Join Madeline Hafner, Executive Director of the Minority Student Achievement Network (MSAN), to learn more about MSAN’s 16 year history of engaging in collaborative research in which practitioners and researchers are equal partners in designing, conducting, and publishing research.  Different models of research-practice partnerships in which the consortium has engaged will be presented along with reflections of the “promises and pitfalls” inherent in collaborative research including the challenges experienced in evaluating partnerships and communicating and using research findings.

Housed at WCER since 2007, MSAN is a national coalition of 29 multiracial, suburban-urban school districts that have come together to understand and eliminate opportunity/achievement gaps that persist in their schools. MSAN districts have student populations between 3,000 and 63,000 and are most often well-established first-ring suburbs or small/mid-size cities. Additionally, the districts share a history of high academic achievement and connections to major research universities.