University of Houston - Downtown
Community Development Project
Existing Item
Requested Biennial Funding: $ 800,000
These funds serve as seed money for community-based efforts to revitalize two separate economically depressed north side neighborhoods, the predominately African-American Acres Homes subdivision and the largely Hispanic area bound by downtown Houston's central business district, I-45 North, 610 Loop North, and Highway 59 North. Both projects have their own boards that oversee a variety of economic development and community enhancement programs. These boards, which operate with a high degree of autonomy, must provide progress reports to the university leadership
Summer Academic Institute
New Item
Requested Biennial Funding: $ 475,000
With the national dropout rate among Hispanic high-school students at an alarming 30 percent and projected to reach 32 percent in 2010 (double what it was in 1990), the urgency to develop creative ways to improve education and encourage Hispanic students to stay in school has never been greater. The integration of Hispanics--and other minority students--into college may also be particularly difficult because of the difference in the college environment when compared to that of their home and community.
UH-Downtown's Summer Academic Institute is a response to these findings and serves to help students graduate from high school, prepare academically for college, and acculturate to a university environment. A key component of the university's nationally acclaimed Jeff Davis educational collaborative (it recently received a Star Award from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board) involving UHD, the Houston Independent School District, and the Houston corporate community, the Summer Academic Institute has provided intense academic enrichment/college preparatory activities for under-prepared, academically at-risk area high school students for the past 13 years. Houston Endowment had provided $3 million of funding for the Summer Academic Institute, but these funds will have been depleted by the end of FY2003.
Criminal Justice Institute
New Item
Requested Biennial Funding: $ 642,404
More challenges than ever face our society, almost all of which involve our criminal justice system. Schools, social agencies, businesses and the general quality of life in our neighborhoods and communities are impacted. There are over 100,000 people who work in criminal justice agencies in the greater Houston area and at least that many who work in educational, community, religious, and service agencies that impact criminal justice issues.
UH-Downtown's criminal justice academic program has uniquely prepared the university to lead the community in addressing issues of crime and justice. The Criminal Justice Institute, a new component of the university's highly respected Department of Criminal Justice, will combine the applied and theoretical aspects of criminal justice in ways that enable it to better serve its students, the community, and the field of criminal justice. The institute will critically assess the effectiveness of crime and delinquency prevention strategies, provide the infrastructure to develop a regional criminal justice research agenda, provide program evaluation, and develop training and certification programs in specific high-need areas. It will also partner with the community to analyze, evaluate and propose solutions to quality-of-life issues such as neighborhood safety, public service and juvenile delinquency prevention.
