Loyola University Chicago
Here you will find all of CURL's research projects and publications.
Instituto del Progreso Latino (Instituto) has developed a new model for providing ESL training to its community of learners. They are combining the best of online educational practice with intensive one-on-one and in-person classroom mentoring to fully meet the needs of their students. CURL evaluated this pilot program which is funded by the MacArthur Foundation.
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Chicago Public Schools launched the Global Citizenship Initiative (GCI) in 2012-2013. GCI provides rigorous curriculum aligned with high standards, supports high quality pedagogy that meets the needs of diverse learners and reflects best practices in civic education, and generates multiple external learning opportunities throughout the city of Chicago.
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CURL started an evaluation partnership with Community Organizing and Family Issues (COFI) focusing on their recently awarded multi-year grant from the Kellogg Foundation. The process evaluation examined the implementation of COFI’s parent leadership program - Family Focused Organizing - in four Illinois communities that are building collaborations to improve access to and quality of early learning programs. Family Focused Organizing develops parents as leaders in their communities so they may advocate on behalf of themselves, their families, and their communities.
Read MoreThe Family Court Enhancement Project is a collaborative project of the Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women (OVW), the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ), the Battered Women’s Justice Project, and the National Institute for Justice.
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Loyola University Chicago sociologist Peter Rosenblatt served as the lead researcher on a CURL project to examine a security deposit assistance program in Milwaukee that used the incentive to encourage low-income residents to move to higher opportunity, lower poverty neighborhoods.
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Action in front of the Dirksen Federal building Chicago, IL.
The Center for Urban Research and Learning (CURL) worked with Organizing Neighborhoods for Equality: Northside (ONE Northside) on a participatory research project to further document and analyze the Organization of the NorthEast (ONE) and Lakeview Action Coalition (LAC) merger process that created ONE Northside. The impact of the merger is of interest not only to researchers and policy makers focusing on non-profit organizations, but also to other similar organizations seeking to be more effective in their advocacy impact and their financial efficiency. Outcomes of this merger have implications for other organizations in Chicago and the nation.
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Carmen Velazquez
Deborah's Place
In a partnership with the Chicago Alliance to End Homelessness and other service and advocacy organizations, the Loyola University Chicago Center for Urban Research and Learning (CURL) and photographer Noah Addis organized this exhibition to present positive images of individuals moving from homelessness to housing. The exhibition confronts the dominant stereotypes that homeless individuals are helpless street beggars or that organizations serving them are just providing handouts without addressing long-term solutions.
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Alternatives, Inc. and Howard Area Community Center partnered to provide an intensive, coordinated, and trauma informed community approach to working with high-risk youth and young adults (up to age 24) who have been detained at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center (JTDC) and/or have been adjudicated to an Illinois Youth Center/IDOC placement and are now re-entering their communities. CURL helped to evaluate the success of the program.
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CURL and the Chicago Foundation for Women jointly collaborated on the “Evaluation: The Road from Programming to Policy” program to train organizations that serve women and girls. Expert-led workshops, participant-selected research projects, and community-wide dissemination will deepen organizational understanding of data analysis. The development of assessment as an organizational tool will provide immediate change as well as lasting skills, assisting agencies as they continue to navigate in an increasingly data driven sector.
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This was an evaluation for a consortium of safety net health care centers in Chicago and northern Illinois, led by the Lawndale Christian Health Clinic. We assessed the implementation of a new training and leadership program in relation to management and staff. We also assessed whether the project improved patient reports of satisfaction and impacted their wait times, among other measures.
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