In October 2024, scholars, practitioners, institutional leaders, and community partners converged in Minneapolis for the 29th annual conference of the Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities (CUMU). A diverse and vibrant metropolitan area with a long history of civic innovation, collaboration across sectors, and community engagement, the Minneapolis-St. Paul area delivered a fitting context for the meeting. The Twin Cities region, like most urban settings, is grappling with important issues about racial equity, economic disparity, public safety, and other issues relevant to CUMU’s mission and the work of urban and metropolitan universities across the nation.

Since the recent expansion of higher education in prison (HEP) programs, correctional systems and universities have been working to optimize these programs to yield maximum impact. Collaborating with individuals with lived experience of incarceration and participation in higher education could provide valuable insights toward improving these programs. This paper reports on a community advisory board (CAB) of formerly incarcerated people, which set out to share ideas on improving higher education in prison based on their personal and shared experiences. These experiences and suggestions were grouped into themes outlined in this paper and accompanied by quotes from CAB members. Members described non-existent or negative relationships with schooling before incarceration. This lack of conversation, culture, or infrastructure for education continued into incarceration, though they recognized that school might have provided better opportunities for students and their families upon release. The board suggested that introducing a trusted, formerly incarcerated peer could help combat negative experiences with school, transition students into learning, and help them build the momentum to be self-sustaining in HEP. The novel insights generated by this CAB reflect the value of integrating lived experience in decision-making regarding HEP programs.

The challenge: This paper examines the state of knowledge and evaluation in prison higher education. Little is known about its efforts, outcomes, and impact or about the students enrolled in such efforts. Potential consequences: Incarcerated college students are a disenfranchised population with restricted autonomy. Without understanding prison higher education efforts and outcomes, colleges and universities run the risk of further marginalizing this group of students. Description/analysis/methods: Using the first comprehensive national survey of prison higher education programs, we assess whether and how data are collected on incarcerated college students and whether these data are used for student tracking and/or outcomes evaluation. We then elucidate a variety of challenges that help explain the current lack of quality data. Rationale/reflection/replication: We find that current data collection among prison higher education programs is extremely limited; most programs are unable to provide basic information about their students, instructors, or key student success metrics such as persistence and completion. We conclude with recommendations for program administrators, colleges and universities, and policymakers involved in the work of prison higher education, equity, and access to higher education.

Across the country, many states are expanding their support for and implementation of Dual Enrollment programs, seeing them as opportunities to encourage students to go on to college - particularly those students who historically might have had less opportunity and/or encouragement to do so. As these programs expand, so too does the need for professional development for the educators who teach this widening and increasingly diverse student population. As documented in several studies, educator professional development is critical to Dual Enrollment success; however, research has shown that training is not always timely, consistent, or robust. To address this challenge, our institutions have found value in leveraging Centers for Teaching and Learning (CTLs) to help fill this professional development gap. In this manuscript we share examples of how CTLs at our respective institutions have supported the training of Dual Enrollment instructors in order to assure successful and inclusive teaching and learning courses.

The CUMU conference theme refers to the human aspects of resilience both at the individual and the collective level, yet it also moves beyond to include more abstract associations of resilience.

Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) are often characterized as Hispanic enrolling (rather than serving) that practice deficit-based systems that continue to marginalize Hispanics and other underrepresented students, especially in STEM fields. Extant research on HSIs stresses the importance of investigations into the value of grassroots advocacy groups as external influencers of institutional servingness through deeper engagement with the Hispanic community. Using a novel Family-Centered Theory of Change (FCTC) that addresses diversity, equity, and inclusion, we integrated concepts of intersectionality and servingness into a Family Integrated Education Serving and Transforming Academia (FIESTA) framework. We investigated the potential transformational impact of FIESTA on students, families, faculty, and administrators at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV), an institution with over 90 % Hispanic population. Preliminary findings shed light on how the FIESTA framework can help reshape an HSI’s identity from “Hispanic enrolling” to a true Hispanic-Serving Institution through Family-Centered Pedagogy. The Family-Centered Pedagogy was defined as the enrichment of the learning experience in which students complement their own instruction by drawing from the experience and ancestral knowledge of their families, supported by the FCTC developed by AVE Frontera, our community partner.​

This paper proposes a framework to create a small business and entrepreneurship accelerator designed based on prior work in evolving traditional place-based pedagogy to a more critical pedagogy of place. The proposal is crafted to utilize the built-in resources of a university as the core components in providing necessary resources for success including expert-level technical assistance and a safe, empowering third space for collaboration. The included case is focused on a suburban/urban campus located near several historically underserved geographies. This is important as the proposed small business and entrepreneurship accelerator will have a special focus on educating and guiding local populations – including high school students – in growing their businesses. The proposal in this paper brings together university resources, local community elements, small business owners, social entrepreneurs, and high school students by activating a critical pedagogy of place rooted in improving economic and social issues.

Context: In Summer, 2020, our team created virtual community-engaged learning (VCEL) modules, in response to the need to move classes to online and hybrid delivery styles during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. These modules addressed engaged learning concepts, and were designed with faculty, students, and community partner organizations in mind. Challenge: This paper explores the challenges of creating and beta testing these VCEL modules, as well as the creative methods taken to produce high-quality content that would continue to serve students in the wake of the pandemic. Product: what emerged from this project is a unique set of self-contained learning modules in Canvas Commons that include built-in assessments, allowing students to demonstrate learning, and giving faculty members the ability to review engaged-learning theory and strategies, and to seamlessly integrate the virtual content into their online classes. Findings: Our beta test findings indicate that students generally had a positive experience with the content, and spent approximately two hours, on average, engaging with the material. In this reflective analysis of our process, we offer an explanation of the replicable process of creating VCEL modules and a description of the outcomes associated with the production and testing of the content therein.

Community impacts of service-learning have gone largely unexamined by researchers, partly because of the absence of a well-established feedback tool. This study is a step toward filling this research gap by developing and validating the Community Impact Feedback Questionnaire (CIFQ) as a means for collecting feedback from partner organization representatives (PORs) on the impacts of particular service-learning projects on community partner organizations (CPOs) and, where applicable, end-beneficiaries. The CIFQ contains items about three categories of impact on CPOs, corresponding to a conceptual model developed by Snell & Lau (2022). These are: a) achieving project goals to further the CPO’s mission; b) augmenting resources of the CPO; and c) acquiring knowledge, insights, ideas, and techniques.There are also items on impacts for end-beneficiaries, overall impact evaluations, and future engagement. The CIFQ was validated with the Delphi method by inviting 16 practitioner panelists, mainly from CPOs, with prior involvement in service-learning. Three Delphi survey rounds helped refine the CIFQ as a tool for capturing the community impacts on CPOs and end beneficiaries arising from service-learning. Possible reasons for controversy and non-retention are discussed.