Community Outreach, Retention, and Engagement
Community Outreach, Retention, and Engagement (CORE) Program is a holistic, culturally relevant program out of the Office for Equity and Diversity (OED) to support family engagement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities (UMN-TC). CORE welcomes all families but specifically focuses on middle and high school families from underrepresented groups in STEM (i.e. African American, Asian American and Pacific Islander, Hispanic/Latinx, Hmong, Native American, Somali, multiracial, first-generation, differently abled, low-income). Students participate in CORE via a cohort-based model until the end of high school.
CORE aims to be the connector between communities, schools, and families with resources and opportunities at the university. CORE’s program delivery for our student cohort is grounded in the FACE of CORE: Family engagement, Academic support and social-emotional learning, College & career readiness, and Engagement in the UMN STEM ecosystem. We invite students and families from September to May to our free, monthly events. During these events, students and families engage in hands-on activities and interact with university faculty and students.
Our programming goal is to provide students and families with the information, support, and agency to pursue their desired pathways. By the end of their time with CORE, we hope that our students are prepared to matriculate, persist, and graduate from college (e.g., University of Minnesota, 4-year college, 2-year college) and pursue a career in a STEM or STEM-adjacent field. CORE works to reimagine how STEM fields can serve the needs of an increasingly diverse population and celebrate the strengths that multicultural students bring to STEM spaces.
If you’re interested in more details about our curriculum and programming, click here.
