About

The Center for Urban Education at Cleveland State University (CSU) was founded in 2010. It initially served as the research and development arm of the Campus International School (CIS), an innovative public school in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD) that was also established in 2010 in partnership with CSU. In the years since its inception, in addition to its continued collaboration with CIS, the Center has grown to include research and development collaborations with other schools, districts, institutions of higher education, and nonprofit organizations in Greater Cleveland, Ohio, and beyond. 

The Center engages in collaborative evaluation research with partners internal and external to CSU; conducts original research related to urban education in conjunction with affiliates at CSU and other research institutions; and facilitates educational programs, professional development, and technical assistance for the CSU and outside communities. The Center is a founding member of the Cleveland Alliance for Education Research, a research-practice partnership among CSU, CMSD, and the American Institutes for Research (AIR), and represents CSU as a partner institution in the Ohio Education Research Center (OERC).

The Center is a national leader in education research. It has generated over seven million dollars in grant funding to CSU from federal (e.g., Institute of Education Sciences, National Endowment for the Arts, National Institute of Justice), state, and foundation (e.g., Hewlett Foundation, Spencer Foundation, William T. Grant Foundation) sources. The Center is the only Ohio institution to have ever received a Research-Practice Partnership grant from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) of the U.S. Department of Education, and it is the recipient of two of only seven IES grants of any type awarded to Ohio institutions in the past decade. It is also one of only two Ohio institutions of higher education to be awarded an Education Innovation and Research grant from the U.S. Department of Education since that program's inception in 2017.   

The Center has been a training site for a number of talented researchers, many of whom have gone on to tenure-track positions at research universities. 

The Center is located on CSU campus in Julka Hall rooms 379, 390, and 394.