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The Center for Urban Education (CUE) is housed within the USC Rossier School of Education, among the top 10 Schools of Education in American private research universities (U.S. News & World Report). While CUE celebrates its 10th anniversary, Rossier is celebrating its centennial. |
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CUE Celebrates a Decade of Making a Difference
President Obama's College Equity Promise
CUE's New Benchmarking Tool is the (BESST)
Institutes on Equity and Critical Policy Analysis Launched
White House Initiative Notes CUE's Contribution
A Community College District is Transformed |
 Debbie Hanson, CUE Research Assistant, explains the CUE Equity Model during a professional development training workshop at East Los Angeles Community College. (September 18, 2009)
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Staff Updates:
CUE Co-Director Dr. Alicia C. Dowd presented "Leaders, Heroes, Coordinators,
Activists: Building Institutional STEM Capacity in HSIs through Networks" at an outreach forum sponsored by the Quality Education for Minorities (QEM) Network Sept. 26 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The
presentation shared some results of a CUE study, funded by the National Science Foundation, on the ways institutions and individuals can promote the participation of Latinas/os in STEM fields. To view Dr. Dowd's PowerPoint presentation, click here. |
The Center for Urban Education (CUE) leads socially conscious research and develops tools needed for institutions of higher education to produce equity in student outcomes.
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Upcoming Events:
--Dr. Elsa Macias is co-presenting findings from the CUE Equity Model with team members from Evergreen Valley College and San José/Evergreen Community College District at the 2009 Strengthening Student Success Conference in San Francisco on Oct. 7-9.
--Dr. Estela Mara Bensimon, Dr. Alicia C. Dowd, Loni Pazich and Megan Chase of CUE will present "Formulating Equity in State Transfer Policy: An Analysis of Seven States."
--Dr. Estela Mara Bensimon will participate in a session called, "The (Sometimes Uneasy) Relationship between Higher Education Researchers and the Media."
--Dr. Estela Mara Bensimon, Dr. Alicia C. Dowd and ASHE Institutes Coordinator and CUE researcher Sandra Luca, will present "Building a Foundation for Conducting Equity-Based Research and Critical Policy Analysis: Emerging Findings from the ASHE Institutes."
--Dr. Estela Mara Bensimon will participate in "Negotiating Identities in Academe: An Intergenerational Dialogue Among Latina Scholars."
--CUE's 10th Anniversary Reception will also be held during the ASHE Conference. |
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CUE Celebrates a Decade of Making a Difference
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
As CUE's founder, it's an honor to celebrate this important anniversary with you. A monumental marker, not only in years, but in all that has been accomplished and learned over the past decade.
Back in 1999 when CUE was established with a grant from the university's nationally renowned Urban Initiative, I knew I wanted to reach audiences beyond other academics like myself. I wanted to do something to bring about real change.
While I recognize that our work is not even close to being complete, it is important to recognize that a change has occurred and a paradigm shift has taken place.
More than forty two-year and four-year colleges and universities in six states have used CUE's Equity Model. Dozens more across the country have participated in CUE professional development workshops to learn about the concepts of "equity-mindedness" that are the foundation for institutional accountability to the academic success of students of color.
In all these endeavors, we've been fortunate beyond my dreams to work with educators who inspire and inform our work. These courageous innovators underscore my hopeful vision of what lies ahead in our next decade.
It is in the passion of equity-minded practitioners and visionary leaders that we see our future. It is "within us" to realize our true capacity in higher education to create both access and equity.
One of the most important changes at CUE occurred when Dr. Alicia C. Dowd joined me as Co-Director in 2008. Her scholarship and leadership has created new capacity for stewarding our mission and she will help provide a vision for our future.
We are also pleased to announce our new website and newsletter, where information about our research, policy analysis and articles are easily accessible.
We have some exciting anniversary events planned for the near future. We will keep you posted and hope you will join us! Thank you for all of your support throughout the years. We hope to see you soon.
Wishing you all the best,
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In the News: Leadership Academy to Deliver the Knowledge for Obama's Equity Promise
President Barack Obama's American Graduation Initiative is focused on getting community colleges on the right track. The $12-billion initiative is the largest single infusion of federal dollars to two-year institutions in our nation's history.
We are pleased the goals of this critical initiative are so closely aligned to our mission and work.
If we give institutions more resources, focus on student outcomes, strengthen data and research and work toward improving basic skills education, by 2020, "this nation will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world," President Obama said in a speech earlier this year.
CUE has been at the forefront of developing quantifiable benchmarks to close the gaps in completion rates for underrepresented students in higher education. Increasing equitable outcomes in basic skills education and transfer are the goals at the heart of the California Benchmarking Project, just one of our projects that directly relates to President Obama's initiative.
With all of the tools and knowledge we have gained over the past decade, the Center is poised to aid in the national effort to increase the effectiveness of postsecondary institutions. Over the next several years, the Center will enhance its ability to bring equity-minded innovation to higher education in a significant way -- by dramatically increasing the number of equity-minded practitioners. A leadership academy will be created based upon CUE's Equity Model and launched next year.
"We have made great strides in access but equity in outcomes has yet to be realized," said CUE Co-Director Dr. Estela Mara Bensimon.
For more information about how CUE's Leadership Academy will help higher education realize these ambitious goals, click here. |
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CUE Benchmarking Tool is the (BESST)
CUE's latest resource, the Benchmarking Equity and Student Success Tool (BESST), can assist college leaders, faculty, system heads and staff collaborate to set goals on their campuses.
It's been designed to help accomplish the very goals that are so much at the forefront of the national higher education agenda, namely improving the rates of college completion, as well as enhancing racial-ethnic equity and high rates of achievement in student success.
Developed by CUE through years of research at a number of higher education institutions in California and several other states, the BESST tool facilitates dialogue and decision-making.
CUE's faculty and professional staff provide expertise by helping stakeholders' choose a targeted area for inquiry and action; build consensus on the problem of practice; determine goals for improvement and set benchmarks to measure success.
The BESST consists of two components to facilitate the benchmarking of performance improvement:
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A PowerPoint graphical interface illustrating the success rates of a cohort of students at important academic milestones.
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An easy-to-manipulate Excel spreadsheet which includes the stakeholders' own student cohort migration data.
For further information and to learn how you can partner with us, please call us at 213-740-5202 or email us at rsoecue@usc.edu. For an illustration of CUE's BESST Benchmarking Tool, click here. |
ASHE Institutes Make Successful Launch
Led by the USC Center for Urban Education, a select group of faculty, policy analysts and doctoral students gathered at a series of multi-day workshops across the country during the summer to discuss the creation of a new community of young minority scholars tasked with studying questions of racial and ethnic equity in higher education.
Race-linked barriers to achievement and race conscious admissions were just some of the hot-button issues in higher education the group addressed and will continue to examine in the future.
The Institutes on Equity and Critical Policy Analysis were held in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Santa Monica, the UCLA campus and Boulder, Colorado. They provided an opportunity for participants to reflect on their own work as well as network with other scholars and policy makers committed to racial and ethnic underserved communities.
Other partners include the Association for the Study of Higher Education, University of California at Los Angeles' Higher Education Research Institute, the University of Houston Law Center's Institute for Higher Education Law and Governance, Columbia University's Teachers College, the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, the Institute for Higher Education Policy, and the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia.
For more information on the ASHE Institutes, go to our website. |
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White House Education Initiative Notes Equity Model Created by CUE
A public forum sponsored by White House education officials at Long Beach City College started out on Aug. 20 with a nod of recognition for the community college's efforts to improve transfer rates to four-year universities through an assessment model developed by USC's Center for Urban Education.
Sepulveda mentioned the college's pro-active involvement in the Equity Model assessment project, which was created by CUE to collect and analyze data on student progress and achievement, and create solutions to improve outcomes for minority students in higher education.
The Aug. 20 discussions at the national forum ranged from talks about ways to better structure student loans and financing for college to how to provide fair assessments of teacher performance.
To read the rest of this story, which was published on the USC web portal, please click here. |
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CUE Equity Model Transforms a Community College District
For some community college students, the gap between what they learned in high school and what they need to know and succeed in college credit courses is a big one.
Bridging that divide is basic skills education, also known as remedial and developmental education. The bad news is that so few students who start at the lowest basic skills level ever reach credit level coursework.
An even smaller number of those students enroll in transfer level coursework and continue on to four-year universities. A disproportionate number of the students falling through these cracks are underserved racial and ethnic minorities.
But here's the good news: one California community college district enlisted the expertise of CUE's benchmarking tools to improve their student outcomes using our respected Equity Model.
Using the CUE Equity Model, San José/Evergreen Community College District has been working to identify and lift institutional barriers to racial-ethnic equity within its large basic skills student population. The Center recently wrapped up the first phase of its work to advance equity in basic skills education at the community college district.
The model employed towards this goal is unique in that it combines the Center's Equity Scorecard method of data inquiry with its Benchmarking Process, which involves the analysis of institutional practices and benchmark goal setting. |
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Center for Urban Education (CUE)
Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California
 Waite Phillips Hall Suite 702
Los Angeles, California 90089
Tel: 213.740.5202 Fax: 213.740.3889
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