In this Issue:
PA State System of Higher Ed Retains CUE to Increase Graduation Rates
New Report on Enhancing High School College-Going Cultures
CUE Workshops: Cal Poly San Luis Obispo Workshop on Fostering a Culture of Inclusion
CUE's BESST at Work in Nevada
CUE Speaking Engagements:
Bensimon Talks about Immigrant Students and U.S. Future
Bensimon Addresses Kent State University Leaders
New CUE Publications: Article Calls for Intercultural Effort in Surveys of Institutional Effectiveness
Chase Article Looks at Transfer Policies for Technical Associate Degrees
CUE Speaking Engagements
 Education Grantmakers Hear about CUE's Community College Work
Dr. Bensimon addressed education program officers at their annual Grantmakers for Education conference, which was held in Los Angeles this year on October 3-5. As part of the conference, foundation representatives went to Los Angeles Trade Technical College (LATTC) to learn about effective instructional strategies.
Bensimon talked about the Center's work with community colleges and how its tools were being used to build institutional capacity for data-based decision making to improve student success. Participating with her on the panel were Marcy Drummond, LATTC's Vice President of Academic Affairs and Chito Cajayon, Vice Chancellor of Workforce and Economic Development for the Los Angeles Community College District.
Bensimon Talks about Immigrant Students and U.S. Future
Dr. Bensimon joined senior scholars and journalists in a September 30th dialogue about the "Futures of Immigration." Convened at Harvard under the sponsorship of Immigration Studies at New York University and USC's Tomás Rivera Policy Center, the dialogue explored the roles of the press and the academy in shaping public opinion and policy debates on immigration through research and reporting.
Bensimon participated in a panel about the nation's future and spoke about the children of immigrants and their presence in U.S. schools and colleges. Other notable scholars included Douglas Massey of Princeton, Richard Freeman from Harvard and Gary Painter from USC. Journalists Julia Preston of The New York Times, Edward Shumacher-Matos from National Public Radio, and Maggie Jones of Harvard's Nieman Foundation for Journalism also spoke.
The complexity of immigration and how this phenomenon is analyzed and portrayed by scholars and journalists are illustrated in a new book co-edited by Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, Ross University Professor and co-director of Immigration Studies at New York University, Vivian Louie, associate professor of education at Harvard and Roberto Suro, professor of journalism and public policy at USC. Published by the University of California Press, "Writing Immigration, Scholars and Journalists in Dialogue" offers multiple perspectives on the effects of migration on the economy, culture and key public institutions. For more information about this book, click here.
Bensimon Addresses Kent State University Leaders
Dr. Bensimon addressed an audience of 150 Kent State University leaders, faculty and staff about the Equity Scorecard on September 23rd. Kent State recently established a new division of diversity, equity and inclusion and is working on strategic goals for inclusion, excellence and success that are based in part on Dr. Bensimon's research.
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New Publications
Article Calls for Intercultural Effort in Surveys of Institutional Effectiveness
Dr. Dowd, Ph.D. student Misty Sawatzky and Randi Korn, associate dean of academic resources at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy, co-authored an article that appeared in the Fall 2011 issue of the Review of Higher Education. Titled "Theoretical Foundations and a Research Agenda to Validate Measures of Intellectual Effort" the authors called for campus surveys that measure intercultural effort on the part of students, faculty, staff and administrators. The goal is to reduce racial bias when colleges use assessments of institutional effectiveness. To read the article, click here.
Chase Article Looks at Transfer Policies for Technical Associate Degrees CUE Ph.D. student Megan M. Chase recently published an online article in Community College Review. In "Benchmarking Equity in Transfer Policies for Career and Technical Associate's Degrees," she examines state policies in Ohio, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin that affect technical credit transfer from public two-year colleges to four-year universities and recommends seven policy benchmarks that can facilitate the transferability of technical credits. To read the article, click here. |
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| Keeping Equity at the Forefront |
| PA State System of Higher Ed Retains CUE to Increase Graduation Rates
The Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) has made a major investment in the Center for Urban Education (CUE) by committing $1 million over two years for CUE to work with all fourteen of its universities to boost college graduation rates among minority students.
"Even with 50 years of civil rights legislation in place, the gains we have made in higher education have been far less than one would expect," said Estela Mara Bensimon, CUE co-director and professor of higher education at USC's Rossier School of Education.
CUE's focus echoes the pledge of President Barack Obama's administration to make the United States the world leader in college attainment by 2020.
CUE will use its signature Equity Scorecard™ to assist the campuses in developing goals to increase graduation rates among black, Latino and other underrepresented students and incorporate these equity metrics into PASSHE's accountability systems that reward improvement among its universities.
"Ensuring access and success for all qualified students is not just a national agenda-it's the right thing to do," said Kathleen Howley, PASSHE senior associate vice chancellor of academic and student affairs.
From Mansfield University with 3,500 students to West Chester University with 15,000, the system's fourteen universities serve nearly 120,000 students in their baccalaureate programs and offer thousands of non-credit training programs to enhance adult employability and regional economic development efforts.
At the PASSHE diversity summit on October 14, Bensimon and CUE co-director and associate professor of higher education Alicia C. Dowd introduced campus leadership to the Equity Scorecard™ and the importance of coordinating and integrating the various system and institutional initiatives on college completion. They also talked about the formation of campus evidence teams, which will lead the work over the next two years.
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| New Report on Enhancing High School College-Going Cultures
CUE and the National College Access Network (NCAN) just released a report detailing findings and strategies to strengthen the college-going cultures of public high schools in Boston. Based on an NCAN demonstration project funded by the Kresge Foundation, Dr. Bensimon, USC Ph.D. student Tiffany Jones, and Tia Brown McNair, formerly NCAN's assistant director and currently senior director for student success at the Association of American Colleges and Universities, led the work with two Boston high schools, the Community Academy of Science and Health and East Boston High School, to assess and strengthen their efforts to increase college admissions for minority high school students. Says Bensimon, "As a nation, we are still far from achieving the goal of closing the racial divides that so strongly characterize educational institutions and systems in the United States."
The project came at a critical time for educators in Boston. A study found that only 35 percent of college-bound Boston Public Schools' (BPS) graduates from the class of 2000 had earned a degree seven years later. As a result, the city launched Success Boston to improve college completion rates for its graduates. Currently, 25 Massachusetts colleges and universities are participating in Success Boston to double the number of local students earning college degrees. The CUE-NCAN project complements these efforts and has the potential for replication in other city high schools.
Says NCAN executive director Kim Cook, "The staff and college access partners who participated in this project have gone through a self-reflective experience that will change the way they collaborate and encourage them to see their students through a new lens-the lens of equity."
Marsha Inniss-Mitchell, director of the BPS college readiness initiative, indicates that findings from the study will be used to strengthen Success Boston's "Get Ready" strategies. In particular, it "has really supported BPS to build stronger alignment with college access and success partners (and) begin to strengthen the college-ready cultures in all district high schools...."
The pilot project came about when Tia Brown McNair attended a CUE Institute on Equity and Critical Policy Analysis funded by the Ford Foundation. After seeing CUE's data and inquiry tools, she wanted to adapt them to secondary school settings.
To read the full report Using Data and Inquiry to Build Equity-Focused College-Going Cultures, click here. To learn more about the project, click here.
The findings and recommendations from the report were reinforced by a College Board national survey of school counselors, which was released on November 15th. They said their schools were not doing what they should to better prepare students for college, such as promoting an early understanding of the application and admissions process. To read more about the survey findings, click here.
A webinar sponsored by American Youth Policy Forum will be held on December 14th from 1 pm to 2 pm (EST) to discuss the project and policy recommendations in greater detail. Presenters include: Catherine Carney, Chief Academic Officer, East Boston High School; Catherine Chiu, Director of Guidance for BPS; Sara Melnick, Deputy Director of NCAN;and Tiffany Jones, Research Assistant for CUE. To register for the webinar, go to: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/603324321.
 | | The Student Success Toolkit Demonstration Project. Boston, MA |
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CUE Workshops
Cal Poly San Luis Obispo Workshop on Fostering a Culture of Inclusion
To enhance a culture of equity and inclusion at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, Dr. Dowd and CUE staff persons Rosita Ramirez and Dominic Alpuche led an October 7th workshop on the topic.
Thirty faculty, counselors and administrators had the opportunity to use CUE's document analysis tool for culturally inclusive pedagogy and practices to analyze a broad range of materials and evaluate their tone and content for equity and inclusiveness.
 | | Mr. Dominic Alpuche and Dr. Rosita Ramirez of the Center for Urban Education |
The workshop is part of an ongoing action research partnership between CUE and the university, which began when education professor Roberta Herter and materials engineering professor Linda Vanasupa participated in CUE's Institute for Participatory Critical Action Research in Summer 2010. The Institute was co-led by Bensimon and Dowd with generous support from the Ford Foundation.
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Through a partnership with the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, CUE has been working with the Nevada System of Higher Education the past year to develop a plan to increase undergraduate success, especially for its students of color. CUE used its Benchmarking Equity and Student Success Tool™ (BESST) to analyze system-level student data at its two- and four-year institutions to find out where students were falling out of the undergraduate pipeline.
On September 16th, Dr. Bensimon, CUE staff person Dominic Alpuche and CUE facilitator Deanna Cherry worked with leadership from the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, Nevada State College and College of Southern Nevada in a daylong program to "plan for excellence and equity by 2020." The BESST was used to analyze campus-level data to develop benchmarks and equity goals to improve degree completion for underrepresented students at the three institutions. To learn more about the partnership,
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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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