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With a designated location and the appointment of its founding director, the Center for Educational Outreach and Academic Success is beginning its work.
An outcome of the Diversity Blueprints Task Force report of 2007, the center is charged with promoting and coordinating educational and community outreach and engagement activities, and strengthening partnerships between U-M and K-12 school systems and communities in the state.
“Following passage of Proposal 2, I asked the entire University community to work together to develop ways to maintain and expand diversity on campus,” says President Mary Sue Coleman. “We know from our peer institutions that community outreach and K-12 pipeline programs are paramount in states where affirmative action in college admissions is no longer an option. The center is a uniquely Michigan approach to this challenge and will strengthen our partnerships with a broad range of constituents.”
In its report, the Blueprints Task Force called for the University to create a center to serve as a coordinating hub to move that work forward.
“The University of Michigan is a staunchly decentralized environment, and our strength lies in this environment,” says Lester Monts, senior vice provost for academic affairs, senior counselor to the president, and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Music. “The new center will help move these important efforts forward by providing a central repository and coordinating base for this work. Under the direction of Dr. William Collins, it will facilitate existing activities and help to develop new ones, as well.”
Collins took the reins as founding director May 1, leaving his post as director of the Comprehensive Studies Program (CSP).
He completed his undergraduate and graduate work at U-M, culminating in a doctorate in psychology. He held positions at the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point and Cornell University, before assuming directorship of CSP in 1992. He also has served as an adjunct associate professor of psychology.
The center is essential for encouraging and developing the talents of all the students within the State of Michigan, Collins says.
“We will work on additional strategies to help Michigan youth understand their hopes and aspirations can be realized through higher education. We want them to envision themselves as college students, and to help Michigan parents guide their children toward this possibility,” Collins says.
The center will work with school districts and leaders, community agencies, parents, and students statewide to accomplish its goals, which include:
• Create effective, comprehensive long-term partnerships with underserved schools to improve opportunities;
• Facilitate and administer centralized outreach programs that enhance and support the efforts of schools and colleges;
• Cultivate and support existing outreach efforts at U-M, and coordinate constructive collaborations; and
• Continue to identify, enroll and recruit a diverse student body.
The center will build on an established history of school- and community-based partnerships. One example is its work with the Southfield Public Schools.
“There has been a longtime disconnect between K-12 and higher education,” says Southfield Superintendent Wanda Cook-Robinson. “We have been collaborating intensely with U-M to bridge that gap. As a result, we have made changes in our curriculum, and several of our students have attended summer science and math camps, theatre performances and literary discussions on campus.”
A key task of the founding director will be to develop a visionary roadmap for the new center. Collins is beginning to draw his earliest sketches of that map and to shape the center’s first steps.
During the course of the summer, he will assemble the center’s staff, launch its Web site and move into its new home at 1327 Geddes.
“We’ll be running full steam ahead by the first of September,” he says.
