Center for Black Student Excellence

The Center for Black Student Excellence is a historic opportunity for the community to gather, design and plan a stronger future for Black students. It emerged from the Black community's desire to build equity, promote opportunities, and accelerate positive outcomes for Black children in Portland.

  • ENGAGEMENT LENS AND PROCESS

    There are many amazing opportunities for Black students, teachers, and the community to share their aspirations and dreams for the Center for Black Student Excellence.

    Black Portlanders can weigh in on the center's programming, focusing on curriculum, defining student and teacher support needs, advocacy, and professional learning. Black Portlanders also have the opportunity to work directly with the design team to influence the physical environment of the space, ensuring everything from the building facade to gathering areas imbues excellence.

    BLACK RADICAL IMAGINATION

    Black Radical Imagination is the core strategy for this collaborative design process. The Studio Museum in Harlem defines the ‘Black Radical Imagination as a revolutionary process of thinking otherwise using Black diasporic critique to articulate a vision for a different world’.

    As stewards of this collaborative process, and practitioners of design justice, we can decolonize our approach to engagement, which often focuses on what is wrong with our current systems.

    We know that Black people and families are experts in their lives and the solutions needed to build a better future for themselves and each other; that is why we are focusing on visionings and dreaming toward new alternatives.

  • Collecting, analyzing, and adequately using community feedback is critical to good design research.

    Community data allows the Center for Black Student Excellence engagement team to use a data-driven decision-making approach. Data-driven decision-making (DDDM) is defined as using facts, metrics, and data to guide strategic decisions that align with your goals, objectives, and initiatives (Tableau, A Guide To Data Driven Decision Making: What It Is, Its Importance, & How To Implement It).

    Without community data, design researchers often create solutions based on their assumptions. Community data gives insight to design researchers and decision-makers, and those insights can help direct the project in the right way.

EXIT SURVEY LINK

The exit survey is a form of data collection that we will be using to gather input.

The goal of this exit survey is to support community members by allowing them to voice their experiences as a Black person living in Portland. Each community member will be asked demographic questions, contact information, as well as visioning questions to support the Center for Black Student Excellence’s project. The information provided from each person will help gain insight into how their experiences as a Black person in Portland can help shape the vision of Center for Black Student Excellence.

Oregon can be experienced and approached differently by Black folks based on one’s culture, gender, sexual identity, and socioeconomic status or even how long one has lived here. We understand that these differences matter. There are as many ways of being Black as there are Black people, but the experience of being Black unites us.

  • Please share this link with participants after the engagement session: https://bit.ly/CBSE-ExitSurvey

    You can also ask participants to Text CBSE EXIT SURVEY to +1 (833) 391-1294 to get a link to the online survey!

    Download the QR Code here: https://bit.ly/ExitQR

Please see the exit survey instructional video below:

 

DATA COLLECTION FORM

The goal of this form is to gather research information from Center for Black Student Excellence’s engagement sessions and other engagements with participants of this project. This form will allow the information gathered to be organized in a way that aligns all community feedback (data types) from each community member.

Once the data collection forms are submitted to Imagine Black Futures, the data will be transferred into our qualitative and mixed methods research and evaluation software Dedoose. Imagine Black Futures will then analyze the data and report on the key themes and insights gathered from the design research phase. 

  • Please use this form to upload your community feedback data to be analyzed. https://bit.ly/CBSE-Data

    You can also get access to the form by texting CBSE DATA FORM to +1 (833) 391-1294 to get a link to the data collection form!

    Download the QR Code here: https://bit.ly/DataQR

Please see the data collection form instructional video below: