CUE Findings Impact Wisconsin Transfer Policy
Bensimon on Harvard Panel Concerning Inequities Facing Men of Color in Education
Community College Practitioners & Policymakers Talk Student Success
Understanding High-Impact Practices Through an Equity Lens
CUE Launches New Website
In case you missed it, CUE revamped its website!
Click here to explore CUE's redesigned site featuring easy to use navigation, a new page for latest news and events, user-friendly guide to CUE's publications and tools, and updated content on all of CUE's current projects.
We value your opinions! Please take one minute to share with us your feedback about our new site.
CUE's partnership with the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) to boost student success in Nevada was the topic of a plenary speech at the annual SHEEO/NCES Network Conference in San Francisco this past May.
Dr. Bensimon and WICHE Director of Policy Research Dr. Brian Prescott addressed state data professionals and policy analysts in a presentation called "We Have Goals... Now What? Building Campus & System Capacity to Support State College Completion Plans."
CUE will present its data to Nevada System of Higher Education provosts mid-September. |
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New Book Chapters
Measuring Student Success
This recently published chapter co-authored by Dr. Bensimon and CUE Co-Director and USC Rossier School of Education Associate Professor Dr. Alicia C. Dowd in New Directions for Community Colleges: Institutional Effectiveness reports on the development of benchmarks on institutional performance and equity developed at CUE over the past several years.
Read the chapter.
Community College Faculty Views of Underrepresented Students
The impact of faculty views on the success of community college students is examined in this new chapter co-authored by Drs. Bensimon, Los Angeles County Education Foundation Associate Director Leticia Bustillos and USC Rossier School of Education Professor Robert Rueda.
Read the chapter. |
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Upcoming Events
National College Access Network (NCAN) Annual Conference
September 28, 2011
St. Louis, MO
Dr. Bensimon and research assistant Tiffany Jones will co-lead a workshop about "Building an Equity Focused College-Going Culture: A Case Study" for practitioners and policymakers working to increase access to and success in postsecondary education for underrepresented students. The presentation will highlight CUE's Equity Scorecard™ work at two Boston high schools.
Click here for more information about the event.
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| Keeping Equity at the Forefront |
CUE Findings Impact Wisconsin Transfer Policy
To help close the transfer gap that exists between students of color and their white peers, the University of Wisconsin System (UWS) collaborated with the Center for Urban Education (CUE) in a study funded by the Ford Foundation to identify and overcome structural barriers to transfer success for students of color.
Now, two years after the start of the study, the UWS Board of Regents' Education Committee has approved a revised transfer policy that incorporates CUE's recommendations from its 2010 Wisconsin Transfer Equity Study.
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UWS Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Rebecca Martin // Photo: UW-Milwaukee Photo Service
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UWS Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Rebecca Martin
reported on the study's results at the UWS Board of Regents June meeting, citing its key findings on inequity in the transfer pathways for students of color in the UW Colleges and Wisconsin Technical Colleges as impetus to amend the system-wide transfer policy and strengthen articulation between the technical colleges and four-year universities.
Other recommendations from CUE's study addressed in the revised policy include focused monitoring of transfer equity indicators in key accountability documents and the adoption of "equity benchmarks" to track progress toward achieving parity in transfer outcomes at the system- and campus-level.
Read the USC News story here.
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Bensimon on Harvard Panel Concerning Inequities Facing Men of Color in Education
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On June 20th, CUE Co-Director and Rossier School of Education Professor Dr. Estela Mara Bensimon participated in a town hall meeting at Harvard University to address the immense opportunity gaps facing African American males in education, as highlighted in two newly released reports by the College Board Advocacy & Policy Center.
Joined by College Board president Gaston Caperton, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., NPR Education Correspondent Claudio Sanchez, Texas Representative Joaquin Castro, actor/activist Hill Harper, and other distinguished scholars and community leaders, Dr. Bensimon urged colleges and universities to take an equity-minded approach to identify and help break down the barriers--often inherent in institutional policies and practices-- that hinder the success of young men of color.
According to Dr. Bensimon, educators should recognize that college is experienced differently for each student, and rather than target students as the point of intervention, they should focus on ways that they, as agents of change, can help students from underserved backgrounds succeed.
In a book chapter co-written by Dr. Bensimon, associate professor at San Diego State University Dr. Frank Harris III, and Rossier School of Education Ph.D. student Robin Bishop, CUE's Equity Scorecard™ is featured as an effective process and tool that allows those at the ground-level of a college or university to assess and improve outcomes for male students of color. To read the chapter, click here.
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Community College Practitioners & Policymakers Talk Student Success
Select faculty, staff and administrators from eleven California Community Colleges and key policy stakeholders had an unprecedented opportunity to share strategies on student success at the CUE's Equity & Student Success Symposium on June 10th in downtown Los Angeles.
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Members of the Policy Makers Panel discuss campus and state system planning
in the student success agenda. Click here to see the full-size photo and caption.
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With nearly fifty practitioners, institutional leaders and state policymakers in attendance, the symposium focused on ways in which postsecondary education reform-despite scarce resources-could incorporate equity indicators that would improve outcomes for students of color. A morning panel of leaders from Santa Ana College, Los Medanos College, and Diablo Valley College described how CUE's benchmarking workshops and BESST™ tool provided a concrete language with which they could raise important issues of equity. Members of the California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office Task Force on Student Success led a discussion during the latter half of the program, putting forth a variety of metrics and practices that could be incorporated into a statewide plan to improve student retention and completion. Dr. Bensimon, also on the panel, spoke to the role equity should play in establishing best practices and metrics. Read the USC News story about the symposium. |
Understanding High-Impact Practices Through an Equity Lens
Research suggests that particular "high-impact practices" such as first-year seminars, internships and learning communities can increase student retention and engagement rates in higher education. High-impact practices alone, however, cannot promise highly effective and equitable educational experiences.
Without the right kinds of questions asked or information collected from institutional leaders, faculty and staff, the benefits of high-impact practices can fall short for African American, Latino, Native American and other historically underrepresented students of color.
This was the theme in Dr. Bensimon's June 15th keynote at a plenary session of the Association of American Colleges & Universities (AAC&U) 2011 Summer Institute on High-Impact Practices and Student Success. The Institute discussed ways that campus practitioners could transform high-impact practices into an intentionally structured curriculum that assures all students receive equal opportunities for success. Citing CUE's Equity Scorecard™ work at Los Medanos College, Dr. Bensimon demonstrated the capacity of faculty members to make equity-minded change to campus policy and practice.
Project Specialist Debbie Hanson co-led three sessions at the Institute with Drs. Tia McNair, AAC&U senior director for student success; Jennifer Keup, director of the National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition at the University of South Carolina; and Jillian Kinzie, associate director at the Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research and NSSE Institute for Effective Educational Practice.
View Dr. Bensimon's plenary address titled, "Appropriating Social Science Research Methods to Develop Equity-Oriented High Impact Practices."
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Center for Urban Education
Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California
Waite Phillps Hall, Suite 702
Los Angeles, California 90089
Tel: 213 740-5202 Fax: 213 740-3889 http://cue.usc.edu
  
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