Sophia Solano
Sophia Solano covers the intersections of higher education, culture and local institutions, with an emphasis on how decisions by powerful boards and leaders reshape everyday lives. On the education beat she focuses on colleges and universities, especially moments when governance, politics and branding collide with student experience. Her reporting leans on detailed scenes and individual stories to explain policy fights and institutional shifts, whether on campus or at major cultural landmarks. She is a reporter on the Metro desk and previously worked in the Features section, reporting for Style and the Going Out Guide, which gives her education coverage a strong grounding in culture and local life. Her work across music, generational trends, food and neighborhood events helps place campus issues inside a broader civic and cultural frame.
Higher education power and governance
Solano tracks power dynamics on college governing boards, such as her coverage of efforts to reshape oversight of Virginia campuses after the ouster of a university president and federal pressure over diversity initiatives. In that reporting she follows one lawmaker’s push to change how boards are structured and evaluated and examines why those efforts draw mixed grades from stakeholders. Her stories surface supporters and skeptics of these changes and show how political fights over boards shape the direction of public universities.
She connects campus governance in Virginia to national debates over diversity, equity and inclusion, using interviews and policy detail to show where federal scrutiny and local politics intersect.
Student experience and institutional accountability
Solano reports closely on how institutional decisions land on students, as in her coverage of Howard University unenrolling hundreds of freshmen just days before move-in.
She followed the story through the backlash and the reinstatement of about 200 students, framing the reversal around questions of communication, promised scholarships and housing security. Her work highlighted how students had been told that forthcoming scholarships and financial aid were on the way, yet were still removed from housing and classes, sharpening the focus on accountability. Across these pieces, she emphasizes the human stakes of administrative choices, foregrounding voices of affected students rather than relying only on institutional statements.
Colleges, branding and the business of education
She also covers conflicts at the edge of campus and commerce, such as a trademark dispute between a Maryland university and a Colorado cannabis company over a logo and the use of the term “Terps.”
In that story she explains how the university argues that the cannabis brand would impair the goodwill embodied in its famous athletic identity, tying intellectual property language to concerns about reputation and public perception. The piece shows how a nickname that began as shorthand for a mascot now carries significant commercial and symbolic value, and how administrators seek to protect it from associations they view as harmful.
Through this kind of coverage, Solano positions colleges as economic and cultural actors, not just educational institutions, and shows how brand protection and business realities feed into broader debates about what universities represent.
Cultural institutions, local life and campus context
Beyond campus gates, Solano writes about cultural institutions and local events that shape the region’s social fabric, including the significance of the Kennedy Center to its communities, a rare September nor’easter that canceled Maryland’s biggest music festival, and a story on “the general’s enemies” burying a time capsule at the Washington Monument. She often uses vivid scenes and striking characters, such as a pig named Synergy who works in crisis intervention at Union Station or a 103-year-old bartender who still runs a cash-only basement bar, to show how people navigate institutions and public spaces. Her features range from profiles of volunteers helping families connect at a new military monument to a list of essential dishes in the region, generational essays on boomers and iPads, and explorations of viral phenomena like the “Gen Alpha melody” and TikTok songs that become full-length musicals.
That breadth in culture and local reporting feeds into her education work, giving her a feel for how students, faculty and neighbors experience universities as part of a wider ecosystem of art, nightlife, tourism and memory.
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.
Abril Preciado
Abril Preciado is an Emmy award-winning bilingual television journalist at FOX6 News Milwaukee who focuses on education, school crises and policy decisions affecting students, families and staff. She follows school communities over months, from emergency response through investigations, relocation plans and the first day back in class. Her reporting on the Lincoln Avenue School fire covers displacement, safety changes, rebuilding and the move to temporary space. She also uses public records to examine local officials, test official claims and connect government conduct to public trust. Before joining FOX6, she reported for Univision in Sacramento, covering the Farm Workers March, wildfires, politics and the Latino community, and contributed border reporting for a national radio network. She centers families, explains complex decisions clearly and focuses on the human effects of policy.
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.