Olivia Doak
Olivia Doak reports on higher education with a close focus on the institutions, finances and campus decisions that shape life at the University of Colorado Boulder and other local schools. Her coverage stands out for treating university moves like major civic and business stories, tracking how real estate deals, leadership changes, student conduct cases and town–gown tensions affect both students and the wider community.
Higher education and CU Boulder as a civic institution
Doak covers higher education as a core public institution rather than a closed campus, following how CU Boulder and nearby colleges interact with local government, neighborhoods and businesses. In her story on the university’s plan to buy a roughly $30 million office tower that spans an entire block on Denver’s 16th Street Mall, she details the scale of the purchase, the building’s current tenants and the university’s strategic use of the space, treating the deal with the same weight as a major commercial real estate transaction. She returns regularly to CU Boulder governance, decision-making and policy shifts, highlighting how administrative choices filter down to students, staff and surrounding communities.
Money, property and the business side of universities
A recurring thread in Doak’s work is the financial and physical footprint of higher education. She reports on large property acquisitions, long-term leases and campus expansion plans, explaining what they cost, how they are funded and what they mean for existing occupants and nearby residents. The 16th Street Mall tower story is characteristic: she breaks out the purchase price, block-wide footprint and anticipated university use, while situating the move within CU Boulder’s broader space needs and downtown Denver’s commercial landscape. Her headlines and story framing consistently treat universities as major economic players whose decisions can reshape a city block, a business district or a neighborhood housing market.
Student experience, safety and conduct
Alongside institutional decisions, Doak follows the student-facing side of higher education, including safety, discipline and campus culture. Her recent work includes coverage of high-profile incidents and student conduct actions, where she lays out the official record, the university’s response and the implications for campus safety policies. She tracks how rule changes, new enforcement approaches and administrative reviews affect student organizations, residence life and day-to-day experience, often bringing in detail from public records or hearing documents.
Local schools and education policy
Beyond CU Boulder, Doak reports on education developments affecting local K–12 districts and other nearby institutions. Her headlines reflect a mix of school board decisions, program launches and accountability issues, emphasizing how policy changes translate into concrete impacts on families, teachers and students. She moves between higher education and local schools with the same straightforward, document-driven style, often grounding stories in meeting coverage, official filings and direct quotes from administrators.
Beat reporter with a higher education lens
Doak’s professional presence identifies her as a higher education reporter for the Boulder Daily Camera, with specific responsibility for CU Boulder coverage. Her background includes previous reporting roles at regional outlets and student or campus publications, and she brings that experience to a beat built around institutions, not personalities. Across her archive, she writes in clear, economical prose, favors specific numbers and named policies, and treats the university as a central civic actor whose decisions belong on the front page alongside more traditional city hall and business news.
4 more education journalists.
Abdul Latif Jameel
Abdul Latif Jameel publishes long-form, research-led pieces on how emerging technologies and scientific advances reshape education, industry, and society. He writes for the Abdul Latif Jameel masthead at the intersection of learning, innovation, and applied science, with a focus on technology, skills, and the future of learning. He explains complex fields such as quantum sensing in clear, accessible terms, breaking down frontier science and tying it to real-world applications. His coverage links breakthroughs in sensing, data, and automation to training, curriculum, and lifelong learning. He treats education as an applied system connected to industry, policy, infrastructure, and human development. He reports in an analytical, explanatory style, using research, pilots, and large-scale initiatives to examine how technologies are implemented, evaluated, and scaled in learning and training environments.
Adria Iraheta
Adria Iraheta is a community-focused reporter at Denver7, distinct for centering students, families and residents in every story about schools, neighborhoods and public services. She covers how decisions by school districts, local agencies and public institutions land in daily life, with a particular focus on Aurora and Arapahoe County. Her beat sits at the intersection of education, community issues, public services, safety, infrastructure, health and climate, from job cuts in a school district to a new transit safety app, DMV outages, street changes and record heat waves. With a decade of local television reporting experience, she reports on the ground in specific local scenes, using plain language, direct questions to officials and clear explanations to show how policies, programs and changes affect the people who live, study and work in Colorado communities.
Alan J. Borsuk
Alan J. Borsuk stands out for connecting what happens in schools to the policy and political decisions behind them. He writes in-depth K-12 education analysis for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and serves as a senior fellow in law and public policy at Marquette University Law School. His work focuses on Milwaukee Public Schools, school choice, literacy, teacher pipelines, and school accountability. He uses long-range perspective, detailed reporting, and structured analysis to explain how reforms unfold, why they stall, and what they mean for students and leaders. He has also written on vouchers, Teach for America, discipline, and teacher evaluation, drawing on decades as a reporter and editor on education and public policy.
Alexandra Hardle
Alexandra Hardle brings a watchdog lens to K-12 schools, using concrete incidents to map how district power, oversight and accountability work in real life. She covers K-12 education for The Arizona Republic, focusing on school systems, governance and the lived impact of policy on students, families and educators. Her reporting shows how school governance can fail students and staff and what that reveals about district culture. She often covers flashpoints, such as the Nazi salute fallout in the Deer Valley district, as windows into deeper dysfunction, tracking how leadership responds, how trust breaks down and how conflicts unfold in public meetings. Her work sits at the intersection of accountability reporting and community stories, grounded in public records, formal rules and multiple stakeholder perspectives, with clear, direct language that explains how institutions make decisions and how ordinary people experience them.