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Category: Celebrations

Celebrating Black History Month

The 2024 theme of Black History Month is “African Americans and the Arts,” which explores the key influence African Americans have had on visual and performing arts, literature, fashion, folklore, language, film, music, architecture, culinary, and other forms of cultural expression. African American artists have used art to preserve history and community memory as well as for empowerment. Cultural movements such as the Black Arts, Black Renaissance, hip-hop, and Afrofuturism have been led by people of African descent and set the standard for popular trends around the world. We wanted to share a list of events currently happening during this month that display the expansive history of Black culture, stories, communities, and so much more.

 

Black History Month Smithsonian Events

 

Northwest African American Museum Events

 

National Museum of African American History & Culture Events

 

Seattle Black History Month Events

CCRI’s Commitment to Racial Justice and Equity

In honoring this year’s Black history month, the CCRI community would like to reaffirm our commitment to racial justice and equity. It is important to acknowledge the ways in which history has shaped educational and institutional access as a whole. These spaces have been afflicted by racism and significant, intersectional forms of oppression designed to restrict the right to knowledge for students of color. As such, it is our goal to design more equitable, anti-racist paths for students of all demographics and backgrounds.

 

Through our work, we hope to bring education towards a future of diverse inclusivity. Whether by transfer pathways for our community college students heading to 4-year universities, by outreach to our rural learner communities, by building connections across STEM concepts and equitable, justice-based practices, or other constructs we hope to investigate, we will continually work toward that future. And so, we welcome you to join in our discussions this Black History Month as we celebrate each week of February.

 

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

On 01/15/1929, one of the most prominent philosophers, political leaders, and civil rights activists came into the world, Martin Luther King Junior. And it is on this day that we honor the memory of him and his call to action within his “I Have a Dream” speech. It is through these words that we continue to guide our research and action, towards a more equitable and inclusive world for all people moving through the education system.

 

Whether through our Rural Learner Success research, where we examine the processes of rural learners and how best to support them along their academic journey, or our STEM transfer research, where we continue to support and build connections across universities and community colleges for our future STEM leaders, we continue to move towards the future that King called for. As King describes, “Our goal is to create a beloved community and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives”. 

 

With this phrase in mind, we welcome you to join us in our celebration and progress toward the future King describes. As we take time to honor him, we gathered a list of resources for ourselves and want to share them with you.

The Seattle MLK Coalition

Northwest African American Museum

United Way of King County

University of Washington Women’s Center
The women’s center has recently launched a leadership and equity-based program with more updates to come.

UW Health Sciences MLK Tribute
The UW Health Sciences team has created a space for shared stories and connections regarding anti-racism and activism.

In Recognition and Celebration of Native American Heritage

The month of November is recognized as Native American Heritage Month. In 2009, President Barack Obama signed “The Native American Heritage Day Resolution,” designating the Friday after Thanksgiving as “Native American Heritage Day.” After signing H.J. Res 40 into law he stated, “I encourage every American to join me in observing Native American Heritage Day….It is also important for all of us to understand the rich culture, tradition, and history of Native Americans and their status today, and to appreciate the contributions that First Americans have made and will continue to make to our Nation.”

 

Along with us at CCRI, we invite you to celebrate Indigenous Heritage, the cultures, and the many communities in which these people are deeply rooted. It is our responsibility to recognize the mass genocide and atrocities committed by settler colonialism and it is our commitment to ameliorate the residual effects. Honoring the resilience and strength of Native and Indigenous peoples, we continue to build paths of healing and connection with those who came before us in our research and conduct at CCRI. 

 

The following resources and websites provide excellent information and ways to engage and support our indigenous communities: https://www.nativehope.org/ provides information on methods of support and information regarding the history of indigenous peoples, https://native-land.ca/ provides information regarding the peoples whose lands we occupy and the communities affected by one another, and the UW Office of Tribal Relations and UW Native Life provide on-campus sources for support, protection, and embracing of our Indigenous and Native students, staff, and community members at UW.

 

The University of Washington acknowledges the Coast Salish peoples of this land, the land which touches the shared waters of all tribes and bands within the Suquamish, Tulalip and Muckleshoot nations. Whose land are you on?

Celebrating First Generation Students Day

We invite you to join us in celebrating National First-Generation Day. It is a call to celebrate students, faculty and staff who are the first in their family to attend college. November 8 was identified as the date for the annual National First-Generation College Celebration to honor the anniversary of the signing of the Higher Education Act of 1965.

First-generation students consist of a diverse group of leaders. Moving through unique challenges and adversities, these students are paving the way for their families and the greater communities they come from. We also want to acknowledge the first-gen staff and faculty for all of their incredible work and dedication to higher education, including our own CCRI team members Lia Wetzstein, Mayra Nunez Martinez, and Leandra Cate.

The University of Washington, across all three campuses, has available an incredible amount of resources for our First gen students. For more information, you can learn more about these resources HERE

NTSW: Cultures of Collaboration- Making Transfer Happen

Transfer, whilst an individual’s choice, does not come easy. There are many considerations when approaching the decision to move from one locale of education to another. Just as it is difficult for students, institutions must also work through the difficulties of losing certain students or moving them through different phases of their collegiate careers. At CCRI, we recognize these points as critical and unique experiences of transfer. As such, we centered a “Culture of Collaboration” as the backbone of the CCRI mission for transfer partnerships.

 

In this culture, we are dedicated to four guiding principles that allow the success of the program to continue well beyond what we can hope for. These principles are as follows: student-centered focus, win-win perspective, equal commitment to the partnership, and web of connections. These principles have allowed countless students to go through the transfer process feeling more confident and supported whilst also supporting the means of connecting institutions to one another in an equity and student-forward framework.

 

You can learn more about this dynamic framework HERE.

 

AAAS 2020

Transfer, as a critical component of student life and educational function, deserves increasing recognition and collaborative effort put forth, and we have extended ourselves above and beyond to do just that. Many of our institutions continually fulfill those connections and build up those pathways for our students to succeed. As such, in honor of National Transfer Student Week, we want to recognize our amazing members of the institutions working to continue to support and build these pathways just as much as it is vital to recognize the incredible students who have directed our research into this phenomenon.

NTSW: STEM Transfer Partnership Engineering Pathway Access Increase

ChemE Capstone project

Team members Matthew Ford, Aleya Dhanji, Kira Glynn King, Jie Sheng, Skyler Roth, and Emese Hadnagy have been looking into increasing and consistently expanding outreach to minority serving 2-year and 4-year institutions to promote engineering pathways for increasing students’ upward mobility. Through countless trials and tribulations, this incredible group of individuals focused on identifying shared data needs around student success barriers, established inter-institutional data sharing protocols, and developed a framework to significantly increase, diversify, and enhanced existing outreach, recruitment and academic advising practices in support of these students.

Such work is extensively crucial in promoting equity-based educational protocols for transfer students moving through STEM pathways. Many of these students face disproportionate experiences of adversity and barriers to their success as minority students, let alone being transfer students. As such, the team’s development and utilization of a new, holistic data model for transfer pathways has been extensively successful in expanding Moser’s Transfer Student Capital model, leading to potential expansive increases in student accessibility of support during their transfer STEM experiences and prospective, successful outcomes. Such work lends a promising outlook for the future of transfer partnerships along the road, hosting great impact for student support and STEM engagement.

You can find the full journal article HERE

The UW’s Community College Research Initiatives receives $449,535 grant to increase rural educational equity

The University of Washington’s Community College Research Initiatives announced that it received a $449,535 grant from Ascendium Education Group for research to increase rural learner success. 

Community College Research Initiatives (CCRI) conducts research to facilitate the advancement of equity in higher education. Ascendium invests in research that helps to build a body of evidence about how to ensure rural learners from low-income backgrounds can achieve their postsecondary education and career goals. Ascendium expects this investment in CCRI’s research will catalyze action affecting policies and practices grounded in high-quality evidence and research. 

The CCRI project will address mentorship program gaps through a multisite, three-stage study of mentorship programs at public rural community colleges across the United States. Drawing upon institutional websites, in-depth interviews and student survey responses, this project will benefit both scholars and practitioners by producing a database of mentoring strategies at rural community colleges. 

“We at CCRI are excited for the opportunity to learn how rural two-year institutions across the country are supporting students from low-income backgrounds with mentorship programs,” shared CCRI director, Lia Wetzstein, Ph.D. The CCRI data will advance the understanding of how the evidence-based solution of mentoring is being implemented at rural colleges while gauging the student experience with a primary focus on students from low-income backgrounds and racially minoritized students. 

“We are grateful to Ascendium Education Group for their support,” Wetzstein continued. Ascendium is interested in generating evidence about practices and programs that increase the completion of high-quality postsecondary education and training and successful transition to high-quality jobs. Through the CCRI analysis of the nationwide landscape of rural community college mentorship and mentorship experiences, this project will produce models of mentorship to specifically address the rural community college context and rural students’ experience. 

Last year CCRI was awarded a $1.2 million grant from Ascendium to work toward equity in STEM education for low-income learners across Washington state. CCRI, a program within Undergraduate Academic Affairs at the UW, is an influential contributor in community college and transfer partnership research identifying strategies that help students transfer to four-year institutions and complete their bachelor’s degrees. To learn more about CCRI, visit https://www.washington.edu/ccri/.

Ascendium Education Group is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization committed to helping people reach the education and career goals that matter to them. Ascendium invests in initiatives designed to increase the number of students from low-income backgrounds who complete postsecondary degrees, certificates and workforce training programs, with an emphasis on first-generation students, incarcerated adults, rural community members, students of color and veterans. Ascendium’s work identifies, validates and expands best practices to promote large-scale change at the institutional, system and state levels, with the intention of elevating opportunity for all. For more information, visit https://www.ascendiumphilanthropy.org. 

For more information or to get involved, contact CCRI, ccri@uw.edu. 

CCRI welcomes student assistant Krista Roekelle Castro Orejudos

Krista is a current sophomore at the University of Washington who is majoring in English: Creative Writing and minoring in Digital Textual Studies. She is also the current student assistant for CCRI and shared that, 

when looking through CCRI’s mission statement and vision, I felt compelled to work for an organization that is dedicated to serving underserved students in community college and to helping them achieve their higher education objectives. I felt like their goals align with mine, and I wanted to do my best as their student assistant to assist them in any way possible. 

She finds that supporting CCRI’s outreach, to help build its social media presence on Twitter and LinkedIn is a way to actualize her values and share this organization’s message. 

When asked about her experience so far with CCRI,

Krista shared that working with CCRI has allowed her to further explore her passion for creative design. She is responsible for our online posts as well as our STEM Transfer Partnership fall convening poster. When she is not designing, she contributes to keeping information up to date on the website. 

Moreover, working with CCRI has given Krista her first opportunity to work remotely. She has learned how to navigate personal strengths and weaknesses when it comes to remote working. She started her position in August of this year and believes she has grown confident in her interpersonal communication skills and her ability to design on a deadline.