a lot of times, they walk through our doors, they don't have that. >> ifill: those are just some of the stories we're covering on tonight's pbs newshour. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> i've been around long enough to recognize the people who are out there owning it. the ones getting involved, staying engaged. they are not afraid to question the path they're on. because the one question they never want to ask is, "how did i end up here?" i started schwab with those people. people who want to take ownership of their investments, like they do in every other aspect of their lives. >> supported by the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation. committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. more information at macfound.org >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions and... >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> ifill: president obama moved today to tamp down talk of imminent military action against islamic state fighters in syria. at the white house, he said his priority is to "roll back" the militants' gain in iraq, where u.s. air strikes are already under way. he said calls to expand the campaign into syria amount to "putting the cart before the horse." >> we don't have a strategy yet. i think what i've seen in some of the news reports suggests that folks are getting a lilt further ahead than we currently are. but there's no point in me asking for action on the part of congress before i know exactly what it is that is going to be required for us to get the job done. >> ifill: separately, there was word that islamic state fighters executed more than 150 soldiers captured in recent fighting. the troops were taken prisoner after militants seized a key airbase in northeastern syria. a video posted on youtube showed a long line of bodies lying face down in the sand. gunmen on the syrian side of the golan heights have detained 43 u.n. peacekeepers from fiji. u.n. officials say it happened during fighting between an unidentified armed group and syrian troops. another 81 peacekeepers-- from the philippines-- were trapped. afterward, u.n. troops kept a close watch on the syrian side of the heights. their mission is to monitor a zone of separation between syrian and israeli forces. j.p. morgan-chase bank has confirmed it's investigating a possible cyber attack, but it says the scope is unclear. "bloomberg news" reported it's part of a series of coordinated and sophisticated attacks by russian hackers. and, "the new york times" reported at least four other banks were also targeted in the last month. the stolen data includes checking and savings account information. a family feud over control of a supermarket chain in new england is finally over. the disagreement, which began in june, spawned worker and customer boycotts that attracted national attention. now, arthur t. demoulas will buy the majority stake in the chain from his cousin for $1.5 billion. he celebrated with employees today in tewksbury, massachusetts. the battle for control ultimately cost the grocery chain millions of dollars in lost revenue. on wall street today, stocks edged lower after the latest spark in the ukraine crisis. the dow jones industrial average lost 42 points to close at 17,079. the nasdaq slipped nearly 12 points to close at 4,557. and the s&p 500 dropped three points to 1,996. the national football league is getting tougher on domestic violence. commissioner roger goodell announced today players will be suspended for six games for a first offense. they'll be banned outright if it happens a second time. goodell was criticized when he suspended the baltimore ravens' ray rice for just two weeks for allegedly hitting his fianceée. today, he acknowledged he "didn't get it right." still to come on the newshour: russian troops advance into ukraine, speeding up human trials of a new ebola vaccine, providing for unaccompanied child migrants, reinventing chicago's community colleges, and, the creative process behind designing bold and iconic book covers. >> ifill: the crisis in ukraine intensified today as the government in kiev accused russia of an outright invasion. hari sreenivasan reports. >> we can confirm that russian military boots are on ukrainian ground. >> sreenivasan: the cries of invasion came from ukraine's prime minister arseniy yatseniuk and from president petro poroshenko, who announced, "russian forces have entered ukraine." >> ( translated ): amateur mercenaries along with employed russian servicemen are trying to organize a counter-offensive against positions of our armed forces. without any doubts, the situation is extraordinarily difficult, but it is controllable. >> sreenivasan: the ukrainians charged russian soldiers and armor are helping rebels open a new front in the southeast. kiev confirmed the rebels have captured the town of novoazovsk on the azov sea-- leaving the port city of mariupol suddenly vulnerable to attack. ukraine's government said images from novoazovsk showed a russian tank on the streets. and nato released its own satellite images, showing russian self-propelled artillery units on ukrainian roads. the alliance said well over 1,000 russian troops have crossed the border-- and warned of more to come. >> these latest imagery provides concrete examples of russian activity inside ukraine, but they are only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the overall scope of russian troop and weapons movements. >> sreenivasan: earlier this week, ukraine had released a video showing what it said were russian servicemen captured on its territory. and today, the rebel "prime minister" acknowledged several thousand russians are fighting with the rebels on their own time. >> ( translated ): among volunteers from russia there have always been many retired military servicemen. there are also currently serving soldiers among us who preferred to spend their vacations not on sea beaches, but among us, among brothers fighting for their freedom. >> sreenivasan: the spike in tensions prompted angry words at the u.n. security council. u.s. ambassador samantha power blasted previous russian denials of complicity. >> at every step, russia has come before this council to say everything except the truth. it has manipulated, it has obfuscated, it has outright lied. so we have learned to measure russia by its actions and not by its words. >> sreenivasan: in turn, russian ambassador vitaly churkin dismissed the accusations, without directly denying anything. >> ( translated ): everyone knows that there are russian volunteers in eastern parts of ukraine, no one is hiding that. we'd like to see similar transparency shown by other countries. i would suggest that we send a message to washington. stop interfering in the internal affairs of sovereign states. stop trying to undermine a regime that you don't like-- >> we are not taking military action to solve the ukrainian problem. what we're doing is to mobilize the international community to apply pressure on russia. but i think it is very important to recognize that a military solution to this problem is not going to be forthcoming. >> brown: the president argued pressure from existing and possibly new sanctions will take an increasing toll on russia even if it's not apparent now. for more on what's happening on the ground in ukraine, joined by andrew kramer from the "new york times" from donetsk. you were visiting a town where the russian troops were streaming in. describe that scene to us. >> this is in a down o town on . we were standing on the outside of the town speaking with ukrainian soldiers retreating. the soldiers were convinced they were fighting the russians, at least many were. we didn't see the troops coming in, but they were said to have come across the border from russia into ukraine. it was a very chaotic scene. in fact, a day later, that town was seize bid the pro-russian forces. >> brown: you also spoke of locals in the area. what did they think about what's happening. >> people who support the russian cause are cheered by the development. the revolution had been on its last legs in the last few weeks and now there's been a reversal of the fortunes, a turning of the tide here. the separatists and, according to ukrainian government, with the support of russia has moved across the russian border and has now opened a new front in the south along the seashore with the cities onovasosk and mario pal as the objectives. the intention is to form a defensive triangle out of the two cities in donetsk and force the ukrainian government into settlement talks on more favorable terms. >> sreenivasan: you're in donetsk now. what's the impact there on what's happening in the other towns? >> in donetsk, little has changed. an artillery barrage killed two today, hitting residential areas. the ukrainian government is keeping up pressure on donetsk. the assumption is forces will be diverted from here to the south to address this new risk and new push by pro russian and possibly with the support of russian supporters coming in across the border. that's the hope of the separatists in this town. it's a setback for the ukrainians who hope to end the war quickly and on their terms. >> sreenivasan: can you feel a level of intention increasing or decreasing from the events in the past weeks? >> the tension is certainly increasing particularly in the towns and villages affected. we drove along a 75-mile stretch of highway from here in donetsk to the area where the battle is taking place and it was almost wholly deserted. you would see only a few cars carrying refugees, burned-out military vehicles and people who were very concerned, obviously, about this new development and the violence which is coming to their communities. >> sreenivasan: is there a cognition of what's happening and how the rest of the world is paying attention? do the people in ukraine, the ones that you speak with, care about what's happening at n.a.t.o. or whether this is called an invasion or incursion? >> people in the areas that have been shelled are mostly concerned about everyday concerns like fetching water and food and staying out of the way of danger. there is certainly, among the rebels, a larger understanding of the context of this war and this conflict. ukraine has now said -- the president of ukraine has said today that russia invaded, n.a.t.o. was more cautious saying russia had carried out an incursion into ukraine. in any case, what's clearly happening here is across border military action in europe and the consequences are very unpredictable. >> sreenivasan: andrew kramer from "new york times" joining us from donetsk. thanks so much. >> thank you. >> brown: i'm joint by andrew weiss, a director of russian ukrainian and eurasian affairs at the white house national security council and now with the carnegie endowment andrei tegoncof and, a political science and international relations professor at san francisco state university. andrew weiss, how do you describe what's going on and who are the russian soldiers? >> i think the russians are disguising their moments so we may have a new front on the southeastern border between russia and ukraine and a russian attempt to create a land bridge between the russian border and crimea, which will allow them to supply crimea more effectively in the future. >> brown: do you use the word invasion, incursion? >> there's a game played in washington where u.s. officials are trying hard not to use the word invasion so you have the state department spokesman saying it's an incursion. the reason for that is u.s. officials, as president obama said today, said they're trying to avoid any perception there's oust military response in the offing so they're downplaying what's happened, but privately people are worried what we're seeing is a dramatic escalation. >> brown: andrei tegoncof, what do you call it? >> i would call it an escalation as andrew weiss described the second front opening and this is something that's been going on quite some time. we have seen the russia assistance before and this is not news. what's new is the ukrainian side is beginning to lose on the front and the russian president has not gotten what he expected to get and germany is pressuring kiev for peaceful solutions. in addition to russia's escalation, ukraine, kiev is launching a p.r. offense against russia. >> brown: you're seeing this as coming from weakness by the ukrainians as opposed to more aggression by the russians? >> i see both, but russia's intervention is not something that has happened just now. russia has been assisting the eastern rebels before. russian volunteers, we know previous commanders of donetsk and luhansk and primarily donetsk were russian citizens. so russia was certainly involved and makes sense, if russia sees itself as a great power to be involved, so it has been taking place quite some time. this was a new speech. we also see that ukraine is trying to launch a p.r. offensive against russia. >> brown: andrew weiss, ukraine has had a stronger military in many ways which would counteract what weiss is saying. >> it looked like the separatists were cornered into strong holds in donetsk and luhansk, and the question is putin cornered? and putin talks about chasing rats in a building he grew up in and he cornered the rat and discovered the rat will attack. patton at various terms in the crisis has chosen to escalate and he's done that once again. >> brown: so you're seeing this differently from the description we've heard. this is russia reacting? >> i don't think putin is to mount a full scale invasion of ukraine but we're seeing they're not willing to lose and when it looks like the ukrainians are poised to do too much too quickly the russians raise the stakes and that's where we are today. >> brown: andrei tegoncof, what's your response? go ahead. >> i don't disagree. i think russia is raising the stakes. remember russia is raising the stakes in response to the ukrainians raising the stakes. ukrainians have anti-terrorist stipulations, searching for a military solution to the conflict, and the russians will see this as a need to restore balance of power. for them, this is a necessity to negotiate better i political conditions for their interests and values. they have major interests for ukraine wants to be a member of n.a.t.o. and join the european union. they have interests to protect russian language speakers there, those who gravitate toward russia, and this is something that they will be willing to defend if necessary by military means. >> brown: andrew weiss, just before we started, you heard word of a new pronouncement or a news announcement, was it, from putin? >> what seems to be happening is andrew kramer from the "new york times" talked about is this russian incursion into ukraine has caused disruption and soldiers are evacuating in a pall mall environment. the russian putin issued a statement 1:00 a.m. moscow time calling on the rebels not to kill the ukrainian soldiers who are now encircled. he said, open a humanitarian corridor. these people are forced to fight, let them go home to their families. it's not clear what's going on on the ground if there is a significant risk that ukrainian forces are going to be ground up by the new russian forces introduce. but it's striking putin is sending out commands via press release, suggesting the situation is very messy and uncontrolled. >> brown: can you comment on that and the sense of whether russias and mr. putin are feeling any impact of the american sanctions so far, whether the pressure from the west is having any impact? >> let me make one observation about the situation in ukraine. certainly russians who are assisting the rebels and the rebels were losing until recently, but a week ago they began a counteroffensive and that's what's happening today. thousands of ukrainian troops are encircled. that's not sufficiently reported in western media but is something that helps putin to negotiate better conditions. this is one of the reasons why he felt so confident in minsk and one of the reasons he did not feel he would need to negotiate poroshenko because poroshenko already nose the conditions and the ball in many ways is in his court. russia can wait until the fall and possibly winter whether it will also be able to use energy weapons and in the meantime the solution is only a political one. this is something, russia recognizes this, the european union, angela merkel, barack obama recognizes this. so it's essential to move in this direction. >> brown: andrew weiss andrei tegoncof and, thank you very much. >> thank you. >> ifill: there were new numbers and a bleak projection today on the ebola outbreak in west africa. at the same time, it appears human trials will begin for a possible vaccine as soon as next week. the ominous forecast came from the world health organization: ebola cases could top 20,000 as the outbreak continues to spread. >> it is now, as you know, really a multinational effort, three countries, heavily affected, not just remote isolated areas where you can rapidly contain, but we are dealing with this disease in large, urban environments and over large geographic areas. this is very unique. >> ifill: so far, the u.n. agency has confirmed more than 3,000 cases. of that number, more than half have died-- in liberia, sierra leone, guinea and nigeria. but the w.h.o says the outbreak could spread to ten other countries. to contain the virus, the agency announced a $490 million strategic plan for the next nine months. >> when we look at the numbers of people to make this work, we are going to need 750 internationals at least and 12,000 nationals, not in capital that is very difficult in the current environment, but that is the scale of manpower needed to do this. >> ifill: the "current environment" includes a sizeable fear factor, especially in liberia, the country with the most ebola cases and deaths. doctors without borders opened a treatment facility in the liberian capital, monrovia, two weeks ago, but its 120 beds are already full. >> the healthcare system has more or less broken down. hospitals have closed, the clinics are closed, some of them have reopened but the staff is afraid to go back because they are afraid to get the disease. >> ifill: in desperation, liberian officials quarantined monrovia's west point neighborhood and armed police have used live ammunition to stop residents from getting out. the medical emergency has also placed a heavy economic strain on affected countries. the african development bank is urging an end to trade and travel restrictions. >> markets are not functioning, airlines are not coming in, projects are being cancelled, business people have left, that is very, very damaging. >> ifill: adding to the difficulty: a different strain of ebola has appeared in the democratic republic of congo, causing 13 deaths so far. here at home, the national institutes of health announced today it will start testing an experimental ebola vaccine next week. for more on that development, i'm joined by dr. anthony fauci, director of the national institute of allergy and infectious diseases at n.i.h, he'll oversee those trials. dr. fauci, thanks for joining us again. what would trials like this look like? first of all, it's an early phase one trial, meaning this is the first time this vaccine has been put in humans so safety is paramount, so you take a very small number of people, 20 total, three at a time, and you use the vaccine to determine if there are untoward effects any inflammation, hypersensitivity, pain or anything that might be a red flag about safety, and also you learn whether it induces the kind of response in a person that you would hope would be protective against ebola infection. the reason we chose this vaccine is it showed very favorable results in an animal model, a monkey model, in which it protected monkeys very well against a challenge with lethal ebola. so this is a first, because this is the first time this has been in a human, in now what would be a series of steps to ultimately develop it to determine if, in fact, it is effective. >> ifill: this has been in development for some time. you called this an "uncontrolled outbreak" in west africa. dr. tom frieden for the c.d.c. said it will get worse before better. is it this west african outbreak moving this from development to trial? >> we have been working on an ebola vaccine for a number of years, now. this has been one of the priorities, the hemorrhagic fevers of which ebola is actually the worst of those. this is kind of the culmination of a process of developing it, but it was certainly accelerated by what we're seeing now with this extraordinary outbreak in certain west african countries. so we were on the track of an ebola vaccine, but we accelerated it. we didn't cut corners but we really put the afterburners on to get things done much more quickly so that we could get to the point where, next week, we'll put this first time in a human, in a normal volunteer right here in our clinical center in bethesda. >> ifill: we've spent time trying to figure out zmapp. this plan would be working with glaxglaxosmithkline. does that make a difference in the timetable how quickly we would see it come to market if it worked? >> gwen, it makes an extraordinary amount of difference. it really is the game changer. when you have a company like glaxosmithkline who partners fully with the n.i.h., with our science and their capability of producing this, that's how you get things done and, in fact, one of the reasonshy we had not gotten the vaccine up to now or even drugs is that there was relatively little interest on the part of many pharmaceutical companies for even drugs or vaccines, and i think the extraordinary dramatic situation which we're going through right now is really going to get people's attention and we'll see a lot more interest in that which i'm very pleased about because we really do need a vaccine and therapeutics. >> ifill: because ebola is such a dangerous virus, how do you assure the safety not only for those taking it in the trial but also for those handling the virus? >> that's a good question. it's important to point out there's no chance of the vaccine giving ema to anyone because we're not giving them an ebola virus. we're giving them a vaccine that has a very small component of the genetic material from ebola that the that would make a protein that is again an important component of the virus but not a virus that can actually replicate. so there's no chance -- when we say "safety" which is the first part of phase one, we're not talking about safety of giving someone ebola, we're talking about safety of an adverse reaction to the vaccine itself. that's an important difference. >> ifill: we're talking about the pocket of 20,000 cases before this thing begins to subside. how do we know the vaccine is the right solution or even are they the right solution? >> a great question because the solution, right now, is what we know can stop an outbreak and that is the ability and the infrastructure to deliver infection control by isolation, by quarantine, by contact tracing and by protecting the healthcare workers with proper personal protective equipment. the difficulty in those west african countries is they don't have that kind of infrastructure in place, and it's truly a struggle to be able to do that kind of infection control. historically, under other circumstances, there have been now about 24 outbreaks of ebola usually in geographically-restricted areas where it was much easier to contain it. you can contain it with good hospital and infection control capabilities. >> ifill: dr. anthony fauci at the national institutes of health. thank you very much. >> you're quite welcome. >> ifill: the u.s. border patrol has apprehended nearly 63,000 unaccompanied children at the southwest border just this year. many of them are then relocated to various cities across the country, creating a growing need for healthcare and education. judy woodruff recently visited a d.c.-based organization that is providing some of that support. >> woodruff: when maria gomez was 13 years old, she and her mother emigrated to the united states from colombia, after her political activist father was murdered. the two settled in washington d.c., where gomez grew up in the midst of a burgeoning latino community. seeing the difficult time many were having, in 1988, gomez gave up her job as a nurse to open mary's center, a place for pregnant latina women to receive free or low-cost prenatal care. many of these women had come to the u.s. to escape poverty and civil war in countries like el salvador. 26 years later, a much expanded mary's center is on the front lines of providing an array of services to an influx of central american families and children. already this year, nearly 6,000 unaccompanied minors from central america have crossed the u.s. border and been released to sponsors in virginia, d.c. and maryland. mary's center alone has received more than 500 of the unaccompanied children over the past few weeks, putting a serious strain on its resources. since its founding, the organization has grown enormously, in order to address the needs of children and adults who've received little or no formal education and many of whom don't speak english. mary's center now offers schooling and social services, in addition to medical care. a few days ago, i visited one of mary's center's four locations in the washington area and spoke with its president and founder maria gomez. maria gomez, thank you very much for talking with us. >> thank you. >> woodruff: so you have run mary's center for over a quarter of a century since 1988. you have seen families. children, coming into the united states from central america and other places. what are you now seeing how is that incoming of people changing? >> the incoming that we're seeing it's almost the same, but people were coming really fleeing the war back in 1988 from el salvador. now, people are fleeing the gang members who are basically doing pretty much the same-- killing their families. we have one child after another whose families have been killed; their brothers and sisters their mothers, their fathers. yesterday we were at a vigil and one of the boys, a 16-year-old, both of his parents were killed right in front of him, and were threatened that if he did not pay them what he earned and from the rest of the family that was there that he would also be killed. >> woodruff: and these are not an occasional story, you're hearing these regularly, is that right? >> every kid that comes in has a story, whether it was their aunt, their grandmother, their father. many, many men-- the fathers of these children-- have been killed because they refused to give them their daily payments that they earned, and sometimes it's for nothing. at the maximum, two, three, five dollars that these people are making a day anyway. >> woodruff: and how are these children getting here? >> what we're hearing from the families and the kids is that the parents or the family members over there sold pretty much everything they had, the little land they had, whatever they had, the cows, sheep, whatever they had so they could get enough money you know, $5,000. so not only do they now have nothing back home, but now they owe money still to these people. >> woodruff: and you also have young women, girls who are being raped? sexually abused on the way? >> many of them, unfortunately because of the gang activities particularly in honduras, the individuals, the young women are being raped even back home. so they're fleeing, they're fleeing many because they'll there's a 50/50 chance that they will cross the border alive than there is a chance to be living back home where they can either be submissive to the abuse or they get killed. >> woodruff: but once they're in the united states there's a good chance they'll be deported back to their home country, what do they face if they go back? >> death is really what they're facing because once an individual becomes a wage-earner they are threatened daily for their wages or they will be killed. that's basically, that's the option they have at this point. that is why you know many parents are taking the risk of actually sending kids as young as nine and eleven years of age across the north. >> woodruff: so you're dealing with families with children who've seen trauma. what're you seeing and how do you deal with it? >> so right now the biggest >> some of them have gotten pregnant. some of them come to relatives, what we're seeing when they come to relatives they go through another trauma. because the relatives realize they cannot afford to have them in their apartment, they realize that they're sort of nuisance, an extra. many of the kids come with the aspiration of coming to school because they've never been to school, some of those kids have never been to school because it's too dangerous. one girl was telling us that they actually killed one of her friends and left body parts on the way to give her the message that if she went to school that would happen to her unless she became part of the gang group. >> woodruff: where does the money come from to take care of all this? >> so right now it's costing us over $800 to take care of these kids. >> woodruff: a person. >> every person because we're not only taking care of the medical piece but the mental health and the dental health and when you add all those things together we can get bills as high as $1,300, $1,500 per person when you start dealing with that. but the basic health care right now is about $800 per person because we have to do special tests now for kids as young as nine years of age for s.t.ds, for h.i.v, that we wouldn't otherwise do that that young right? >> woodruff: and do you feel you're able to address the need? are you able to do what needs to be done? >> we have the staffing, we have the staff to be able to do that even if it means we extend hours we have the psychologist, the psychiatrists, the medical staff to do that we have the capacity. i think what's concerning now is that right now we're running as of the end of july up to now we've racked up almost $400,000 worth of free care that we've given because these individuals are not able to pay. >> woodruff: the stories you tell and that they tell are so powerful, but yet there are still people in the united states who say, "we're very sympathetic we wish it weren't this way, but we first have to pay attention to problems in our own country. we can't receive people who are suffering from all around the world." what do you say to those people? >> i totally understand what they are saying, but i also know this land has an opportunity, this is how we were created to take people from all over the world. what i say to people who talk about the fact that we can't take on and we have so many people that we have to still take care of. i often wonder are we really as a community, i'm an american now i have a u.s. passport. are we really taking care of the poorest and the most vulnerable in this country? that when we're given an opportunity we as americans always pay it back and that is what i think what we need to look forward to. >> woodruff: maria gomez, mary's center, we thank you very much for talking with us. >> thank you very much for the opportunity. >> ifill: next, for years, community colleges in america have opened their doors to everyone, offering a huge variety of courses at a fraction of the cost. but with only 5% of community college students graduating on time, should the schools be revamped? the city of chicago believes so, and has hired a controversial chancellor who has her own story of transformation. hari is back with the next in our series on "rethinking college". these are all natural science classes. >> sreenivasan: cheryl knows these hallways better than most. after all, she walked them some 20 years ago as a community college student. >> let's see if i can recognize any of my old classrooms. >> all righty. >> sreenivasan: today, she walks as the boss. in 2010, heimen was asked by chicago's mayor to leave a lucrative job at the utility giant commonwealth edison to become chancellor of city colleges of chicago, one of the largest community college systems in the country. >> this is how much closer we need to get to the starting. >> sreenivasan: heimen manages a budget of $650 million, overseas, hundreds of employees and seven college campuses. her task was to turn around a dismal record. only 7% of the 115,000 students were graduating. >> good luck and thanks for attending city colleges of chicago. >> sreenivasan: like many students at city colleges of chicago, heimen had a challenging childhood. >> how are you? appy birthday! >> sreenivasan: raised in chicago's public housing by parents addicted to drugs, she left home at age 17, dropped out of high school and, for a time, became homeless. against the odds, heimen returned to school, getting her high school diploma, a bachelor's degree and an nba from northwestern universities prestigious kellogg school of management. how important is it for someone sitting in that sort of prospective student's chair to say here's a woman who came through the housing authority, went through corporate america and she's running this place. i can see myself in her shoes? >> i think a lot. i think a lot. what many of our students need more than anything else is hope. a lot of times they walk through our doors and they don't have that. i think, without that, it doesn't matter what type of education we're providing them, they will never think that they can make it out of their circumstances, but they will somehow think that their circumstances dictate their destiny, and i tried very hard to give them that hope that that's not true. that's part of why i came from corporate america and took this job. >> sreenivasan: now heimen hopes to reinvent the city colleges of chicago. >> how do you establish a model which helps you shift the paradigm of how community colleges should be defined? shift the paradigm from institutions that have typically been solely focused on access to those who now couple access is success, and what we mean by "success" is that students are continuing what they came here for in a timely manner and that those credentials are relevant. >> if you think a dna -- >> sreenivasan: currently, only 5% of the 8.3 million students enrolled in community colleges graduate over time. meaning 35 million americans over age 25 have some college credit but no degree. were students coming to city colleges and taking credits they didn't particularly need or wouldn't translate into a job? >> they were. they would come in with a perception of i want to be x, and then they thumb through this huge course catalog to try to put their future together with the limited information and guidance. >> sreenivasan: when heimen arrived at city colleges of chicago she said too many students were taking classes that didn't advance them toward a degree and, as a result, many dropped out. others like shana henderson say they wasted time and money. henderson ended up with 88 credits, 26 more than she needed for her associate's degree. >> i didn't necessarily know how to navigate college and select classes so i took art because i figured that, you know, i liked drawing, but i didn't know necessarily if that will count towards my graduation. >> what's really going to determine when and how often we offer it is students' availability. >> sreenivasan: heimened tripled the number of students advisors and crated course by course career paths for every student. >> we watched pathways toward success which takes what we know to be relevant industries which represent the job market and what four-year institutions look for and taken those and put them in clear semester-by-semester pathways. ♪ >> sreenivasan: new transfer agreements with four-year universities insured college students were taking proper courses towards a bachelor's degree. that seems basic. that seems fundamental. i would expect a city college or any college would have my credits to transfer. >> it does seem very fundamental to you and i, but it was revolutionary when i started talking about it. students would get their associate's degree and transfer and only half their credits would transfer. >> sreenivasan: the changei helped shana henderson transfer to the university of illinois. >> in my family, they always had to take care of family or work, so i think to take it upon myself to have that accomplishment for my family will make us all proud. (cheering) >> sreenivasan: in three years since heimen lost her reinvention campaign graduation rates nearly doubled. the number of degrees awarded jumped from 2,000 to 4,000. but the reinvention of city colleges also met with controversy. heimen with no background in education was under fire from faculty for hiring expense v outside business consultants and at the same time took the drastic move of replacing six out of seven college presidents. >> students have to juggle their schedules. >> sreenivasan: she cut staff, eliminating courses and other cost and took a hard line on labor negotiations to save $51 million. what is the hardest part of changing a cul culture? >> well, the hardest part of change is culture. i think the hardest part of changing culture is you have to convince everybody that you're changing not to hurt them but you're changing so that everybody can have a win-win. >> sreenivasan: heimen's sweeping changes at city colleges of chicago will be watched closely by both critics and supporters as a reinvention plan heads into its fourth year this fall. >> ifill: tomorrow harry looks at >> ifill: tomorrow hari looks at performance funding at public universities. the more students graduate the more money the institution gets from the state. online, read about how an arizona community college is running its campuses like a business and whether its students benefit from being treated like customers-- that's on our education page. finally tonight: some people may judge a book by its cover. but what about creating a cover that best represents a book? jeff recently talked to a man whose job is to do just that. >> brown: book lovers and you know who you are will recognize the covers of numerous books who appeared in the last decade from issues of classical writers to new novels and works of non-fiction. the man who designs the covers is stepping forward with two books of his own, one that investigates the act of reading called "what we see when we read" and second a compendium of his work and thoughts about it entitled "cover." peter mendelsund is the associate art director. welcome. >> thanks for having me. >> brown: how do you see the job? >> the job is to represent the author's words. we read the manuscript when we get it and try to find some way of translating those words into a visual that can sort of bear the weight of the narrative. >> brown: i shouldn't be surprised that you actually read it, but you do a deep reading of the book. >> yeah. it's a serious responsibility, and i like to read the work as closely as i can. it's very important to me that the cover that ends up on the book not be in some way dissident with the author's project as a whole. >> brown: you write about reading in a different way. you're looking for different things than i would be as a general reader. >> it's an extreme process in reading as a designer. i'm interested in visual emblems or occasions in a book i can translate into something visual. it could be a scene, a character, it could be a metaphor itself, but just anything in the text that could be made visual and then that thing can be sort of a vessel that the whole book can be poured into. >> brown: when you say you bear the responsibility, that goes to do we judge a book by its cover, right? you're coming between the author and potential readers. >> it's a very serious responsibility. i feel a tremendous amount of guilt when i get it wrong. it's important to me and my responsibility to the author to make sure they're comfortable with the thing that wraps their -- their baby. >> brown: have you developed a theory about what makes a great cover and vice versa? >> i would say there's two answers to that question. one is a great cover is, as i said, a cover that really does a great job of representing that particular story, but, of course, a great cover is also a cover that sells a book well. >> brown: yeah. and my theory about what sells a book well is not a popular theory, but i think any cover that looks very different from all the covers around it, that cover is going to draw your eye. so if all the covers on the table are colorful and you make a white cover, it may seem bland by itself, but that white cover, just by virtue of being different, will draw your eye and draw you to it. >> brown: i want to give an example. one of the biggest sellers in your successes is steve larson books. why did that work? >> well, i have another theory is if you make something pretty enough, it doesn't matter what it looks like, people will want it. i think this is an extremely violent murder mystery and the cliches for jacketing the books are shadowy guys, trench coats, murder weapons, a lot of blood. you put blood on any kind of jacket image and it will signal it's a crime novel. in this case, there's no blood and it is delicately wrought and the color is very unusual, a very bright day glow yellow. and i think that kind of proves my point was that it just looked so different and, hopefully, was visually appealing enough that when you were in a book store and saw it, at the very least, you would come a little closer to it, close of like a mag pie, you just wanted t to pick it up. >> brown: did you know it away or did sales tell you you succeeded? >> it was an arduous process coming up with the cover, i did probably 50 versions. >> brown: is that normal? sometimes lightning strikes away and you have your eureka moments but i do as much work i feel i need to do to do the job. and even after it's made, there was hemming and hawing about whether it was the right cover, which just proves you can never get consensus on these things. but i was happy with it. ip not sure if it's a good cover by association or whether it's generally a good cover, but i'm proud of it, for what it's worth. >> brown: in what we'll call the smaller book, you asked the question what we see when we read. you're actually talking about what we see, what we imagine, and i'm wondering, we're in a visual culture, now, and this obviously ties to the kind of work you do as a designer of covers. >> that's right. it occurred to me at some point i was plucking, as i said, these sort of visions out of an author's work and it occurred to me it was a strange process. it wasn't quite the way i think i imagined it and the way i had imagined it is the way most people imagines it which is the author provides you their vision of a particular world that's populated by particularly characters and you read about them and you see the author's people and places, then you close the book and it's over. and the strange thing is really, i realized when i started to examine these kind of visions, the author's prompts weren't mattering that much. he might say anna has black hair, is tightly curled. i'm picturing whatever the closest analog i can come up with to the woman tolstoy very narrowly describes to us and that might be a teacher of mine from grade school, turns out when you examine the process and parse it, we all co-create the book along with the writer. >> brown: do you think all of this is changing because of the changing technology, a changing society that is more visual, perhaps, than print oriented? >> in a way it makes this idea of imagining things for ourselves this kind of nebulous anand this world where we're bombarded with visual stimuli, there are very few places other than dreaming that we get a feeling of occupying a metaphysical realm. so it's special this that regard. we text pictures to each other, see pictures on the internet and everything is visual. so it's nice to think of this more, as i put it, kind of amophous place. it becomes more precious. >> brown: what we see when we read and covers. peter mendelsund. thank you so much. >> thank you for having me. >> ifill: we have a photo gallery of peter mendelsund's work, on our art beat page. again, the major developments of the day: ukraine accused russia of invading its territory, the u.s. and other powers said moscow has "outright lied" about its actions, but president obama ruled out a military response. the president also tried to tamp down talk of military action against islamic state fighters in syria. he said, "we don't have a strategy" yet. the world health organization reported the death toll in the west african ebola outbreak rose above 1,550. could be 20,000 cases in the months ahead. on the newshour online right now: the artist who's wrapped entire islands and bridges in bright fabric now wants to cover a 42-mile stretch of the arkansas river with a curtain of translucent silver. but the project, titled "over the river," is on pause due to legal challenges from groups that say it will damage the environment. in the meantime you can see drawings of what this art installation will look like, on our art beat page. all that and more is on our web site, newshour.pbs.org. and that's the newshour for tonight. on friday, we'll look at zmapp the experimental drug protocol that is being used in very limited amounts to treat ebola. i'm gwen ifill. we'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening with mark shields and david brooks. for all of us here at the pbs newshour, thank you and good night. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: ♪ ♪ moving our economy for 160 years. bnsf, the engine that connects us. >> charles schwab, proud supporter of the "pbs newshour." >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >> this is "nightly business report." >> global tensions, the conflict in ukraine flares up again, pressuring stocks, overshadowing better economic data here at home. and that isn't the only event overseas investors need to watch. bounce, a key indicator of the housing market health rises, but there may be more to that report than meets the eye. and minimize the impact. worried about the hack attack on jpmorgan? some steps you can take to protect yourself and your small business. we have all that and more tonight on "nightly business report" for thursday, august 28. >> good evening, everyone. tyler is off tonight. a tug of war on wall street today as investors weighed encouraging data about the u.s. economy against geopolitical

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