On Friday, October 13 and 14, 2016, the Texas Education Consortium for Male Students of Color (TECMSC) convened at Houston Baptist University (HBU) where approximately 80 educational leaders from ISD’s, community colleges, and universities attended from across the state of Texas. This turnout represents a record number of attendees for a Consortium regional meeting. The goals for this meeting were to: 1) provide a space for Consortium members to continue their collaboration with a state-wide network of scholars and administrators; 2) engage with other institutions across educational sectors (i.e. school districts, 2-year colleges, 4-year universities) as well as by regions (i.e. Central Texas, North Texas, Houston area, etc.); and, 3) critically reflect on the first three years of Consortium work and create a vision for the next three years focused on addressing the challenges of boys and men of color in Texas and to collectively create solutions to address them.
Dr. Emmet Campos who MC’d the proceedings introduced Eduardo Borges, Senior Director of Special Projects from HBU who welcomed all attendees, followed by an introduction by Dr. Franciso Solis, chair of the Council, of our newest Consortium members includeing Sam Houston State, Seguin ISD, McLennan Community College, San Jacinto College, and Houston Community College System. We also welcomed our newest Advisory Council Members: Adrian Rodriguez, TCCD; Rodrick Moore, Lone Star College-CyFair; Dr. Archie Wortham, Northeast Lakeview College; Nicolas Villareal, Northeast Lakeview College; and Toribio Ramirez, UT Austin). Nicholas and Toribio are student representatives on the Council and underscore our commitment to lend a student voice to the work that we do at the Consortium.
Dr. Victor Sáenz then followed with Consortium updates which acknowledged our growing TECMSC network of institutions including prospective and invited institutions (Denton ISD, San Jacinto College, and University of El Paso, to name a few) and our plans for Phase II of the project. His presentation included an overview of the next three years of the project including an outline of the strategy plan and business model that will help provide a framework to sustain the project over the next three years and beyond. Next up was our Student and Local Partners Panel made up of local student leaders and partners who engaged the audience in critical dialogue about the importance of sustaining the efforts to support young men of color with direct input from the student themselves We transitioned to the final part of the day where we conducted two breakout sessions, the first organized by regional partners, and the second by sectors, ISD’s community colleges and universities using a tool, the After Action Review Guide, to help direct our discussions, This tool helped us to collectively reflect on the first three years of the initiative, as well as to begin to frame a vision for the future of the project.
We want to thank Houston Baptist University again for hosting a successful Consortium meeting and our first strategy session with our Advisory council. We are excited about our progress thus far and look forward to our next strategy session with the Council on December 11/12, 2016. We will continue to provide more updates regarding our Consortium work on this website.
