Our society, schools, and communities need educational leaders, scholars, and activists who have an in-depth understanding of the complex assets and inequities within the urban education environment.

This need is for those who can respectfully value the many assets of historically marginalized communities and who can courageously address and remove the inequities of race, class, gender, sexuality, disability, religion, immigrant status, culture, and home language. Accordingly, the Urban Education Studies (UES) doctoral program provides students with the critical foundational understanding to serve this need.

To accomplish this, the UES doctoral program, using a cohort model, focuses on a deep study of urban education and of the assets and inequities of historically marginalized communities within the urban context. The faculty use collaborative discussions; practice thinking critically; various writing and presenting exercises; in-depth study of articles, books, research methodologies, and research theories; address of educational activism; among other activities and approaches. The intended result is the development of activist-scholars.

Further, this program is nationally unique in two ways: 1) the students in each cohort average over 60% being students of color, and 2) over 60% of the faculty are scholars of color. This provides an exciting, creative, highly diverse learning environment, very different from almost all other doctoral programs in the US.

Graduates of the UES doctoral program have become school leaders, university professors, leaders in research and intervention centers, higher education leaders, leaders in non-profit organizations, among other possibilities.