University of California, Los Angeles
Project Title
For project support of the Young Scholars Civic Engagement Program
Date
Sep. 11, 2025
Duration
24 months
Description
Middle school is a critical period for civic identity development, yet few civic learning programs are intentionally designed for this age group. This grant will support the launch and implementation of the Carnegie Young Scholars Civic Engagement Program, a new initiative developed by UCLA’s Center X to cultivate civic agency among Los Angeles middle school students. Each year, the program will directly serve approximately 730 students—130 through two summer institutes and 600 through classroom implementation during the school year. Students will explore local issues, design inclusive civic districts, and present their work publicly at Carnegie – UCLA Civics Day, hosted at the Los Angeles Public Library. Students will help plan and facilitate the event, further developing student voice, agency, and ownership of their learning.
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Project Title
For continued development of Mann UCLA Community School and associated knowledge building
Date
Jun. 04, 2020
Duration
72 months
Description
Transformation ofhistorically low-performingschoolsisnecessary to affect change for all students. For the last three years, the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) has addressed thisneedby bringing UCLA’s resources to bear in service of transforming the Horace Mann Middle School into the Mann UCLA Community School (Mann UCLA). After facing years of plummeting enrollment and now servinga disproportionatenumber of high-need students, Mann UCLA is on its way to reassuming its former role as a valuable community resource and site of academic excellence for local families. This represents not only a substantial, long-term commitment by UCLA to its local community, but also an important opportunity to model for the nation the role that a public university can play in K-12 education. With renewed Corporation support, UCLA will continue its work to transform Mann UCLA through teacher capacity building and wrap-around student services, and it will also share this work more broadly to impact practice in other contexts.
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Project Title
For a project to develop a school improvement network in Los Angeles and strengthen higher ed-K-12 collaboration
Date
Sep. 08, 2016
Duration
45 months
Description
The Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) believes that improvement science can help unlock powerful knowledge that already exists within individual classrooms and schools and make it broadly useful across the urban schooling landscape. Improvement science harnesses homegrown expertise and innovations, and uses rapid cycles of prototyping and testing to guide the development and continued refinement of new tools, processes, roles, and relationships. In the proposed scope of work, UCLA will deepen its work with its burgeoning network of schools in Los Angeles through expertly facilitated network improvement cycles that will aggressively target problems of practice (such as the wraparound support strategies for English Language Learners), and surface, test, and share practices that have broader systemic application for schools nationwide.