CUE Co-Director, Alicia C. Dowd
“What can and should colleges and universities do to reduce social and economic inequities?” A research agenda of this scope is no small undertaking. For Dowd, the question of “What can we do?” has led her to explore institutional effectiveness as the locus of change. And the related question, “What should we do?” has led her into the political realm—to understand and advocate for equitable distributions of resources for low-income and underrepresented minority students. And as she looks forward, “what works?” is an important question to achieve economic efficiency, productivity and equity—essential concerns needed to broaden the debate and the potential range of solutions. Seeking to reframe the traditional goal of the public two-year sector from providing equal access and opportunity to achieving equal educational attainment among racial-ethnic and socioeconomic groups, Dowd’s scholarship is steeped in a theory of change which underscores institutional responsibility and cultures of inquiry. Change doesn’t occur by magic or mandate, Dowd argues, “as much as it does from the active engagement of educators in meaning-making processes. Colleges can become more equitable and effective by developing the capacity for organizational learning. Too often," Dowd elaborates, "equity and efficiency are concepts that are held in tension. Institutions become more efficient and effective when practitioners have both actionable information and an orientation towards equity."
For this reason, practitioners are a vital part of Dowd’s mixed-methods research agenda to improve student outcome equity. Research methods in which faculty, administrators, and counselors engage in the institutional data analysis, reflective inquiry, and selfassessment of instructional practices help develop the practical wisdom and professional expertise necessary to recognize and counter discriminatory practices and to address inequities in student outcomes. Such efforts are bolstered and informed in Dowd’s work by the results of statistical and interpretive research.
Dowd’s commitment to equity has been a defining professional passion and was at the heart of her decision to first collaborate with and later to accept the co-directorship of the Center for Urban Education with her colleague Estela Mara Bensimon, who founded the Center in 1999. Since first affiliating with CUE in 2005, Dowd has contributed to a number of high-profile research projects, including the California Benchmarking Project, funded by grants from the Ford and Hewlett Foundations, which builds on CUE’s landmark Equity Scorecard work and more recently the Ford Foundation supported expansion of equity and accountability work with the University of Wisconsin System and the state’s two-year and technical colleges. Dowd is also the lead researcher for the National Science Foundation grant, Pathways to STEM Bachelor’s and Graduate Degrees for Hispanic Students.
“Dr. Dowd’s interdisciplinary approach to addressing inequities in higher education,” offered Bensimon when recommending the appointment, “has made tremendous contributions to our scholarship and to its application at numerous two- and four-year colleges. We look forward to her leadership as CUE grows and expands the reach of our work to help colleges and universities make equity in student outcomes a priority.”
Prior to joining CUE, Dowd led the inter-institutional research team that conducted a national research project on the transfer of low-income and high-achieving community college students to highly selective institutions with funding from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, Lumina Foundation for Education and Nellie Mae Education Foundation. Dr. Dowd has served as the principal investigator of three major national studies of institutional effectiveness, equity, and student outcomes, in addition to the California Benchmarking Project.
During its first 10 years, CUE has fostered research that has helped institutions of higher education across the country become more accountable to students from underserved racial and ethnic communities. Building on its inaugural model (the “Diversity Scorecard”), the center has pioneered a multi-disciplined approach, called the CUE Equity Model, which provides accountability, inquiry and benchmarking tools for assessing progress toward closing the racial achievement gap in college completion. As Dowd looks forward to CUE's next decade, she is eager to translate the research and development from the first ten years into impact. “There is growing acknowledgement that there is no scenario whereby we can achieve “success” as a system, as a state, or nationally—as our president is aspiring—without dramatically improving results with students who have been historically underserved in higher education.”