William Jewell

Nearly every college and university in the Kansas City area is seeing record-high enrollment rates. Some schools attribute their success to making college more accessible to lower-income and nontraditional students, while others credit the campus atmosphere.

In the city of Liberty, Missouri — the second town to ever be incorporated west of the Mississippi — you'll find history, hiking, ghost hunting, and a quaint town square with plenty of shopping and dining.

Shawnee, Kansas goes to the polls next Tuesday amid culture wars, lawsuits, and a sexting scandal. Plus: A new choral work commissioned by William Jewell College is helping the institution own up to its fraught racial history.

William Jewell College has commissioned a new choral work, “The Canon for Racial Reconciliation,” which is part of a broader effort at the college to reckon with the institution's racial history. The music melds Orthodox liturgy with gospel sounds, and is co-written by composers Nicholas Reeves and Isaac Cates.

An independent group at William Jewell revealed the college founders’ deep ties to slavery, including the fact that enslaved people helped build Jewell Hall and that the college's namesake Dr. William Jewell did not free all the people he enslaved, contrary to previous accounts.

At the liberal arts college in Liberty, Missouri, a group of researchers called the Slavery, Memory and Justice Project has caused a reckoning with the college's past.

Ongoing concerns about the coronavirus keep venues closed. Two Liberty-based opera artists, a singer and a stage director, try to embrace the situation instead of fighting it.

Among other things, local colleges are planning to limit classroom capacity, put new restrictions on dorm life and end the fall semester early.

Smaller schools think they could be an attractive option this fall for students wanting to save money and avoid overcrowded classrooms.