Administrators, teachers and researchers from SMU and Dallas Independent School District, along with local educational non-profits came together for the 2024 Conference of the Consortium on Educational Research and Improvement (CERI).
CERI is a collaboration between SMU and the Dallas ISD to work together to identify and support mutually beneficial research, evaluation and improvement projects.
Dr. Annie Wright, Executive Director of the newly renamed, The Addy Foundation Center on Research and Evaluation, says, “The CERI conference is an excellent example of the growing and unique collaboration between our two institutions and that our mutual goal is to improve outcomes for K-12 students in Dallas and beyond.”
CERI is a research-practice partnership developed to help support the next generation of SMU research by faculty and graduate students and promote the sharing of new knowledge to Dallas ISD educational leaders. One goal of CERI is to make research endeavors between the two institutions more efficient and impactful.
Dr. Michele Broughton, Dallas ISD Deputy Chief of Academics agrees, “Dallas ISD has always valued collaborative work with SMU, and it has come to fruition through CERI. The mutual benefits of this partnership work ultimately to support our teachers and students.”
Held at Pegasus Park in Dallas, the conference featured speakers from SMU and Dallas ISD as well as participants from community-based partners with topics such as: early learning, summer learning loss, Advanced Placement course enrollment, and math reasoning. Participants even got to put on Virtual Reality headsets and experience innovations in VR learning. Representatives from Dallas ISD and SMU’s respective research boards also coached participants through the process of developing collaborative research projects.