Call for Proposals: The Impact of Budget Cuts on Underrepresented Students in the CSU System
The Civil Rights Project / Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA, a national research center on issues of civil rights and equal opportunity in American society, has been actively researching issues of college access since it was founded at Harvard University 14 years ago, producing five books and many reports on college access issues. We have had considerable success in generating high quality interdisciplinary research that becomes part of public discussion. In response to a request from the California State University Faculty Association we have agreed to convene a panel of national experts and commission new independent research on issues of access and opportunity at the CSU’s, and the impact of the financial cutbacks growing out of the national and state financial crises and budget decisions. We recognize that the CSU system is absolutely critical for training the coming generations of college graduates in our state and plays a role of considerable national importance in shaping the diversity of the nation’s college graduates. We believe that although there has been a great deal of writing about the role of elite universities and community colleges on Underrepresented Minority students, there has bee too little on the crucial role of relatively open BA granting public institutions.
This work will be led by CRP Co-directors Patricia Gándara and Gary Orfield, professors of education at UCLA. All commissioned work will be intensely discussed in an academic roundtable and peer reviewed before publication. Our goal is to produce the best possible scholarly assessments of these critical issues with a limited budget and a tight time frame. We will provide editorial support in revising the papers and in helping present the findings in ways that will be accessible to a broad public and policy makers. Though we plan to publish working papers from successful studies, authors will retain rights to publish later more technical versions in academic journals or books.
We request interested scholars to submit proposals not to exceed five pages on any of the topics listed below, or others that they believe could contribute to analyses of the impact of budget cuts, and attendant policy shifts, as they affect underrepresented students and their communities in the California State University System. Proposals will be due by April 20. Draft papers will be due by July 1 and will be discussed in an academic roundtable at UCLA on July 9. Authors will have until August 25th to revise their papers in light of suggestions and questions coming out of the roundtable and peer review.
For further guidelines and suggested topics, please view the attached Call for Proposals.
