Director's Message

Thank you so much visiting our website. We hope that you find it both informative and easy to navigate.

Hamline University’s Center for Excellence in Urban Teaching, which celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2008, is Minnesota’s pioneer organization for training and supporting teachers in applying proven culturally relevant pedagogical practices in urban and urban-like schools to promote increased educational success for all youth in Minnesota.

In our first decade of teacher training and school change, the Center has:

• Prepared over 200 college students of color for the field of teaching in Minnesota.
• Trained over 800 new teachers in effective, real-life strategies for diverse classroom through a unique graduate-level certificate program, called the Certificate in Urban Teaching.

We work across the teaching spectrum and have successfully piloted effective programs that seek to change the landscape of quality teaching in Minnesota. For example, we have:

(1) Trained college students of color to become K-12 teachers in urban schools;

(2) Supported the retention of new teachers working in highly diverse schools through a graduate level certificate program in effective strategies for the real classroom;

(3) Implemented systems change at the school and district level to help promote increased student achievement.

(4) Developed an effective after-school tutoring program that pairs urban youth with college students of color—one of just two after-school programs in the entire state that is raising urban student achievement in reading.

(5) Piloted, in 2008 with Hamline's MEDAL Program, a customized and career-embedded master’s degree program with an emphasis on urban teaching for 15 early career teachers working in the St. Paul Public Schools.

Please take the time to look at our programs. And if you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact me.

Thank you again for visiting the Center for Excellence in Urban Teaching.

Frank Hernandez, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor/Director