Center for Transformational Educator Preparation Programs (CTEPP)

About CTEPP

In spring of 2021, the Chancellor’s Office, with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, developed a new center called the CSU Center for Transformational Educator Preparation Programs (CTEPP). The Center leverages the successes of the New Generation of Educators Initiative (NGEI) and the Chancellor’s Office Learning Lab to Close the Teacher Diversity Gap to help support the transformation of CSU educator preparation programs into more equitable and just organizations. One key component of the Center is the Transformation Lab (TLab), a community designed to promote capacity to use data-driven continuous improvement to transform both the culture and the outcomes of educator preparation programs in alignment with the Center’s Key Transformation Elements (KTEs). Each team selects one KTE to work on in the Lab and to do a ‘deep dive’ around a problem they may not know how to solve yet, but that is a troubling equity imperative they feel they have some ability to impact within the next two years.

The TLab provides a community for campus teams to learn together with intention and focus, accelerating the pace of improvement aligned with the CTEPP vision.

Transformation is Happening

In its first year, the CTEPP community consisted of four campus improvement teams drawn from the Learning Lab network: CSU Bakersfield, Humboldt State, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and Cal State Northridge. These teams participated in the Equity and Excellence Certification Course and organized to make progress on their KTE goals. In the Lab, teams engaged in focused, continuous improvement work, collecting data and investigating their systems to produce theories of improvement to guide their efforts. They set measurable aims and chose specific drivers for improvement where they see opportunities on their campuses. Before ‘going big’, these teams are testing changes on a small scale and collecting evidence to support further expansion this year. Here are some examples of the changes being tested:

Team Humboldt is developing new training and support for clinical supervisors with a focus on quality, equity-centered feedback to candidates;
Team Bakersfield is creating new training and support for clinical supervisors with a focus on more equitable support for Black candidates to improve retention rates;
Team Northridge is focused on recruitment and community-building strategies to increase applications, enrollment and sense of belonging of BIPOC candidates; and
Team Cal Poly SLO is partnering with county HR directors to strategically improve hiring and retention practices that impact beginning Latinx teachers in their K-12 partner districts.

The CTEPP Community Grows to Ten Campuses

With one year under its belt, the CTEPP community is ready to grow and expand its reach. The community now includes six new campus teams from Sacramento State, Cal State Stanislaus, Cal State Long Beach, Cal Poly Pomona, Chico State, and Cal State Los Angeles. Ten teams now meet in the Lab network four times a year to undertake measurable, sustainable, and scalable improvements aligned with CTEPP’s vision and mission. This facilitated, cross-campus sharing enables all teams to accelerate the pace of learning and improvement. In the opening Lab session in September, Cohort 1 teams presented their work, inspiring the six new campuses and helping them to anticipate what their own improvement work might look like.

Support Expands

EdQ serves as the support hub for the TLab community, providing coaching and technical support to campus improvement teams to use continuous improvement methodologies in their work. In order to work with this larger community and to increase internal capacity, the EdQ support team has expanded to include three faculty improvement coaches: Allegra Brown from CSU Dominguez Hills, Patricia Lane from Cal State Bakersfield, and Erin Ramirez from Cal State Monterey Bay.

What’s Next?

The barriers being lifted and improvements happening are not simple, and the work ahead poses challenges, but with support from the TLab community, the Educator Quality Center, and the broader CTEPP organization, the Lab has gotten off to a great start. Another two years of collaborative work is designed for these ten teams to help them generate the confidence and capacity needed to scale their work and begin documenting and sharing successes across the CSU and beyond. Stay tuned.

Team Northridge