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WASHINGTON Continuing the break with State of the Union tradition, President Barack Obama will spend most of next week previewing more of the proposals he will outline in the upcoming address, including on identity theft, electronic privacy and other cyberspace issues, the White House announced Saturday.

Traditionally, the White House closely guards plans to be offered in the State of the Union until just before the president delivers the nationally televised address.

But in a bid to generate excitement as he begins the next-to-last year of his presidency, Obama began previewing new initiatives during the week, including programs to boost homeownership by reducing mortgage insurance premiums and increase access to higher education by paying for the first two years of community college for Americans who meet certain criteria.

"I didn't want to wait for the State of the Union to talk about all the things that make this country great and how we can make it better, so I thought I'd get started this week," Obama said Wednesday in Michigan, where he discussed a rebounding U.S. auto industry. "I figured, why wait? It's like opening your Christmas presents a little early."

All of the proposals include steps Obama can put in place on his own, a practice he used frequently last year that irritated Republicans. Other proposals will require collaboration with Congress, which Republicans now control. They reacted coolly to Obama's announcements this week.

Last week, Obama highlighted proposals to help the economy and the middle class. The emphasis this week will be on cyberspace issues.

Obama will use an event at the Federal Trade Commission to lay out the next steps in his plan to tackle identity theft and improve consumer and student privacy. It follows up on a plan Obama announced last October to tighten security for the debit cards that transmit federal benefits, like Social Security payments, to millions of Americans.

After holding his first meeting of the new year with the top leaders in Congress on Tuesday, Obama will discuss cybersecurity, including ways to get the private sector and federal government to voluntarily share more cybersecurity information. He'll do so at the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center, which is housed in the Department of Homeland Security and shares information among the public and private sectors.

On Wednesday, Obama will be in Iowa to talk about ways to make affordable, high-speed Internet more available nationwide. The White House would not say where in Iowa the event will take place.

Vice President Joe Biden is also pitching in, traveling to Norfolk, Virginia, on Thursday to announce new funding to help train people to join the cybersecurity workforce, the White House said.

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Obama to focus on cybersecurity issues next week

In the West Harlem neighborhood where Columbia University would build the Obama presidential library, residents are accustomed to change. But they have not always welcomed it.

The proposed library would be a cornerstone of Columbia's massive expansion into the mostly poor and working-class neighborhood of Manhattanville, one subway stop north of the university's sprawling main campus in Morningside Heights. With views of the Hudson River to the west and a cluster of public housing high-rises to the east, the Obama library and museum would serve as a bridge between the old and the new.

As one of the four semifinalists for hosting the Obama library and museum, Columbia has emerged as a formidable challenger to Chicago's two bids one by the University of Illinois at Chicago on the Near West Side and another by the University of Chicago on the South Side.

In some ways, the West Harlem site mirrors the Chicago neighborhoods offered for the library. Its residents suffer from high unemployment, poverty, inadequate public schools and gang-related violence, all in the shadows of an Ivy League university that continues to encroach on the community's borders.

But unlike Chicago, where sites in neglected neighborhoods in North Lawndale, Washington Park and Woodlawn are competing to win the library for its economic benefits as much as its historical significance, West Harlem already is in the cusp of an economic revival.

The community's physical transformation began in the past decade, fueled in part by more than $7 billion in construction by Columbia that increases its footprint in the area while promising an infusion of new shops, restaurants and open space for the community.

About a mile from booming central Harlem, home of the landmark Apollo Theater and former President Bill Clinton's office, West Harlem is a community in transition. Having been sidestepped by the African-American cultural movement of the 1920s and '30s known as the Harlem Renaissance, Manhattanville developed instead as an industrial corridor. It was once home to a dairy, a brewery and automobile plants that included a Studebaker factory that the university preserved and uses as an office building.

Over the past decade, West Harlem, like the rest of Harlem, has undergone a rapid demographic shift to a more diverse population that is now 38 percent Hispanic, 27 percent white and 25 percent black. Storefront markets and family-owned businesses are nestled among low-income apartments and ornate tri-level brownstones that sell for an average of $1 million.

Over the next 25 years, Columbia plans to develop a four-block area from 129th to 133rd streets between Broadway and 12th Avenue. Its plans also include a parcel of land on the north side of 125th street as well as three properties on the east side of Broadway from 131st to 134th Street.

Columbia officials have not disclosed exactly where the library would go on those properties and declined to speak to the Tribune on the record about their proposal.

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Obama library would add to revitalization taking place in West Harlem

Provided by The Hill Obama to push cyber issues ahead of State of the Union address

President Obama will spend next week laying out new proposals to improve Americans' cybersecurity, broaden access to the Internet and guard against identify theft, the White House said Saturday.

The shift in focus will lay the foundation for Obama's upcoming State of the Union address on Jan. 20, and follows trips around the country this week in which Obama emphasized manufacturing, housing issues and the improving economy.

Obama will spend most of the week in Washington, with events scheduled at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Monday and the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center on Tuesday.

He is expected to announce new efforts to increase voluntary collaboration between industry and government on cybersecurity. At the FTC, he'll focus on ways to fight identify theft and improve consumer and student privacy, a White House official said on background.

Increasing high-speed broadband access will be a topic as Obama travels to Iowa on Wednesday.

The president will also meet with congressional leaders from both chambers and parties next week to discuss potential areas of common ground, the White House said.

Vice President Biden will also take part in laying out the pre-State of the Union agenda by traveling to Norfolk, Virginia on Thursday to announce new funding for job training in cybersecurity.

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Obama to push cyber issues ahead of State of the Union

President Barack Obama's plan to offer a free community college education to qualified students is based at least partly on a Chicago initiative, White House officials said.

The president laid out the federal plan Friday in a speech in Tennessee. Obama said his plan, including its title, "America's College Promise," is based on a two-year scholarship program called the "Tennessee Promise" in that state. The White House said it also looked at Chicago's effort to offer free community college to qualified students in putting together America's College Promise.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced the Chicago Star Scholarship program in October. On Friday, Emanuel said the city took a page from Tennessee's plan in developing the Star Scholarship, and that he had talked to people in the Obama administration about what Chicago was doing.

The Chicago Star Scholarship will cover tuition, fees and books at City Colleges of Chicago "pathway programs" for Chicago Public Schools grads who have at least a 3.0 grade-point average and are academically ready for college math and English courses.

"I have shared that with people in the White House, some very big, big, big important people, and some other people," Emanuel said at a news conference Friday where expanded college credit classes in Chicago public high schools were announced.

"And I said, 'You should look at what we're doing,' and I had conversations before on this. And I think this is a testament to what people in the White House, from the economic adviser to the president to the vice president, share, which is, we can no longer have high school the defining end point of your education."

Asked what parts of Chicago's program the Obama administration borrowed, Emanuel offered no specific examples. He instead talked about how he and the president share the belief that post-high school education is a necessity, and both programs reflect that.

Under the Chicago Star Scholarship, eligible students must first apply for federal and state financial aid. The scholarship will cover costs for up to three years above any state or federal aid the student receives. The program is starting during the college system's fall 2015 semester, for qualified spring 2015 CPS grads.

Emanuel briefly touted the program Thursday during a campaign address on his education platform.

"No other city can match Chicago, and I believe we'll be leading the way for others who will follow now," he said.

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Obama's plan for free community college has seed in Chicago

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