CEOSE Releases Biannual Report

The Office of University Partnerships is pleased to share the following announcement on behalf of our friends and colleagues in the Committee on Equal Opportunities in Science and Engineering (CEOSE).

Ira Harkavy, Founding Director of the Netter Center for Community Partnerships at the University of Pennsylvania, and a member of the Committee on Equal Opportunities in Science and Engineering (CEOSE) that "advises the National Science Foundation (NSF) on policies and programs to encourage full participation by persons from underrepresented racial and ethnic minority groups (African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans), persons with disabilities, and women within all levels of America's science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) enterprise" is pleased to share with colleagues the CEOSE's most recent biannual report to Congress.

The report recommends that: "NSF should implement a bold new initiative, focused on broadening participation of underrepresented groups in STEM that emphasizes institutional transformation and system change..."

The report explicitly calls, in effect, for an anchor institutions approach, involving higher education-school-community partnerships as a means for broadening participation for all groups across all levels of schooling:

"This initiative might include several multisite, geographically-based, national experiments of foundational and implementation research involving universities, schools, and communities. The ongoing research experiments would be inclusive of all underrepresented populations and would be designed to significantly advance broadening participation across all levels of schooling, resulting in sustainable pathways preK-20+."

Below are the links to the cover letter from the full committee as well as the summary of its recommendations:

• http://www.nettercenter.upenn.edu/sites/netter_internal/files/ CEOSE_Letter_Colleague_Summary.pdf
• http://www.nettercenter.upenn.edu/sites/netter_internal/files/2011-2012_CEOSE_Recommendation_Summary_Final.pdf