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CRDEUL
340 Appleby Hall
128 Pleasant St. SE
Minneapolis MN 55455 USA
Tel: (612) 625-6411
Fax: (612) 625-0709
TTY: (612) 626-1014

E-mail: crdeul@umn.edu



CRDEUL Home

This summer brought a sustained, Midwestern-style whirlwind of activities to the Center, including the addition of a new staff member (Robert Copeland, CRDEUL program associate), work on new publications, preparation for an upcoming regional conference, and an office move to an expanded location in Appleby Hall. Of these projects, our office move down the hallway was by far the most physically demanding task for a bunch of cerebral researchers! We gained an additional room of storage space, a much-needed workroom area, extra space for staff and visitor desks, extra windows providing an excellent view of scenic downtown Minneapolis and the famous Mississippi River , and more wall space for the expansion of the Center's popular, in-house Resource Holdings. This move was, of course, filled with plenty of boxes, tape, paper, dust, and the usual "slow-and-go" movement associated with changing locations. On the other side of this process in early September, however, we finally settled in and began unpacking. We celebrated by hosting an open house on Tuesday, September 28, 2004, which included a ribbon-cutting ceremony, fabulous door prizes, thought-provoking contests, and guided tours.

This fall is moving along quickly now that the dust has settled. The biggest public event we will host this year is the Metropolitan Higher Education Consortium's regional conference, "Building Bridges for Access and Success from High School to College: Meeting the Needs of Twin Cities Underserved Students." The event will be held Saturday, January 15, 2005, at the Continuing Education and Conference Center on the St. Paul Campus of the University of Minnesota . We anticipate up to 250 attendees for this event, including postsecondary educators, secondary school teachers and staff, and community organizations interested in supporting college transitions. This is a citywide developmental education initiative, which is an important step in building ongoing collaborations across the Twin Cities to support the K-16 continuum. Kwabena Siaka, a Ph.D. student in the educational policy and administration program, is the graduate research assistant on the project. More information and registration is available at [actual URL].

Our other activities include hosting monthly local forums, providing professional development opportunities, adding to our in-house resource center, and producing educational publications about access and higher education.

Publications continue to be one of the most popular outreach components of the Center. In October we published CRDEUL's sixth monograph, Best Practices for Access and Retention in Higher Education , edited by Irene Duranczyk (a CRDEUL faculty advisory board member), Jeanne Higbee (CRDEUL's senior faculty advisor for outreach), and myself. CRDEUL publications are distributed regionally and nationally at conferences and are available free on our Web site [URL].

Faculty and staff in General College are writing chapters for a book on the General College educational model, Integrating Intellectual Growth and Student Development: The General College Model . Chapter topics include, focusing on the history of GC, promoting multiculturalism in developmental education courses, embedding skill development in content courses, facilitating development through student support services, and assessing outcomes. Co-editors of this project are Jeanne Higbee, Dana Lundell, and David Arendale (CRDEUL's faculty advisor for outreach). The book will be published in the spring of 2005. It will be disseminated widely to provide updated and comprehensive information about the unique, integrated model that is the nationally recognized General College program.

As we expanded the new CRDEUL resource center in September, Mr. Richard
O'Neill, a previous donor to the CRDEUL library's bookshelf and file collection, visited the Center again. He offered to make another donation to round out the collection, and we are so grateful! In honor of Barbara Lynn Corwine, his late wife and a former GC alumnae, he donated 3 more matching bookcases and 2 filing cabinets.

Finally, I would like to welcome two new staff members. First, Robert (Bob) Copeland, CRDEUL's new Program Associate was hired in June, and he supports and organizes much of the Center's work along with me and the rest of our staff. He is also the new editor of the CRDEUL Center Points. Second, we just hired Miguel Vargaas who is working part-time to assist us in our office projects. Welcome, Bob and Miguel!