New Horizons for Learning: Transforming Education

University of Washington's Educational Partnerships Reach Out

to Communities Statewide and Internationally

An NHFL Interview with Louis Fox

According to University of Washington's President Richard McCormick: "Universities such as the University of Washington must establish a social compact with the society they serve. The public research university is uniquely positioned to help tackle problems facing society today whether it is crime, poverty, environmental degradation or the health of our K-12 educational system. Post-secondary education is no longer the province of the "elite" but is required for all those who want a part of the good life in this country. This means that K-12 and higher education are in this together."

"The UW has chosen to focus its efforts on areas where it can match distinctive university expertise to important K-12 and community college needs, where the UW's existing academic strengths permit us to make a difference and where its own faculty and students can benefit from collaboration with the schools."
The headquarters for many of these new projects is the Office of Educational Partnerships, led by Vice Provost Louis Fox. Five years ago, he embarked on a project to explore the possible relationships between the University of Washington and other educational institutions in the state (community colleges, public baccalaureates, the K-12 community). The meetings turned from information sharing to planning, and two years ago UW President Richard McCormick and Provost Lee Huntsman asked Fox to create an office to support university partnerships. Fox's office soon became an incubator of a range of educational partnership which now extend beyond the education community to the business community, governmental agencies, and community based organizations Some partnership are formed across University of Washington departments and others are regional, statewide, national, and international in their scope.
New Horizons for Learning asked Fox to respond to a set of questions about the work of his office and to provide examples of the work that grow out of engagements with the K-12 community.
How do you define the purpose of your work?
Our mission is to foster sustainable partnerships with the necessary infrastructure -- human, technological, conceptual, and material -- ensuring broader access to educational opportunities and creating innovative new forms of education and engagement. We strive to form partnerships that create collective approaches to systemic change in critical areas of educational need.
In the formation of these partnerships we look for the intersections between the strengths, aspirations, and interests of diverse institutions and individuals. One of the central purposes of our work is to find those points of intersection and shape and reshape a course of action that uses the strengths, engages the broadest set of interests, and fulfills the aspirations of those involved.
Our experience is that the development of these partnerships can be thought of as having three stages. In the first stage, people are brought together around a common need. Those identifying the need engage in formal and informal research in order to develop a shared understanding of the context, history, and character of the issue to be addressed. A dialogue begins to identify forms of action that might fill this need.
In the next stage, programmatic approaches to addressing the area of need take shape. In the best partnerships there is a continual exchange between action and reflection that results in an evolving structure designed to respond to opportunities and need.
In the third stage, an infrastructure is built to sustain the work of these partnerships. The development of this infrastructure can be thought of as establishing a set of necessary conditions for partnership activity to flourish. Critical aspects of this infrastructure include the development of human, technological, conceptual, and material resources. While still marked by experimentation, responsiveness, and flexibility, these partnership have defined a scope of work and are carrying it out.
In some cases, the Office of Educational Partnerships helps identify a set of needs, forms a partnership and identifies a set of actions. In other cases, we work with others to carry a set of initial ideas through to the completion of a project. In many cases, partnerships moving into the third stage of their development go on to be housed elsewhere in the university or the community. In this sense, we can be seen as an incubator of partnerships that go on to be institutionalized elsewhere.
What are some of the projects your office has developed form initiating ideas to full implementation?
Technology Initiatives focused on increasing fluency in information technology for all students and enhancing education through the use of technology. The initiatives include the University's Center for Teaching, Learning and Technology, which provides assistance, workshops, consulting, and an on-line suite of tools for UW faculty and instructors; the Smart Tools Academy, under the talented direction of Brian Chee, which was a series of four-day residential immersion experiences for over 2000 principals and superintendents in Washington State, designed to give these school leaders the tools to infuse technology into schools and districts in meaningful ways that support and improve student learning and achievement; other technology initiatives, including the UWired Students Technology Corps, who are now working in 40 Seattle Public Schools and the UWired Tech Swat Teams, working to network and install computer labs, with quality equipment donated by Washington businesses,
A K-12 Institute for Science, Math, and Technology Education, headed by Drs. Dana Riley-Black and Ethan Allen, focused on the mastery of inquiry-based science and math for all children. The John Stanford International School led by principal Karen Kodama. The mission of the school is to offer K-5 students an education shaped in all its dimensions by an international point of view and a strong emphasis on technology. Nearly fifty faculty, through the University's International Faculty Council, are working in partnership with the faculty of the Stanford School in all disciplines and at all grade levels. Through partnership with the University, the school is connected to the super-fast Internet2, making it the first elementary school in the nation to be attached to the next-generation Internet, and a first partner school of its kind working with a research University to experiment with and develop new K-12 applications for broad-band technology. The university is also helping the school to develop international partner schools.
What projects are you working on that are in their incubation stage?
The Puget Sound Partnership for Arts Education, directed by Christine Goodheart (formerly education director for the Lincoln Center Institute) and focused on developing comprehensive, sustainable arts education for all students both in and out of school. (Click here to go to an article by Louis Fox and Christine Goodheart).
Rural Education and Technology Centers. Three centers are now in existence, in Forks, Toppenish, and Omak, Washington, with others planned in the future. The centers work to extend academic programs and academic and technical expertise to educationally isolated or under-served rural communities. The educational, economic, social, and cultural aspirations of each of these communities have shaped the unique features of the centers.
Seattle Digital Divide Project. The revolution in computers and telecommunications networks and the remarkable rate of this change are creating new jobs, causing an explosion in entrepreneurship and ease of access to global markets, providing access to public goods like education and health care, and fostering new modes of community building. All of these things – and many more – are the dividends of this revolution in information technology. Yet the fruits of the Information Age are out of reach for many in our communities. This gap, the "digital divide," threatens to cut off populations (and regions) from higher education, good jobs, and the chance to participate in the affairs of the broader society. For some citizens, technology brings the promise of inclusion, opportunity and wealth; for others, greater isolation and increased poverty. The Seattle Digital Divide Project brings together all the important community stakeholders to do the necessary and foundational research on the context and extent of the digital divide in our city, and then will align all of the necessary resources – human, technological, conceptual, and material – to address this problem in a systemic, sustainable, and systematic way.
Can you give us some examples of projects that are now housed elsewhere that you have helped to initiate?
Leadership Initiatives focused on developing excellence in the leadership of public schools. These initiatives include the Institute for K-12 Leadership directed by Dr. Rudy Crew, former chancellor of the New York City Schools. The Leadership Institute is now housed in the College of Education.
A Center for Mind, Brain and Learning, now called the Talaris Institute, which researches how the human brain acquires, encodes, and processes information. The Center is directed by Dr. John Medina, a molecular biologist. One of the purposes of this center is to bridge the gap between neuroscientists and educators, so that school curriculum and teaching methods reflect the latest and best knowledge about how minds work and children learn. Two new undergraduate degree programs in early childhood education are planned: Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience Education, K-12; and a Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience Education, Birth to Six.
In both of these cases our work was, in the main, to draw attention to the work and ideas of talented individuals, like Rudy Crew and John Medina, and help to create a deep and broad dialogue, both on- and off-campus, around the compelling ideas and plans that each of these remarkable leaders have.
What are the key ideas that underlie such a diverse set of projects?
In the course of our work, we often refer to the notion of a "learning ecology." This refers to our fundamental belief that education is an ecological system and that the health of one part of the educational system depends on the health of all the parts. We view education as a continuum of experience throughout life and one of the central activities shaping society.
We also believe that a research university has a unique set of capacities and competencies to contribute to the development of a learning ecology. Among these capacities are a commitment and ability to conduct and disseminate research – to create and apply new knowledge in areas of important human need and interest, across an broad array disciplines; facilities and technologies designed to support education; expertise in teaching; commitment to service on the part of all faculty, students, and staff; and increasingly well-articulated relationships with other educational institutions.
There is a growing awareness in society that some of our most pressing problems can only be addressed through the creation of sustainable partnerships. Complex issues require a broad set of stakeholders working together to address problems that can not be solved by any one institution working alone. Educational institutions in a democratic society are expressions the communities in which they reside. Strengthening these institutions takes collaborative work among all sectors of the community. By engaging in these partnerships, the University of Washington is demonstrating that we take our role as a responsible community member seriously.
What are some of the essential attributes of effective partnerships?
To be effective, these partnerships must strive to:

Align individual aspirations with community aspirations and with the unique capacities of the partners;

Offer solutions to real problems and deliver real products to their constituencies;

Actively pursue equity, justice, and reciprocity;

Maintain a condition of openness and humility, allowing members of a partnership to learn from one another and to recognize one another's unique contributions; and

Develop intelligence about what solutions to problems are transferable from one context to another.

How is this work connected to the education of undergraduate and graduate students?
Students, faculty and staff are the greatest strength of any university. The University of Washington has been engaged in a long term effort to transform undergraduate and graduate education by providing opportunities to do real world work and research. The partnership efforts described above provide myriad opportunities for students to share what they know and deepen their learning in a variety of contexts. For example, in the Smart Tools Academy, students coach school leaders as they develop technology skills. The Pipeline Project, which originated in the Office of Educational Partnerships and is now housed in the Office of Undergraduate Education, places undergraduate students in a variety of community settings. They are currently developing an "arts pipeline" to train and place students with arts specialists and teaching artists.
How are the University of Washington faculty involved? How do they benefit?
In many of our partnership efforts, UW faculty are key creators of and contributors to the partnership. For example, the diverse projects that comprise the K-12 Institute for Math, Science and Technology were almost all created by University of Washington professors and then linked together across the disciplines and then with the schools.
In a recent article, president Richard McCormick, focusing on K-12 partnerships, noted that "university faculty who work with good K-12 teachers gain a whole new perspective on the art of teaching—and tremendous respect and admiration for what these teachers do under often difficult circumstances. Our faculty also gain new insight into the students who will soon be in their own classrooms, particularly valuable as the demographic profile of these students is changing. But the big reward, of course, is the feeling at all levels that the university is involved in society's important work. The public schools have long been a cornerstone of our democracy. If they are to keep our children and our nation abreast of a changing and evolving world, schools must also evolve and change. Research universities have a role to play in this process."
What attributes do you hope will characterize your work?
When I think of our work, I hope that we are entrepreneurial, flexible, responsive, willing to take risks. Most importantly, this is work that brings people and institutions together to do those things that are most meaningful, even urgent, within a community. It is the work and the communities that should be visible and our efforts should be catalytic and, ultimately, invisible.

About Louis Fox:

Louis Fox is the Vice Provost for Educational Partnerships at the University of Washington. He leads the UW's efforts to meet the educational needs of the state and the region, through collaboration with K-12 school districts, community colleges, public and private baccalaureate institutions, business, industry, and nonprofit organizations. He is also responsible for national and international partnerships. Fox has served the UW in many other roles, including Special Assistant to the President and Associate Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education. His charges include developing programs and strategies that use information technology to support teaching and learning on campus, developing applications of information technology to provide educational services throughout the state, and extending these programs and services nationally and internationally. He can be reached via email at lfox@u.washington.edu.

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