Projects and Centers

Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE)

Community colleges have long distinguished themselves through their efforts to put students first and their emphasis on teaching and learning. Innovations in curriculum, teaching strategies, and support services for students are hallmarks of these institutions. Yet while community colleges often pioneer new strategies, they don't have sufficient access to tools that help them assess their initiatives and measure their progress toward key goals.

Today, community colleges are being asked to rise to new challenges. Across the country, community colleges must respond to the increasing expectations for quality, performance, and accountability set by governing boards, state and federal governments, accrediting organizations, and the public. Key among those expectations is that colleges should emphasize assessment and improvement of student retention and student learning.

To respond effectively to these challenges, community and technical colleges need assessment tools appropriate to their unique missions and the characteristics of their diverse student populations. CCSSE is meeting that need.

The CCSSE website can be found at:  http://ccsse.org

DataUse

Data use for educational improvement is studied under many guises (e.g., data use, data-based decision-making, data-driven decision-making, evidence use), all with the same intention: providing districts, schools, and educators with better information that can help educate children.  If offered in a useful form, such data can help teachers, principals and other educational personnel learn more about their students, improve their teaching craft, and ultimately impact a variety of educational outcomes.

The DataUse website can be found at: http://edadmin.edb.utexas.edu/datause/

The Higher Education Administration Student/Professional Association (HEASPA)

As the name suggests, HEASPA is an association of higher education administration students studying at the masters and doctoral levels in the Higher Education Administration Program of the Education Administration Department at The University of Texas at Austin.

In an effort to foster relationships and communication among students, faculty, administration, and the profession, we have joined together as a group to exchange ideas, share resources, and develop our academic and professional careers. We welcome all participation.

Student Success Initiative (SSI)

SSI is a grant-funded group that provides training and consultants to community college administrators and trustees. SSI focuses on helping community colleges use cohort-tracking data to increase student success and close equity gaps.

Current Projects:

Achieving the Dream (http://www.achievingthedream.org/)

SSI provides leadership coaches that visit each of 185 participating community colleges with the goal of creating an institutional transformation geared towards student success, informed by institutional cohort-tracking data.

Governance Institute for Student Success (http://www.governance-institute.org/)

This grant provides training for community college board of trustees members in aspects of good governance combined with an evidence-informed student success agenda in policy making. (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-funded national initiative in partnership with Association of Community College Trustees (ACCT))

Board of Trustees Institute

Provides training for community college board of trustees members from Texas colleges who have or are currently participating in Achieving the Dream. Focuses on an evidence-informed student success agenda in policy making. (Houston Endowment and Greater Texas Foundation-funded national initiative)

Gulf Coast Partners Achieving Student Success

Aimed at increasing student completion and success by working with eleven Gulf Coast ISDs and eight community colleges. SSI manages this grant and provides coaching for the Gulf Coast community colleges. (Houston Endowment-funded Gulf Coast region initiative)

Past Projects:

Developmental Education Initiative (http://www.deionline.org/)

Fifteen Achieving the Dream community colleges and five states were chosen to participate in this grant. Participating colleges focused on helping students make progress quickly through developmental education through focusing on student services, curriculum redesign, and technology, among other areas. Scaling successful innovations was emphasized. SSI provided technical assistance providers/consultants for the DEI project. (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-funded national initiative)

California Leadership Alliance for Student Success (http://www.class.utexas.org/)

SSI and the Center for Community College Student Engagement (CCCSE) worked with leaders at twelve California community colleges focusing attention on leadership strategies and policies to increase successful outcomes for California community college students. (The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and The James Irvine Foundation-funded project)

Study of High School Restructuring

The Houston A+ Challenge (HA+C) received funding from the Carnegie Corporation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, supplemented by the Annenberg Foundation and the Brown Foundation, to support a 5-year initiative to work with 24 large high schools in the Houston Independent School District engaged in a student-focused, whole-school change effort. The initiative, called the Study of High School Restructuring, redesigns high schools into small, theme-based academies to produce graduates ready for the demands of the 21st century.

Stupski Project

The Stupski Foundation has partnered with the University of Texas at Austin. Both entities will be working with selected districts across the nation. The purpose of the course/project is to develop a deep understanding of what it takes to significantly increase student academic achievement and close achievement gap. Research of district reform will be a focus along with examples of districts that have attained significant results. The Foundation's organizational assessment instrument will provide a structure for understanding the reform from a district perspective. Research- based core essential elements in the organizational assessment provide a way of thinking about and understanding the changes that must take place for a district to be high performing.

Texas Center for Education Policy

A central purpose of the center is to bring researchers together whose work has direct bearing on policy issues of the day and to in turn bring them together with the larger stakeholder education communities statewide. Internally, we have begun to accomplish this through a series of highly successful policy brown bags as noted herein. Several of us have also been involved in the legislative session, advising policymakers on dropout prevention, student assessment, and teacher quality. Soon we will be posting policy briefs on our legislative-related work and activities.