Heman Sweatt Center
Housed within the Division of Campus & Community Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin (UT), the Heman Sweatt Center (Sweatt Center) is a faculty-led student organization consisting of professors, administrators, graduate, and undergraduate students committed to creating community and honoring the legacy of Heman Marion Sweatt.
Heman Sweatt Center Research Lab
The Heman Sweatt Center Research Lab strives to create equitable access for Black males across the P-16 educational continuum. The Heman Sweatt Center Research Lab accomplishes this goal by publishing asset-oriented and humanizing research articles and briefs, centralizing research from the nation’s top scholars in a publicly accessible fashion, and developing the research skills of graduate and undergraduate students.
Core Components:
- Black Male Education Research Collection (BMERC)
- Black Male Research Briefs
- Black Male Research Fellows
BMERC & Black Male Research Briefs
The highly visible image of the Black male in America is a frequent topic of scrutiny, conjecture, and opinion. But what does research into the reality of the Black male experience have to say? Helping scholars, journalists, and educators discover answers to that question is our goal through BMERC and our Black Male Research Briefs. The peer-reviewed scholarly information provided and featured provides a counter-narrative to the prevailing beliefs about American Black males.
We collate and examine peer-reviewed research from the nation’s top scholars on issues related to Black males and topics that include, but are not limited to, the achievement gap, sport, gender identity, social justice, the school-to-prison pipeline and the criminal justice system. It is hoped that engagement with evidence-based inquiry and facts about Black males will provide a counternarrative to the prevailing beliefs about Black males, inform the myriad discussions regarding these men and boys, and steer conversation toward truth about their experiences and needs.
Featured Scholar: Dr. Roderick L. Carey
Link to Dr. Roderick L. Carey’s articles: https://community.utexas.edu/black-male-education-research/?s=roderick+carey
Roderick L. Carey is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences, in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Delaware. His current interdisciplinary research serves to make sense of the school experiences of Black and Latino adolescent boys and young men in urban contexts, drawing upon critical theories, sociological tools, and constructs from developmental psychology. Dr. Carey employs primarily qualitative approaches in researching and writing about both macro and micro issues related to families and schools, teacher education, professional development for equity, Black Boy Mattering, and the ways Black and Latino adolescent boys and young men conceptualize their postsecondary school futures and enact college-going processes.
Dr. Carey is the Founder and Director of the Black Boy Mattering Project, a unique secondary school partnership study that investigates how adolescent Black Boys and young men articulate their mattering across multiple school and social domains. This work is primarily funded through his University of Delaware Partnership for Public Education Fellowship.
Dr. Carey received his Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction with a concentration on Minority and Urban Education, from the University of Maryland College Park; his Ed.M. in Human Development and Psychology from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education; and his B.A. in Secondary Education and English from Boston College.
Prior to joining the University of Delaware, Dr. Carey was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Urban Education. In partnership with the Department of Applied Developmental Psychology in the School of Education, he was the lead qualitative researcher on a team conducting mix-methods evaluations of the Heinz Endowments Youth Organizing initiative. He also chaired the first Center for Urban Education Summer Educator Forum, which brings together approximately 100 Pittsburgh area educators annually for two days of workshops, lectures, discussions, and other professional learning experiences. From 2009 to 2012, he was a Research Assistant for a $1.5 million Institute of Education Sciences grant to design a writing curriculum to improve reading and writing among predominantly Black and Latino middle-school students.
He spent four years working in urban charter schools in Washington, D.C., as a high school English teacher, coach, performing arts coordinator, and instructional leader.
His articles have been published in the Harvard Educational Review, American Journal of Education, Race Ethnicity and Education, Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Education and Urban Society, Educational Administration Quarterly, Independent School, The Urban Review, and Urban Education. Dr. Carey has been invited to deliver speeches, lectures, and conference research presentations locally, nationally, and internationally and has consulted with independent schools, summer camps, and such organizations as the Southern Poverty Law Center on issues related to race, justice, and education. He reviews manuscripts for multiple journals and academic presses and serves on the Advisory Board for the High School Journal. He also serves on the Editorial Board for Urban Education was awarded the 2019-2020 Outstanding Service Award. He has published multiple book chapters and reviews, and has authored a blog on the Huffington Post. Most recently, he was invited to write blogs for the Voices in Education: The Blog of Harvard Education Publishing, Forum of the American Journal of Education, and for the Official Blog of Kappa Delta Pi.