SERVE at UNC Greensboro is pleased to announce that we have been selected to operate the Southeast Region 5 Comprehensive Center (SER5CC) to provide technical assistance and capacity-building services to North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.
The U.S. Department of Education announced the Comprehensive Centers Program awards in late September. The purpose of the program is to establish comprehensive technical assistance that provides capacity-building services to State educational agencies (SEAs), regional educational agencies (REAs), including Tribal educational agencies (TEAs), and local educational agencies (LEAs), and schools that are designed to improve educational opportunities and outcomes for all students. The grant is anticipated to span a five-year period with this year’s award in the amount of $2.26M.
“We are honored to be selected to operate the Southeast Region 5 Comprehensive Center (SER5CC) and we look forward to the outstanding work ahead,” says Dr. Maria Pitre-Martin.Dr. Maria Pitre-Martin, SERVE’s Executive Director.
Message from Priscilla Maynor and George Hancock, Co-Directors of SERVE’s Region 6 Comprehensive Center
Since 2019, the Region 6 Comprehensive Center at SERVE has worked to expand the capacity of State education agencies, local districts, and schools throughout Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina – focusing on sustainable growth and effective implementation of strategies to support all students throughout the region. SERVE’s more than 30-year history of providing research, evaluation, and technical assistance at the state, regional, and national levels positioned our team to efficiently navigate the work of our Comprehensive Center through a global pandemic that challenged the field of education and to maintain a focus on the blending of research and practice to achieve success.
The success of our Comprehensive Center can be directly attributed to the dedicated team of professionals at SERVE, who worked collaboratively with educational leaders throughout the region to address the needs of our schools and students. As a result, we have once again been awarded the opportunity to facilitate this work in the region for the next five years through the renamed Southeast Region 5 Comprehensive Center
As we launch the next iteration of our Center this fall, we will be working with educators in GA, NC, and SC to improve organizational coherence in support of low-performing schools and districts, to address the unique educational obstacles faced by historically underserved populations, and to scale up and sustain key evidence-based initiatives in each state.
In pursuing this work, we will continue to collaborate with educators across the region and throughout the National Comprehensive Center Network, with the ultimate goals of closing achievement gaps for all students and improving educator practices and quality of instruction.
Our team is excited to kick off the Southeast Region 5 Comprehensive Center, and we look forward to sharing updates as this important work gets underway!
Project Abstract
The SERVE Center at UNC Greensboro proposes to operate the Regional Center for Region 5 (R5CC) and provide intensive, capacity building services to Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. We propose five goals representing customized strategies that address nine educational challenges. The first three goals describe support to the SEAs on their key improvement initiatives.
Goal 1: Support the three SEAs in improving their effectiveness in carrying out Consolidated State Plans.
Goal 2: Support the three SEAs in continuously improving their literacy, math, and MTSS initiatives.
Goal 3: Build the capacity of SEAs to address emerging needs.
Goal 4: Scale up promising practices/ evidence-based practices (EBPs) through engaging cohorts of LEA and school leaders.
Goal 5 focuses on support to the National Center, Content Centers, RELs and other federal assistance providers in disseminating their products and services.
The expected outcomes are that we will build the human, organizational, policy, and resource capacities of the SEAs and LEAs we serve as they address nine educational challenges (e.g., improving low-performing schools, improving literacy and math outcomes, improving the implementation of MTSS, addressing emerging issues such as the educator shortage and non-academic barriers to learning). Our annual set of project plans will outline the activities to be accomplished each year based on our stakeholder engagement process. In terms of the primary activities to be accomplished, we describe ten capacity-building strategies (e.g., training/coaching in the application of Implementation Science, supporting the use of EBPs, facilitating peer-to-peer learning, supporting LEA cohorts through sustained professional development/Communities of Practice).
