that promotion at work but its rarely for the money or the power its mostly for what it allows you to do in your own life.

I define myself by my own business. I built it from the ground up. But I built it for the lifestyle it allows me to lead.

Neither.

There are two things that come before you look towards personal or professional success:

That dictates which goal youre going to put the most emphasis on, for where you are in your life right now.

So, youve seen there is an overlap between Personal and Professional success and theyre quite often connected from the start.

But which one should get your focus?Well, that comes down to a few factors:

This isnt to say that youshouldntmulti-task and try to take on a couple of goals at a time. If you can manage that, thats fine. But if there is a big goal like, for example, going back to school and changing your career, or losing 50 lbs worth of weight, its going to be hard to manage them both.

So be careful which one you prioritize, and dont take on too much at once.

Like I said earlier, its all about what you what. And, well, whats going to make you happy.

And, both hinge on whether theyll make you happy.

Read this article:
The Difference between Personal and Professional Success

While the stimulus checks have started dropping into bank accounts and many creditors are offering relief on payments, those options may not be available to everyone or they may not be enough. That's why some people are turning to unsecured personal loans, often used for debt consolidation or home improvement projects, to cover emergency expenses.

While some lenders are offering low interest relief loans, others are tightening credit requirements for borrowers.

Here's what you need to know about taking out a personal loan during this crisis and whether or not one makes sense for you.

An unsecured personal loan is money borrowed from a bank, credit union or online lender that can be used for anything. The money is paid back in installments over time, usually with a fixed interest rate.

While many experts would caution against personal loans, which often come with high interest rates and fees, they could make sense in an emergency situation.

"Ideally, I'd hope people would use relief programs before taking on additional debt," said Justin Pritchard, a certified financial planner at Approach Financial, in Montrose, Colorado. "But if you absolutely need to borrow, a personal loan is not the worst way to go."

Since the loan is unsecured, you don't need to pledge collateral, which helps you avoid putting your home or other valuable assets at risk, Pritchard said. "Plus, you're not raiding your retirement savings and pulling money out of accounts like a 401(k)."

The fixed interest rate on most personal loans also allows you to know exactly how much you are paying each month and when you should pay off the debt, he said, so that is helpful when compared to credit cards, which often have variable rates.

But interest rates on personal loans can be very high as well, he warned.

"Some personal loan rates go above 30%, so you're not necessarily getting a great deal," he said. "Plus, there may be origination fees that add to your total borrowing cost, and you don't get a break on those if you pay off the loan early."

While various lenders will offer loans to those with credit scores ranging from bad to excellent, it is hard to find a lender that will issue a loan without a demonstrated ability to pay it back.

"Lenders look for the borrower's ability to repay that loan," said Elisabeth Kozack, managing director for lending at Marcus by Goldman Sachs. "Lenders want to verify the source of income you have. It could be employer income or it could be military income, retirement income, benefit income."

Your credit score and your past payment history will also factor into your loan offer.

When shopping for loans, she recommends determining the amount you need and what kind of monthly payments you want to make. And consider the interest rate together with overall benefits like lower fees or flexibility with payment dates.

"The interest rate generally will be higher for longer-term loans and lower for shorter-term loans," she said.

Think about a loan holistically, inclusive of fees and interest. An origination fee isn't necessarily a bad thing if you can get a lower rate and spend less on interest plus fees over the life of the loan.

"If you pay an origination fee, be sure to account for that in the amount you request," said Pritchard. "Lenders might reduce your loan proceeds to cover origination fees."

He recommends getting quotes from at least three different lenders. A diverse sample would include a local bank, a credit union and an online lender.

"Credit unions, with their community focus, might be most willing to work with you if your finances are less-than-ideal," he said.

If you have explored your options and are deciding between a personal loan or credit cards, check with your bank or credit union to see if they offer an economic relief loan, said Luis F. Rosa, certified financial planner at Build a Better Financial Future in Las Vegas.

"You have to take into consideration the fees and the interest rate once the 0% introductory APR ends," said Rosa, "but if it's a short-term fix, this might be a good option."

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Personal loans can help in a crunch. But read this before you apply - CNN

Abstract

Could mitigating persistent worries about belonging in the transition to college improve adult life for black Americans? To examine this question, we conducted a long-term follow-up of a randomized social-belonging intervention delivered in the first year of college. This 1-hour exercise represented social and academic adversity early in college as common and temporary. As previously reported in Science, the exercise improved black students grades and well-being in college. The present study assessed the adult outcomes of these same participants. Examining adult life at an average age of 27, black adults who had received the treatment (versus control) exercise 7 to 11 years earlier reported significantly greater career satisfaction and success, psychological well-being, and community involvement and leadership. Gains were statistically mediated by greater college mentorship. The results suggest that addressing persistent social-psychological concerns via psychological intervention can shape the life course, partly by changing peoples social realities.

For many people, a life well lived includes professional success, personal well-being, and engagement in ones community (1). What factors help people achieve these outcomes?

Certainly, resources and opportunities to develop important life skills (e.g., executive function) in childhood and adolescence contribute to adult success (24). However, access to resources does not automatically translate to better outcomes, partly because social-psychological concerns can impede peoples ability to use resources and pursue opportunities available to them (57). College, for instance, offers young people substantial opportunities for learning and the development of diverse skills and relationships (8). However, black and other racial minority students also enter college aware of the underrepresentation of their group in higher education and how the ways in which stereotypes and discrimination can shape the experiences of students from their group. Past research shows that this context reasonably evokes worries in students about whether they, or their group, can belong, a phenomenon known as belonging uncertainty (911). These worries can lead students to perceive common everyday challenges in college, such as exclusion from a social outing or receiving critical academic feedback, as confirming that they do not belong. This perception can become self-fulfilling. For instance, it may make students less likely to join student groups or to reach out to prospective mentors, undermining supports and achievement during college (9, 10, 12). Through this process, worries about belonging, rooted in a history of social disadvantage, can perpetuate racial inequality in higher education (see Fig. 1A for a conceptual model illustrating this process).

(A) For students from socially disadvantaged groups, awareness of negative stereotypes and a history and current reality of group-based disadvantage can give rise to worries about belonging. This belonging uncertainty may fester in the face of common everyday adversities in college and ultimately undermine important outcomes in college. (B) The social-belonging intervention offers students a nonthreatening lens through which to view daily adversities. It can thereby sustain engagement with school and improve the college experience, especially for students from disadvantaged groups who disproportionately bear the burden of belonging uncertainty. The present study examines whether the better trajectory fostered by the intervention can improve students outcomes after college (C) and whether gains in life outcomes are statistically mediated by postintervention grades and/or college mentorship.

Our understanding of this process derives largely from past field experimental research testing a targeted exercise called the social-belonging intervention. The intervention, described more fully below, is designed to mitigate worries about belonging in the transition to college. Although it is delivered early in college and lasts less than an hour, it has been shown to improve diverse outcomes in college, including academic performance, physical health, and well-being, for students from groups disadvantaged in higher education (13). Research on the social-belonging intervention draws on a tradition in psychology in which intervention field experiments serve both theoretical and applied functions (57, 14). First, they advance basic theory, in several ways. They assess the causal role of a specific psychological process within an ecologically valid context. In doing so, they can assess how this psychological process interacts with other processes in the world. For example, if an intervention that lessens belonging uncertainty improves outcomes by helping students access campus resources and relationships (10), then that suggests how psychological and structural processes interact to influence peoples lives. Furthermore, intervention field experiments can illuminate the contribution of psychological processes to social problems. If an intervention that lessens belonging uncertainty improves outcomes experienced by people from disadvantaged groups, then that means that belonging uncertainty contributes to those outcomes under status quo conditions as observed in the control group. Second, intervention field experiments offer valuable applied insights by evaluating the effectiveness of specific approaches to social problems.

If belonging uncertainty undermines the college outcomes of students from socially disadvantaged groups, then are these students less well-positioned to thrive after college? If so, could the belonging intervention enhance success not only during college, as shown in past research, but also subsequently? If adult benefits are observed, then what would explain how a 1-hour exercise early in college could alter the life course? To address these questions, we followed up with participants from the original randomized controlled trial of the intervention. At the time of the follow-up, it had been almost a decade since participants had taken part in the intervention and they were, on average, 27 years old. We examined their professional success, psychological well-being, physical health, and community engagement, with the prediction that black adults who had completed the intervention materials years earlier would show benefits on these outcomes relative to their counterparts who had completed the randomized control materials.

In an effort to interrupt the self-fulfilling nature of belonging uncertainty (11), the social-belonging intervention offers students a nonthreatening lens with which to make sense of common social and academic adversities in the transition to college (9, 13). To do so, it shares stories from diverse older students, who describe experiencing a range of everyday challenges to belonging in the transition to college and how their experiences improved with time. These stories thus represent challenges to belonging as normal in the transition to college, as temporary, and as due to the transition itselfnot as evidence of a permanent lack of belonging on the part of the self or ones group. The intervention is appropriate for school environments that, in fact, offer opportunities for belonging and the development of positive relationships for all students. It would not be expected to be helpful in contexts that are unmitigatedly hostile or that lack relevant resources.

The original randomized controlled trial of the social-belonging intervention included black and white students in their first year at a selective university. In a 1-hour immersive in-person experience, students read the intervention stories and reflected on their own experience in college in light of them [N = 92; (10)]. As previously reported, compared to multiple randomized control conditions and a nonrandomized campus-wide comparison group (N = 162 additional black students), this treatment raised black students grade point averages (GPAs) from sophomore to senior year, halving the racial achievement gap (10). Moreover, at the end of college, treated black students reported being more confident in their belonging, happier, and healthier than control peers. Subsequent studies have found academic benefits of the intervention in other populations and contexts (15, 16). These include multiple scaling studies with thousands of students, in which online versions of the intervention raised first-year completion rates and grades of students from socially disadvantaged groups (12).

How does the intervention help students succeed? Most hour-long experiences quickly recede from memory. Indeed, by the end of college, few students in the original experiment (8%) accurately recalled the treatment message (see the Supplementary Materials) (10). Likewise, few (14%) attributed any of their success in college to it. Thus, the gains do not hinge on the salience of an idea. The intervention also does not provide students objective resources or the kind of practice that is necessary for skill-building (4, 17). Rather, we propose another model for understanding life success, one that prioritizes how people make sense of and respond to their social context. From this perspective, a single targeted exercise that shifts how people make sense of their experiences at a key time may alter the recursive cycles that play out between an individual and their social context over time (5, 6). In the case of social belonging, awareness of disadvantage perpetuates inequality by seeding plausible but pejorative and self-fulfilling interpretations for everyday adversities. Yet, providing students a narrative for understanding adversities that saps them of their threatening meaning could sustain students engagement in the academic and social contexts of school. In turn, this engagement may help students build valuable relationships; reinforce confidence in their belonging; and provide cascading psychological, academic, health, and relational benefits during collegeresources that might support better life outcomes later (see Fig. 1B for an illustration of this process).

Consistent with this theorizing, daily diary measures administered in the first week after the intervention (i.e., in students first year of college) showed that the intervention lessened the degree to which black students suffered a drop in their feelings of belonging on days of higher adversity (10). They were less likely, it seems, to globalize the implications of adversities into the conclusion I dont belong here. This change in the interpretation of daily experiences appears to have had academic consequences. It statistically mediated the 3-year gain in black students GPA. Moreover, treated black students were more engaged on campus in the first week after intervention, for instance, emailing professors and attending office hours more (9). Subsequent studies have found that the intervention can lead students from socially disadvantaged groups to participate more in student groups, to develop more friendships on campus, and to be more likely to develop a mentor relationship in the first year of college (12, 16).

Could these improvements in college benefit their peoples adult lives after college? In our model, even as worries about belonging serve as a causal lever for change, they do not exist only in a persons head (5, 6, 18). First, they arise from the social context, particularly from awareness of societal disadvantage and the existence of negative stereotypes about ones group. In turn, they perpetuate disadvantage in students lived experience. Of particular importance, feelings of belonging uncertainty may lessen the likelihood that students form valuable relationships with mentors. Worried that they do not belong and with an interpretative lens that renders social adversities as global threats, students may avoid situations where these relationships could naturally form and not take the actions necessary to nurture them. While this could have consequences in students immediate circumstances, it could also affect outcomes over time. Mentors play a central role in fostering success and well-being for their mentees in and beyond school (19, 20), and may be especially meaningful for mentees from marginalized backgrounds whose ties to relevant social networks may be more tenuous to begin with (21). Testing this model, here, we examined whether remedying worries about belonging in the transition to college (via the social-belonging intervention) might help black students form mentor relationships that support their thriving long after college (see Fig. 1C).

To examine postcollege benefits, we asked participants from the original randomized controlled trial to describe their lives along four broad dimensions: career satisfaction and success, general psychological well-being, physical health, and community involvement and leadership. These outcomes are of inherent importance; they also mirror outcomes improved by the intervention in college (e.g., academic achievement, happiness, health, and participation in extracurricular activities). Table 1 shows the measures used to assess these dimensions. Although self-reported measures are limited in some respects, they capture how people experience their lives (22) and can be particularly appropriate when people are in diverse contexts, each with different metrics of objective success, as was the case here (e.g., participants were pursuing different careers and were at different stages of doing so). To capture different aspects of these broad life dimensions, we assessed each with multiple measures. We report results for both the individual measures (Fig. 2, with illustrative examples in the main text) and the composites formed from them (Fig. 2 and main text), as each is of interest. Given the breadth of the individual measures assessed for each dimension, the reliabilities for the composites vary. Narrower measures of secondary interest (e.g., participants connection with their alma mater) are reported in the Supplementary Materials (see table S9).

See Measures section of Materials and Methods for greater detail on the individual measures, including citations for established scales.

Primary outcomes 7 to 11 years after intervention by race and condition for composites and the individual scales that comprise them (see Table 1). Error bars represent 1 SE. The y axis represents the full range of each scale or, for variables without a fixed scale, a range that captures nearly all of the variation in responses. P < 0.10, *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, and ***P < 0.001.

To test the hypothesis that the social-belonging intervention would improve each main outcome for black participants, we focus on the most direct test: the simple effect of condition among black participants. We also report, and illustrate in Fig. 2, the treatment effect among white participants, the main effect of treatment, and the race condition interaction for each outcome. In the Supplementary Materials, we additionally report the main effect of race. We also provide results for analyses of the individual measures that comprise each composite and results from extensive robustness tests in the form of specification curves (see table S4). Consistent with the theory that belonging uncertainty would not undermine the outcomes of white participants (and thus an intervention addressing it would not benefit them), the simple effect of treatment among white participants was not significant for any of the main outcomes. After examining the direct effects of treatment on life outcomes, we conduct mediation analyses to test whether the observed treatment effects might arise, in part, from a greater development of substantive mentor relationships in college among black students.

Participants from the original social-belonging intervention trial (10) sample were recontacted 3 to 5 years after college graduation and invited to complete an online survey. They were told only that the survey extended a previous study related to the transition to college, which they had completed in their first year of college. Re-recruitment was high (87%; N = 80); achieved through repeated efforts and a $50 incentive; and did not vary by participant race, condition, or their interaction (see the Supplementary Materials, fig. S1, and tables S2 and S3). On average, respondents completed the follow-up survey 8.50 years after intervention delivery (SD = 1.22 years; range: 7.20 to 10.77 years).

All respondents had graduated from college. They were approximately 27 years old (Mage = 27.42, SD = 1.31; range, 25.43 to 30.97). Most were full-time employed (49%), full-time students (38%), or both (3%). Median annual household income was $40,000 to $49,999 (range: <$1000 to >$200,000). Fifty-six percent were in long-term romantic relationships, and none had children. These factors did not differ by race, condition, or their interaction (see the Supplementary Materials).

First, we examined participants professional lives. Eight and a half years after the treatment, black adults reported greater satisfaction and success in their careers in the treatment condition than in the control condition, B = 0.74, SE = 0.23, t(75) = 3.23, P = 0.002, d = 1.19 (see Fig. 2). To illustrate, black adults rated their potential to succeed in the future relative to their classmates 16 percentile points higher in the treatment condition than in the control condition (69th percentile versus 53rd percentile), B = 16.34, SE = 5.79, t(75) = 2.82, P = 0.006, d = 1.05. Whites showed the same pattern on the composite measure but nonsignificantly, B = 0.28, SE = 0.25, t(75) = 1.14, P = 0.26, d = 0.35. Thus, the main effect of condition was significant, B = 0.51, SE = 0.17, t(75) = 3.02, P = 0.003, d = 0.73, and the race condition interaction was not, B = 0.46, SE = 0.34, t(75) = 1.34, P = 0.18.

In some cases, people achieve professional success at a cost to well-being and health (23), for instance, if success requires exceptional self-regulation. There was no such trade-off here. On indices of general psychological well-being, black adults reported better outcomes in the treatment than in the control condition, B = 0.72, SE = 0.25, t(75) = 2.94, P = 0.004, d = 0.96. To illustrate, black adults rated their life satisfaction just above the scale midpoint in the control condition (M = 4.44, SD = 1.06, on a 7-point scale) but nearly a full point higher in the treatment condition (M = 5.41, SD = 0.87), B = 0.97, SE = 0.31, t(75) = 3.15, P = 0.002, d = 1.01. Whites showed no effect of treatment on the composite measure, B = 0.06, SE = 0.27, t(75) = 0.21, P = 0.84, d = 0.07. Because the treatment effect was so strong for black participants, the main effect of condition was significant, B = 0.39, SE = 0.18, t(75) = 2.14, P = 0.04, d = 0.50, and the race condition interaction marginally so, B = 0.67, SE = 0.37, t(75) = 1.83, P = 0.07. Notably, there was a significant racial inequality in the control condition; black participants reported significantly less well-being than white participants, B = 0.51, SE = 0.23, t(75) = 2.16, P = 0.03, d = 0.63. Treatment eliminated (directionally reversed) this disparity, B = 0.16, SE = 0.28, t(75) = 0.58, P = 0.57, d = 0.22.

Next, we examined self-reported physical health. Consistent with research that feelings of social connectedness are one of the strongest predictors of physical health (24), treatment had improved this outcome among black students at the end of college (10). However, at this more distal point, black participants reported directionally better health with treatment, but the effect was not statistically significant, B = 0.36, SE = 0.25, t(75) = 1.48, P = 0.14, d = 0.41. The effect was also nonsignificant for whites, B = 0.14, SE = 0.27, t(75) = 0.52, P = 0.60, d = 0.23, and overall, B = 0.25, SE = 0.18, t(75) = 1.38, P = 0.17, d = 0.32, with a nonsignificant race condition interaction, B = 0.22, SE = 0.37, t(75) = 0.61, P = 0.54.

An important goal of college is to prepare people to join and lead new communities (25). At its heart, the belonging intervention addresses the opportunity to integrate into new communities, even when doing so is difficult at first. Therefore, we examined the extent to which participants reported substantial contributions to nonwork community groups (e.g., outreach/service, cultural/identity, and political organizations) after college. Black adults reported greater involvement and leadership with treatment, B = 1.15, SE = 0.51, t(75) = 2.27, P = 0.03, d = 0.66. For example, 68% of black adults in the treatment condition, but only 35% in the control condition, reported having held at least one leadership position outside of work, B = 1.40, SE = 0.66, z = 2.12, P = 0.03, Odds Ratio (OR) = 4.06. In particular, the treatment increased black adults contribution to outreach/service and cultural/identity organizations (see table S5). White participants also showed a trend toward greater community involvement and leadership, B = 0.80, SE = 0.55, t(75) = 1.44, P = 0.15, d = 0.57, so the main effect of treatment was significant, B = 0.98, SE = 0.38, t(75) = 2.60, P = 0.01, d = 0.64, and the race condition interaction was not, B = 0.35, SE = 0.75, t(75) = 0.47, P = 0.64.

How could a 1-hour exercise cause lasting gains in broad life outcomes? Undoubtedly, life outcomes unfold dynamically over years and are multiply mediated by an array of psychological, behavioral, structural, and relational processes (see Fig. 1). For the present study, we examined the potential role of two factors, postintervention college grades and college mentorship. Both represent important aspects of the better experience fostered by the social-belonging intervention in college. Furthermore, both may be understood as reflecting the cumulative effects of diverse processes in college (see Fig. 1).

First, although black students attained higher postintervention grades with treatment (10), grades only modestly predicted black adults career success (r = 0.38, P = 0.03), well-being (r = 0.23, P = 0.18), and community involvement (r = 0.35, P = 0.05) in bivariate correlations (see table S6A). Furthermore, results from mediation analyses indicated that postintervention grades did not explain intervention effects on any of the life outcomes examined. Zero was included in the confidence interval (CI) for the indirect effect in the bootstrapped mediation analysis for each outcome, although the mediation analysis approached significance for community involvement and leadership (see table S7).

Second, black adults reported greater mentorship during and after college with treatment, B = 0.67, SE = 0.21, t(75) = 3.16, P = 0.002, d = 1.16 (see Fig. 3A). To illustrate, the percentage of black adults who reported having developed an academic mentor during college was nearly twice as high in the treatment condition (84%) than in the control condition (43%), B = 1.94, SE = 0.76, Z = 2.56, P = 0.01, OR = 6.93. The percentage who reported that this mentorship continued after college was also much higher with treatment (37%) than without (4%), B = 2.55, SE = 1.13, Z = 2.26, P = 0.02, OR = 12.83. Whites showed a trend in the same direction on the composite measure, B = 0.34, SE = 0.23, t(75) = 1.46, P = 0.15, d = 0.45, so the main effect of condition was significant, B = 0.50, SE = 0.16, t(75) = 3.21, P = 0.002, d = 0.76, and the race condition interaction was not, B = 0.33, SE = 0.31, t(75) = 1.06, P = 0.29.

(A) Self-reported college mentorship by race and condition. Error bars represent 1 SE. (B) For black participants, college mentorship mediated intervention effects on composite career satisfaction and success and on general psychological well-being. Mediation was observed ( = 0.05) if the bootstrapped 95% CI of the indirect effect did not include zero, which occurred in both cases. *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, and ***P < 0.001. ns, not significant.

For black participants, the composite mentorship measure robustly predicted career success (r = 0.54, P < 0.001), psychological well-being (r = 0.65, P < 0.001), and community involvement (r = 0.38, P = 0.01) in bivariate correlations (see table S6A). Of note, these correlations were of smaller magnitude and did not reach significance for white participants (0.08 rs 0.29) [see table S6B; see also (21)]. Furthermore, results from mediation analyses indicated that the composite mentorship measure statistically mediated the gains in career success and psychological well-being for black adults. Zero was not included in the CI for the indirect effect in the bootstrapped mediation analysis for either outcome (see Fig. 3B). For community involvement and leadership, the mediation analysis approached but did not reach significance (see table S7).

Although these results are correlational, they are consistent with our theorizing. Participants open-ended comments illustrate their experiences with mentors in college. One black participant (control condition) wrote, I wouldnt say I received any mentorship at [school] - not for lack of interested professors, but I didnt really seek it. Another (treatment condition) wrote, The first semester of my freshman year was very difficult for me. I was struggling academically, didnt feel like I fit inI began to spend more time speaking with my freshman counselor. We really bonded, and she helped me to realize that I did belong at [school]. Thanks to her, I was able to connect better with my peers and perform better academically. Weve kept in touch ever since. Table 2 provides the full text of these and other responses. They illustrate the importance of mentors to students development and the difference in black participants experiences by condition.

Illustrative examples of participants open-ended descriptions of their most meaningful mentor relationships during college.

The present study shows that a brief intervention to address worries about belonging in the transition to college improved major life outcomes for black Americans 7 to 11 years later. The outcomes improved by the interventioncareer satisfaction and success, psychological well-being, and community involvement and leadershiprepresent key aspects of a life well lived. The magnitude of the effects on well-being is particularly noteworthy, given the past findings that many kinds of interventions, including therapy (26), and major life events such as marriage, divorce, and unemployment (27), have quite modest effects on well-being. Moreover, we provide evidence for one way the intervention seems to have helped black adults thrive: by helping them connect to a valuable resource in their college environment, a mentor.

A major contribution of this study is to highlight a social-psychological barrier to the thriving of black Americans: belonging uncertainty. Without an intervention to address uncertainty about belonging in the transition to college, our results indicate that black students ended up with worse outcomes in adulthood than they, and their postsecondary context, had the potential to achieve. Opportunities to form consequential, lasting relationships with mentors went unrealized. Lower rates of professional success and personal well-being followed.

The results underscore the importance of mentors in college. Relationships with mentors, not grades, mediated the long-term gains. Yet, the intervention was not a mentorship program in which students were assigned a mentor by college administrators. Instead, the intervention lifted a psychological obstaclepersistent group-based worry about belonging, rooted in awareness of social disadvantageto allow students to develop, on their own, authentic relationships of significance that, in many cases, lasted well past college graduation (28). Such student-initiated relationships may be more meaningful and garner greater commitment from both students and mentors (29). The results suggest the value for institutions of assessing and addressing disparities in the organic development of social ties on campus, especially by examining the structures, opportunities, and psychological processes that foster or inhibit the development of student-initiated mentor relationships.

Although mentor relationships statistically mediated the lasting gains of the intervention in this context, the intermediary factor by which a belonging intervention improves distal outcomes may differ elsewhere (13). For instance, at colleges with lower persistence rates, graduation may be the most important predictor of later life success (although mentors may also facilitate this outcome), a milestone toward which the belonging intervention can facilitate progress (12). In middle school, interventions to reduce psychological threat can yield lasting gains (e.g., increasing college-going) because short-term academic gains fostered by the intervention can help students enter more advanced academic tracks (18). While the mechanism that gives rise to lasting gains may differ in each case, an important lesson is that the subjective can become objective. A new way of thinking afforded by a psychological intervention concatenates through self-reinforcing processes to improve the objective reality of peoples lives (57).

Why did the treatment fail to improve the health outcomes of black adults when it had done so years earlier in college (10)? Perhaps the initial health benefits faded with time. Alternately, perhaps the present study was underpowered to detect health benefits, a possibility made more likely by the heterogeneity in our participants lives after college. The end of college is a relatively homogeneous and uniformly stressful context (30), which may have increased our ability to detect effects at that point. After college, factors beyond the reach of the intervention may have a relatively larger impact on health, such as the availability of health care or the idiosyncratic timing of occupational stress. If power is the key issue, then more sensitive measures, such as measures that go beyond self-report assessments, or more distal measures when greater health issues have arisen may again reveal differences.

In its focus on the psychological determinants of life success, the present study invites comparison to classic research on major structural reforms that can improve life trajectories, such as increasing opportunities for early childhood education (31). Bringing these areas together, it is essential to ensure both that opportunities are available and that people make sense of these opportunities in ways that promote success. Structural investments are often necessary to support positive life trajectories (3, 31). Yet their full benefit will not be realized if psychological barriers such as doubt about belonging get in the way. Although our study focused on college students, the mutual dependence between individual psychology and social structure is broadly applicable. Where else do the reasonable ways people make sense of themselves and their situation impede them from taking full advantage of opportunities and resources available to them (5, 32)? Where are people confident and ready to learn, to connect, and to grow but necessary structures or opportunities are inadequate for them to thrive?

As the present study followed up on the only social-belonging intervention whose participants have reached their late 20s, our sample size was constrained by the original study. In addition, for many reasons, it is often difficult to achieve large samples at distal assessments. Despite this, we were able to retain 87% of the original sample.

Notably, the magnitude of the treatment effects reported here may represent an upper bound, as all participants attended a single, well-resourced college and the intervention was an intensive, in-person experience, albeit a brief one. An open question, and an important direction for future research, involves boundary conditions: In what kinds of school contexts are treatment benefits more or less likely (16, 33)? For instance, how might the belonging intervention function in less selective institutions with lower graduation rates, or in majority-minority institutions where belonging concerns, may differ (12)? In general, we expect the greatest benefits in settings where belonging uncertainty constitutes a barrier to successwhere there are resources to succeed, and genuine opportunities to belong, yet negative stereotypes and a history of group-based disadvantage lead students to question their belonging. Conversely, the intervention is likely to have limited benefits in contexts where genuine opportunities to belong are lacking and/or where resources are sorely lacking, as this could undermine the ability of students to act productively on the new way of thinking afforded by the intervention. For instance, if a context lacks opportunities to cultivate mentors, then outreach from students will not meet with success. And we would expect later life course benefits of the intervention when it helps students accrue benefits in collegesuch as an outlook on adversity, a credential, and/or relationshipsthat perpetuate positive outcomes in the next stage of their lives.

When people do not thrive, it can seem that they lack essential skills or that their context lacks of opportunity. However, black participants in our sample were academically prepared and attended a well-resourced university. Still, their thriving as both students and adults was impeded by a persistent uncertainty about their belonging in college. The results highlight the potential, already present in at least some individuals and some institutions, to achieve substantially better outcomes. This potential can be hidden yet realized if institutions anticipate and proactively address overriding social-psychological concerns that shape individuals lives (32, 34). In illuminating this dynamic, our findings highlight a psychological mechanism by which a history of sociocultural disadvantage can perpetuate inequality to new generations and how this process can be interrupted with targeted and timely intervention.

The present study examined effects of the social-belonging intervention, particularly for black participants, on major life outcomes after college. The design of the original study was a 2 (condition: control or social-belonging intervention) 2 (race: black or white) between-subjects experiment. The follow-up study preserved the same design, and no new manipulations were introduced. We obtained human subjects approval from the Stanford University Institutional Review Board (IRB) and followed ethical guidelines in conducting this research. The original study procedures, including the sampling procedure, random assignment to condition, and intervention and control materials, are described in detail in the Supplementary Materials for the report of college outcomes (10).

The original intervention study took place at a selective university in the United States. Its selectivity is illustrated by the high college entrance exam scores of the study participants. Overall, black participants had an average SAT-Math + Verbal score of 1399 on a 1600-point scale, and white participants had an average score of 1500. At the university, black students were a numeric minority, representing between 5 and 15% of the undergraduate student body at the time of the study.

Despite its selectivity, there were large racial disparities in achievement at the university. This was illustrated in the previously published study reporting college outcomes (10): Black students in the control condition had GPAs for the final 3 years of college that were almost a third of a letter grade lower than the GPAs of their white peers.

To recruit participants, we obtained contact information from the alumni directory at students alma mater and from social media (e.g., LinkedIn). We first sent all participants for whom we had a physical mailing address a letter inviting them to participate in the study. This letter was followed by subsequent phone, email and social media outreach. Final attempts to reach participants included a postcard to their home address from college. Recruitment took place over a 19-month period. The first participant responded on 29 June 2012. We closed the survey on 30 January 2014. Most participants (64%) took part within the first 5 months of study recruitment (between 29 June 2012 and 1 December 2012). Participants were offered a $50 Amazon gift card as compensation.

As noted, the study was described to participants as extending a previous study they had taken part in during their first year of college on the transition to college. No additional information on study hypotheses, methods, or results was provided.

Participants completed the study between 7 and 11 years after the initial study participation. At this time, most participants were 26 to 29 years old. All had earned their undergraduate degree from the selective private university, most within 4 years of initial matriculation, consistent with the high on-time graduation rate at the institution.

At follow-up, nearly all participants identified themselves as being full-time employed (49%), full-time students (38%), or both (3%). Common career fields were health care (23%), law (20%), technology/engineering (14%), and education (10%). Of the eight participants who did not identify themselves as full-time students or full-time employed, two reported being full-time homemakers, one was studying full-time for the bar exam, one had just left a full-time job to start a company, one was finishing a second bachelors degree (part-time) while looking for a job, and three did not provide more information about employment. The median annual salary was $40,000 to $49,999 (mode, less than $1000; range, less than $1000 to more than $200,000). The median household income was also $40,000 to $59,000 (mode, $30,000 to $39,999; range, less than $1000 to more than $200,000). Among those not attending school full-time, the median annual salary was $50,000 to $59,000.

To help characterize the sample, we also asked participants about their home life and civic engagement. Overall, half (56%) of participants reported being in a long-term romantic relationship, including marriage. None had children. Most (84%) had voted in the most recent U.S. Presidential Election, and very few (5%) had ever been convicted of a crime. See table S1 for demographic factors reported by race and treatment condition. As the table illustrates, none of these factors differed significantly by condition or the interaction between race and condition.

Below, we briefly describe each measure that contributed to the composites, describe how composites were constructed, and provide correlations between scales that formed composites. The one variable not assessed via the survey was postintervention grades, which we tested as a mediator. For this variable, we used the primary postintervention academic outcome from the end-of-college follow-up (10): sophomore-through-senior year GPA earned during normal academic terms (i.e., excluding summer courses), obtained from official university records during the previous wave of the study.

An annotated version of the Survey Instrument is available on Open Science Framework (osf.io/xz3hr). The survey instrument document provides the full text of primary and secondary measures and accurately represents the order in which measures were assessed. Below, we include the page number(s) on which particular measures can be found.

Given the nature of the study and the extensive efforts required to reach the sample, the survey instrument included a wide variety of questions. The present report focuses on participants reports along four major indices of adult thriving: career satisfaction and success, psychological well-being, physical health, and community involvement and leadership. It also examines college mentorship as a mediator of adult thriving. In the Supplementary Materials, we additionally report results for narrower outcomes of secondary interest (participants connection to their alma mater, clinical measures of mental health, social support and loneliness, perceived social status, and cognitive accessibility of stereotypes and self-doubt) and for variables related to racial attitudes and experience on which we did not expect intervention effects. Measures not included in the present report assessed participants experiences during or before college, other outcomes on which we did not expect intervention effects (e.g., grit and primary appraisal of stress), open-ended questions, and outcomes we may report elsewhere (e.g., current friendship networks).

The career satisfaction and success composite comprised four measures, which were standardized and then averaged to create the composite ( = 0.77) (see Table 1).

1) Job satisfaction. Job satisfaction was measured with eight items on or rescaled to be on a 1 to 6 scale ( = 0.89). Items were drawn or adapted from various career satisfaction or related scales (35, 36). We had originally intended to include a ninth item focused on job burnout (I feel emotionally drained from my work). However, the item reduced scale reliability and did not load on the same factor as the other items, so it was dropped (see pp. 5758 of the Survey Instrument).

2) Workplace belonging uncertainty. Workplace belonging uncertainty was measured with two items [adapted from (10)]. We included a third item (When something good happens, I feel that I really belong at my workplace) but, consistent with past practice (10), we dropped it because of its low correlation with the other items. Both items were assessed on a 1 to 6 scale (r = 0.52) (see p. 45 of the Survey Instrument).

3) Perceived success. Perceived success was measured with one item [adapted from (9)]. It asked participants to compare their success to date to the success of other students from their alma mater who graduated in the same year using a percentile ranking between 0 and 100 (see p. 45 of the Survey Instrument).

4) Perceived future potential. Perceived future potential was also measured with one item [adapted from (9)]. It asked participants to compare their potential to succeed in the future to the potential of other students from their alma mater who graduated in the same year to succeed in the future using a percentile ranking between 0 and 100 (see p. 44 of the Survey Instrument).

The psychological well-being composite comprised three measures, which were standardized and then averaged to create the composite ( = 0.76) (see Table 1).

1) Subjective happiness. Happiness was measured with the four-item Subjective Happiness Scale (37). All items were assessed on a 1 to 7 scale ( = 0.89) (see pp. 2526 of the Survey Instrument).

2) Life satisfaction. Life satisfaction was measured with five items. Four items were drawn from the Satisfaction With Life Scale [SWLS; (38)]. The fifth was based on a single-item life satisfaction measure widely used in national panel studies (39). The single-item measure was originally on a 10-point scale but was rescaled to 1 to 7 so as to be on the same scale as the SWLS and then averaged with the other four items ( = 0.80) (see pp. 2224 of the Survey Instrument).

3) Perceived stress. Following past research (16), we were primarily interested in how overwhelming people found stress they experienced (secondary appraisal) rather than how much stress people reported they experienced (primary appraisal). Therefore, we measured perceived stress with the short version of the Perceived Stress Scale (40). All items were assessed on a 1 to 5 scale ( = 0.85) (see pp. 2829 of the Survey Instrument).

The physical health composite comprised three measures, patterned on those used previously with this sample (10). The three measures were standardized and then averaged to create the composite ( = 0.71) (see Table 1).

1) Self-assessed general health. We assessed self-reported general health with the five-item general health component of the Medical Outcomes Study Short-Form Health Survey (41). All items were assessed on a 1 to 5 scale ( = 0.80) (see p. 35 of the Survey Instrument).

2) Sick days in the past 3 months. Participants reported how many sick days they had taken from work or school in the past 3 months (open response) (see p. 36 of the Survey Instrument). There were a few outliers on this measure. In primary analyses, we used a nontransformed version of the variable. However, we also created a winsorized version of the variable. The specification curve results (discussed below) indicated that the results were substantively similar regardless of which variable was used.

3) Doctor visits in the past 3 months. Participants reported how many times they had visited the doctor in the past 3 months (open response) (see p. 36 of the Survey Instrument). There were a few outliers on this measure. In primary analyses, we used a nontransformed version of the variable. However, we also created a winsorized version of the variable. The specification curve results (discussed below) indicated that the results were substantively similar regardless of which variable was used.

The community involvement and leadership composite comprised two measures (r = 0.24), which were summed to create the composite (see Table 1).

1) Number of domains very involved in. On a three-point scale (1 = not at all, 2 = some, and 3 = a lot), participants were asked about the extent of their involvement in activities related to eight nonwork domains since earning their undergraduate degree. The domains are listed in table S5. We counted the number of domains in which participants reported a lot of involvement [see (42)] (see p. 62 of the Survey Instrument).

2) Number of domains with leadership role. For each domain in which participants reported at least some involvement, they were asked whether they had held a leadership position in that domain since earning their undergraduate degree. We counted the number of domains in which participants reported having had a leadership position (up to eight) (see p. 63 of the Survey Instrument).

The college mentorship composite comprised four measures, which were standardized and then averaged to create the composite ( = 0.69) (see Table 1). As these measures are retrospective, it is possible that it assesses only how much mentorship participants recalled, not how much they experienced. However, the pattern of results accords with immediate postintervention daily diary measures of greater engagement with faculty from the same sample (9) and with greater contemporaneously reported mentor development in the first year of college in other trials (12).

1) Had a general mentor in college. Participants were asked whether they had someone to whom you could turn for support, advice, or encouragement when you faced a problem or difficulty in or out of school in college (binary yes or no) (see p. 17 of the Survey Instrument).

2) Had an academic mentor in college. Participants were asked whether they had someone who [took] a special interest in you and your academic development in college (binary yes or no) (see p. 18 of the Survey Instrument).

3) Whether academic mentorship continued after college. Participants were asked when they had received mentorship from the person(s) they identified as their academic mentor. Options included each semester of college and mentorship continued after graduation. Selecting yes to the postcollege time period was coded as 1 (otherwise 0) (see p. 20 of the Survey Instrument).

4) Importance of most important mentorship. After answering the other mentorship questions, participants were asked to write an open-ended prompt to the question, Describe the nature and quality of the most meaningful mentorship you received at [school]. Then, they were asked to rate the importance of this mentorship (1 = not very important and 5 = extremely important) (see p. 21 of the Survey Instrument).

Primary outcomes. Outcomes were analyzed using linear or logistic regression, as appropriate, with intervention condition (control or social-belonging treatment) and participant race (black or white) as contrast-coded between-subjects factors. To test the robustness of the results, we conducted a specification curve analysis (43) for each main outcome and the mentorship composite. As discussed in the Supplementary Materials (see table S8), analyses indicated that results were robust across various plausible model specifications and not likely due to chance. Thus, the main text reports results from the most parsimonious models without covariates.

Mediation analyses. To conduct the mediation analyses, we used the structural equation modeling R package lavaan (44). As predicted by theory and consistent with past findings (9, 10) treatment effects emerged only or especially for black participants. Thus, we only included black participants in the mediation analyses. Analyses of postintervention grades controlled for preintervention grades. We specified a 95% CI and 10,000 resamples. We considered mediation to be observed ( = 0.05) if the resulting 95% CI of the indirect effect did not include zero.

Data. All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are present in the paper and/or the Supplementary Materials. Additional data are available from authors upon request and, if needed, IRB approval.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, so long as the resultant use is not for commercial advantage and provided the original work is properly cited.

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A brief social-belonging intervention in college improves adult outcomes for black Americans - Science Advances

Many people now have extra time on their hands as they stay home and comply with social distancing measures. To pass the time, some of people are baking,while others are taking advantage of free virtual tours.

If you feel motivated to learn a new skill, you can use this time to try out the plethora of free courses currently available online. Universities like Harvard and Yale have given free access to some of their courses, and websites like edX, Future Learn and Courseraalso offer free online classes from various universities.

Whether you want to polish up your project planning skills, learn how to negotiate successfully or dip your toes into basic Mandarin, CNBC Make It rounded up 10 courses for those interested in improving their skills in business management, entrepreneurship, personal finance and more.

These classes are free, but you may have to pay in order to obtain a certificate proving your completion of the course. Prices vary depending on the class.

1.Collaborative Working in a Remote Team

Many businesses have had to shift to remote work in order to comply with social distancing measures. But for some business managers, this is their first time managing remote teams. This course will help you learn to navigate the ups and downs of remote work and how to effectively manage remote workers.

2. Fundamentals of Project Planning and Management

This course teaches the basics of project planning to ensure your future projects run smoothly. Some of the topics the class covers include:

3.Becoming an Entrepreneur

If you have ever been curious about founding your own company, but do not know where to start or lack an idea, check out this course from MIT. The class, taught by Laurie Stach, founder and director of LaunchX, and Martin Culpepper,professor of mechanical engineering, lays out the basic elements of starting a new business, including market research, identifying business opportunities and pitching ideas.

Want to learn more about the basics of entrepreneurship? Entrepreneurship 101 from MIT is also available on edX.

4.Financing Innovative Ventures

Raising funds for a new business can be a challenge of its own. This class from the University of Maryland guides aspiring entrepreneurs through how to develop investor pitches, figure out fundraising options and perform company valuations, as well as other aspects of financing your own company.

5.Personaland Family Financial Planning

It is never too late to organize your personal finances. This course can help you learn "prudent habits" to implement in your finances, including managing income taxes and how to build and maintain good credit.

6.Financial Planning for Young Adults

Aimed at young adults, this course introduces the basic concepts of financial planning, including how to assess your finances, budgeting, saving, setting financial goals and more. If you are interested in pursuing a career in financial planning, this course also includes video interviews with professionals working in the field.

7.Successful Negotiation: Essential Strategies and Skills

At some point in your career, negotiation skills will likely be necessary. You may want to negotiate a higher salary or a job offer. Through this course from the University of Michigan, you will learn the four basic steps for a successful negotiation.

8.Critical ThinkingandProblem Solving

Critical thinking and problem solving are two of the most sought after qualities in employees and business leaders. If you'd like to improve on those skills, this course may help to "demystify, discuss and provide application techniques for critical thinking and problem solving in a business context."

9.Public Speaking

Another attractive quality in a leader is confidence in public speaking. Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, has credited a public speaking course as a source of his success.

But for many people, public speaking is terrifying. This class from Rochester Institute of Technology can be a step to overcome the fear. It covers several tools and methods to overcoming public speaking anxiety once and for all.

10.Mandarin Chinese Level 1

Five years ago, Bill Gates admitted in a Reddit Q&A he felt "pretty stupid" for not being fluent in any foreign languages. In contrast, Mark Zuckerberg impressed Chinese university students by showing off his Mandarin skills at a Q&A panel.

Studies have shown the benefits of bilingualism, including the ability to outperform monolinguals in conflict resolution. Also, you can impress employers by knowing multiple languages. If you have excess free time right now, you may want to try learning a popular language such as Mandarin orSpanish.

Check out:The best credit cards of 2020 could earn you over $1,000 in 5 years

Don't miss:5 tips for effectively working from home during the coronavirus outbreak, when you have kids

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10 free online classes that will help you gain new skills to succeed in your career - CNBC

The University of St. Thomas in Houston will reopen its campus in the fall and will resume in-person classes, officials said Wednesday.

In addition, the college is offering free tuition to students in three new online associate degree programs.

Our faculty, staff and students have risen to the challenge of online delivery through the summer, but now were looking forward to getting our community back together on campus, St. Thomas President Richard Ludwick said Wednesday.

The announcement comes after colleges and universities around the country closed campuses and resumed classes online in March due to efforts to curb the spread of COVID-19.

Amid uncertainties during the pandemic, many colleges are continuing classes online through the summer while weighing options for the fall. The University of Texas at Austin announced earlier this month that it will make decision about the fall semester in late June and will continue to plan for all possibilities in the meantime.

Baylor University is already making plans to resume classes and residential life on campus this fall, but the plans are dependent on the continued decline in COVID-10 cases within the Waco area and guidance from government and public health officials, President Linda Livingstone wrote in a letter to the community Monday.

A reopening, however, will not be a normal start, the president said. The university will be required to adapt its models for instruction, residential life, and on-campus activities and will apply a five-phase strategy to reopening campus, starting on June 1 with staff and faculty who are involved in critical infrastructure and research support and then continuing gradually throughout the summer.

COLLEGES RESPOND TO PANDEMIC: Texas colleges cut budgets in response to economic impact of COVID-19

Ludwick said St. Thomas has consulted with students, faculty and staff along with world-class experts, who have attended board meetings and spoken with university officials.

What weve decided from all of that is that we should get back to campus, and the fall seems to be the time to do that, said Ludwick, who noted that students will continue to face technology issues with online and remote learning and that reopening will help mitigate that digital divide.

Underscoring all of that is the need to operate safely for our people and to use the best guidance that comes from our civic, state and federal leaders, and certainly the CDC. Those kinds of policymakers will give us the rubric.

St. Thomas officials will use the time before the August reopening to determine exactly what returning to campus will look like, especially given that pandemic rules and guidelines can change daily, Ludwick said.

The private Catholic university will be preparing for every contingency, including accommodations for those who may not feel ready to return to classroom instruction, Ludwick said. Our community can rest-assured that when we return, we will be following strict expert advice on cleaning practices, social distancing and contact tracing.

So far, Ludwick said officials are considering having classes available online and in-person, but possibly reformatting the traditional classroom, opting instead for learning spaces that might resemble a gymnasium or considering tented outdoor locations that allow the community to learn while social distancing, Ludwick said.

COLLEGE IN THE FALL?: UT to decide fate of fall classes at the end of June

The university will also open its micro campus in Conroe in fall with two locations the planned nursing facility that will offer up an accelerated bachelors of science program and a campus in downtown Conroe, east of the courthouse, which is still under construction. The university also remains on course to add softball and mens and womens track and field to its 12 existing sports, presuming students are back on campus in the fall.

St. Thomas will also roll out a number of initiatives, including the three new tuition-free degrees, to help students and offset some of the effects of the pandemic, a university release said.

Online 60-hour associate degree programs in cybersecurity, networking technology and electronic technology fields in which officials say jobs are high in demand and offer higher salaries have been developed. The UST microcampus in Conroe will serve as a physical space for students in those programs to connect and meet.

This city has helped support St. Thomas for almost 75 years and at this moment while many are struggling, the university wants to accelerate the way it gives back, Ludwick said. This tuition-free semester is one way to help and provide many people in hard hit sectors a chance to reskill in industries that are thriving.

The school has hired an expert in online delivery to expand its digital offerings and has assigned a personal success coach for each undergraduate student.

brittany.britto@chron.com

Brittany Britto covers higher education at the Houston Chronicle.

Previously, she was a general assignment features blogger and reporter for The Baltimore Sun, where she wrote about arts, entertainment, local notables, and culture.

She has been recognized for her cultural coverage by the Society for Features Journalism. In 2018, she was named a Penny Bender Fuchs Diversity Fellow for the national features organization and won four awards a tie for the most won in one year in recent SFJ history -- for her diverse portfolio and noteworthy features on Baltimores distinct culture.

Brittany is a two-time graduate of the University of Maryland, College Park, with a masters in multiplatform journalism and a bachelors in English.

Send your tips and stories to brittany.britto@chron.com, and follow her on Twitter to keep up with the latest.

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Baylor, University of St. Thomas to reopen in the fall - Houston Chronicle

The 2020 NFL Draft was supposed to be hosted in Las Vegas, but the coronavirus pandemic forced the league to hold a virtual draft instead. Players, head coaches and general managers were forced to stay in their homes with cameras on the scene for the large majority of the first round on Thursday night.

On Friday's installment of "Nothing Personal with David Samson," David Samson weighed in on the 2020 NFL Draft and believed that -- despite the circumstances -- it was an overall success.

"What we've seen is that the NFL is an industry leader in connecting with fans," Samson said. "Now they've got the product to do it because everyone is so interested in the draft. It's always such a huge event to begin with. The NFL did it and I was proud of it."

The NFL Draft is always a product that fans are interested in and even attend as the league ushers in their next generation of stars. People want to know who their favorite teams are going to draft and it was more entertaining than ever.

In the wake of COVID-19, fans needed a distraction from the fact that the majority of the population is quarantined and there haven't been any sports. Samson believes the league held a heartfelt tribute for coronavirus victims at the start of the event and it was all a successful production for sports fans.

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Samson: Why the virtual NFL Draft was a success - CBS Sports

Martin Lewis spoke about his website's meteoric rise in a 2015 interview with the Financial Times, in which he revealed why he thinks Money Saving Expert became a go-to source for financial advice. The website has amassed millions of regular visitors, which Mr Lewis credits to the move to take finance journalism and focus it on everyday spending. The journalist has become well-known for advice on how to get good deals on specific products, from credit cards to mortgages and retail items. Another key aspect of the site, as explained in the FT interview, is that all of the research is done by him and his team of journalists.

He also realised that the only thing people want is answers, and that nobody wants to know about the issues".

He added: "They want to be told what to do, and I tell them. Thats the difference.

Another feature of the Money Saving Expert's success is the personalised advice, with Mr Lewis's face at the centre of its articles accompanied by his television appearances.

He said: Finance is a personal thing and you want to see the whites of someones eyes.

"Thankfully, our research shows there are a lot more people who like than dislike me its about an 85/15.

His research also shows that when his face comes off the site in March, people will still go on visiting, and the site will go on raking in the money.

The business model comprises of no advertising and no subscriptions, all revenue comes from paid-for links.

In the interview, Mr Lewis estimated that he has saved the British public billions thanks to his advice.

READ MORE:Martin Lewis explains 12 furlough need-to-knows for employees & firms

In the 12 years prior to 2015 he calculated that he had saved people tens of billions of pounds.

Mr Lewis added: You can argue theres over 20billion been paid out in PPI and we reckon were over 25 percent of that, so theres five billion to start with.

In another 2015 interview with the Telegraph, Mr Lewis said his website was the "cleverest thing he has ever done".

He said: "I spent 80 to set up a website in 2003. Its called moneysavingexpert.com. It was built by a chap in Uzbekistan, off-the-peg, with forums, and in only two weeks.

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"It was the cleverest thing I did, but I didnt know it was clever. My friend said it wouldnt work, he said I needed to have adverts on the website and that 'no one puts a face on a financial website'.

"I set it up because I thought the information should be out there, not to make money. It was only when the server costs became too expensive that I thought I should look at that.

"In the end, its turned 80 into more than nine figures, after tax. You also have to factor in the 90-hour weeks and the huge amounts of stress.

"Now people make the mistake of saying youre rich now that youve sold the website. But they dont realise I was lucky, Id already made a lot before that."

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Martin Lewis: Money Saving Expert's secret to success revealed It made the difference!' - Express