Our center was founded on an abiding belief that admission and enrollment professionals are deeply dedicated educators. In your roles, you shape the educational and cultural environments of our campuses. You seek to understand the individuals who apply, and then you bring them together as a collective who learn from one another, just as they do from your faculty members.

To be at your best, you must have a deep understanding of school and society, social movements, and inherent biases that are barriers to progress. Today we live in a nation divided by class, opportunity and political tribalism. In the midst of it all, our students build their identities on factors both within and beyond their control.

• What can we learn about all this?
• How can we best understand our applicants in light of these factors?
• How should it impact the way we read applications and build campus communities?
• And finally, how can we avoid biases that may contribute to divisions and a lack of inclusion?

It is time for us to have this conversation. Please join us January 27-29, 2019 here in Los Angeles at Admissions, Race and Identity to explore these most important and vexing issues of our day. We will learn from experts, devise ways to improve our policies and practices, and we will understand each other a little better as a result.

Please visit our website to register and for details. I’ll see you in January!

All the best,

Jerome Lucido

Professor of Practice and Executive Director

Center for Enrollment Research, Policy and Practice

Associate Dean for Strategic Enrollment Services

USC Rossier School of Education

RSVP

RSVP

Dear USC Rossier Faculty, Staff and Students,

We would like to remind you that there is still time to RSVP for the Book Club. We will be reading and discussing There There, by Tommy Orange.

Our school-wide discussion will take place in the Radisson Ballroom on Wednesday, Nov. 7, 2018, from noon until 2 pm. Lunch will be provided, so please RSVP by Oct. 12.

Books can be picked up in WPH 1100 10 am–noon or 2 pm–4 pm, until Wednesday, October 3^rd. After then, books may be picked up in WPH 1102, until Fri., Oct. 12th. Please note that your acceptance of the book indicates your commitment to read it and participate in our discussion!

We also welcome remote participants to take part in the discussion. Please provide a mailing address if you will need the book shipped to you. A link to the virtual classroom will be provided closer to the date of the Book Club.

Part of the Rossier Way

We launched our book club last spring as part of a new initiative, “The Rossier Way,” which is designed to cultivate a culture of caring and support among faculty, staff and students. I am hosting the book clubs in partnership with Darline Robles, our Associate Dean of Equity and Inclusion.

Our goal is to select a work of fiction that helps us explore themes relevant to our mission to advance educational equity. This book was among the many thoughtful suggestions submitted by faculty and staff at our August Kick-Off.

There There is, according to its publisher, Knopf Doubleday, “a relentlessly paced multigenerational story about violence and recovery, memory and identity, and the beauty and despair woven into the history of a nation and its people. It tells the story of twelve characters, each of whom have private reasons for traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow.”

Tommy Orange is a recent graduate from the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. He is a 2014 MacDowell Fellow, and a 2016 Writing by Writers Fellow. He is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. He was born and raised in Oakland, Calif., and currently lives in Angels Camp, Calif.

We look forward to a lively discussion in November.

Conference schedule may be viewed at https://cresstcon.org/schedule-page/

Conference Overview:

Please join us for CRESSTCON’18, October 1-2 at UCLA’s Luskin Center for a conference unlike any other.  This year’s conference theme is Learning Together: Building Partnerships to Accelerate Excellence and Equity. CRESSTCON unites educators, researchers, and developers from around the world with a common vision of sharing our best practices and improving the academic outcomes of every student.

At CRESSTCON’18 you will engage with an unparalleled group of leaders in the fields of educational technology, policy, and economics and participate in discussions on the latest global trends and opportunities in education. Our keynote speakers this year are Bror Saxberg, Vice President, Learning Science at Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) and Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco, the Wasserman Dean, UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies. Our renowned speakers will share their experiences of overcoming roadblocks, building bridges, and working with other practitioners to accelerate excellence and equity. Please see our schedule of events for more details.

Register today — use the promo code, cress18, to get $50 off the registration rate.