Recent News

7/2008 -- TG, a public nonprofit corporation focusing on access to higher education, has awarded the Ray Marshall Center a $200,000 grant for the ongoing Central Texas Student Futures Project for fiscal year 2009. TG's support for the project is in its third year and so far has exceeded $625,000. The project tracks college and workforce participation for graduates of 10 Central Texas independent school districts and identifies factors associated with student success after high school. The overall project began in Fall 2004 and will continue at least through 2010. Other project funders include the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce, Texas Education Agency and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Christopher T. King and Deanna Schexnayder are joint principal investigators for the overall project.

7/2008 -- This July, the Ray Marshall Center began work with colleagues at Harvard's Center for the Developing Child on a year-long project funded by the George Kaiser Family Foundation to develop a sectoral jobs strategy for the parents of low-income children being served in early childhood programs offered by the Community Action Program (CAP) of Tulsa County, OK. Robert W. Glover, Tara Carter Smith, Christopher T. King and 2nd year LBJ student Brian Levy will be identifying promising sectors for this initiative based on site visits, interviews and research on CAP participant skills and labor market trends, among other factors.

7/15/2008 -- Researchers at the Ray Marshall Center - including Christopher T. King, Ying Tang, Tara Carter Smith and Daniel Schroeder - are wrapping up a project for the Texas Association of Workforce Boards (TAWB) estimating five- and 10-year returns on investment (ROI) of associated workforce services based on a quasi-experimental impact design. Center staff briefed TAWB on their preliminary ROI findings in mid-June and will present final estimates and a guide to ROI estimation at TAWB's annual retreat in Salado, Texas. Dr. King presented a paper based on their Texas ROI results at a national conference sponsored by the Wilder Foundation in St. Paul, MN on July 15.

6/2008 -- Longtime Center staffer Karen White, an accomplished pianist and local piano teacher, threw herself a birthday party on June 21 with a 90-minute concert at the Carver Library, wowing the crowd with difficult pieces by Rachmaninoff and the Brahms Piano Quintet, which she performed with a quartet of internationally acclaimed musicians. She will reprise the Brahms piece in Barcelona, Spain in July, performing with the renowned Casals Quartet.

6/2008 -- Center director Christopher T. King has been named to the Research Advisory Panel for the National Technical Assistance and Research Center to Promote Leadership for Increasing the Employment and Economic Independence of Adults with Disabilities, based at Rutgers University. He will participate in the upcoming panel meeting in late July in New York City and New Brunswick, NJ.

6/2008 -- Center researchers Christopher T. King and Daniel Schroeder and 2nd year LBJ student Livier Cabezas also co-authored a report - Exploring the Landscape and Effectiveness of Workforce Development (WFD) Services for Hispanics/Latinos: Lessons from Goodwill Industries as a WFD Laboratory (June 2008) - with Dr. Linda Kato of Goodwill Industries (GII) and consultant Dr. Robert Crosslin. This report, which is based on collaborative research conducted at GII and the Ray Marshall Center, will be released as part of a national media event later this summer or early in the fall.

5/1/2008 -- Deanna Schexnayder, research scientist and associate director of the Ray Marshall Center, was selected as one of two outstanding supervisors at The University of Texas at Austin. UT President William Powers, Jr., presented Ms. Schexnayder with a certificate and honorarium at the annual Staff Recognition Program and President's Reception, held in the Texas Union Ballroom on Thursday, May 1. Ms. Schexnayder has been affiliated with the Center since 1992.

3/2008 -- The Ray Marshall Center and the Center for Social Work Research at The University of Texas at Austin have released three publications constituting the final reports on the Devolution of Subsidized Child Care Services in Texas project. The publications analyzed both the process of child care policy decision-making and the factors associated with child care subsidy duration, employment duration and the turnover of child care facilities,

3/2008 -- The Ray Marshall Center has published a research brief summarizing findings from the 2007 senior surveys undertaken as part of the Central Texas Student Futures Project. The brief, edited by Christopher T. King, Deanna Schexnayder and Nicole Beck, discusses highlights of the project, findings, conclusions, recommendations and future research/next steps.

2/2008 -- The Ray Marshall Center has released two reports presenting initial findings on evaluations of local workforce investments in both the City of Austin and Travis County, Texas.

12/2007 -- The Ray Marshall Center, in conjunction with The University of Texas at Austin's IC2 Institute, released two reports on the economic and workforce effects of Hurricane Katrina, aging workforce and related factors on NASA's Space Shuttle Program efforts along the Gulf Coast. The research was conducted by the Ray Marshall Center/IC2 Institute research team last year and is based on field interviews, focus groups and surveys. The reports conclude with a series of recommendations for NASA, its contractors and others.

11/29/2007 -- Christopher T. King briefed Travis County Judge Samuel Biscoe and the Commissioners Court on preliminary outcomes and impacts from local workforce investments.

11/26/2007 -- Christopher T. King, Deanna Schexnayder and Tara Carter Smith participated in a series of briefings and meetings concerning the Ray Marshall Center's ongoing research in the Student Futures Project. On November 26, Dr. King and Ms. Smith, joined by Jim McClure of Skillpoint Alliance, briefed Round Rock ISD Superintendent Jesus Chavez and his leadership team on the First Look report findings and implications. On November 27, the project and report were highlighted in front of 450 people at the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce's "State of Education Summit," On November 28-29, at The University of Texas at Austin's Thompson Conference Center, Dr. King and Ms. Schexnayder, respectively, led two community briefings by the Center and Skillpoint on the report's findings and implications. On November 30, Dr. King presented those findings and implications at a Center for Health and Social Policy forum at Brackenridge Hospital in Austin.

9/2007 -- The Ray Marshall Center has published Austin Biotech Workforce Education Consortium: First Year Report, by Robert W. Glover, providing a first-year assessment of the Austin Biotech Workforce Consortium to augment biotechnology curriculum offerings at Austin Community College (ACC). New programs are being established in three ACC departments. The Biotechnology Department is implementing an 11-week "Fundamentals of Biotechnology Program" as an experiment to determine if specially designed, abbreviated training focused on practical skills is sufficient to prepare individuals to access entry-level biotech jobs. The other two programs provide advanced training for existing students as well as for incumbent workers. At the one-year mark, the report concludes that the project has been successful overall. All targeted courses and specializations have been developed and are being implemented. Further, ACC has proven the viability of using faculty externships to develop meaningful certificate programs in a short time frame in order to meet needs for an emerging technology workforce.

9/2007 -- Central Texas Student Futures Project is the new name of the research formerly known as Creating a Central Texas High School Graduate Data Center. The name was changed to reflect more accurately the nature and scope of the research being conducted.

9/2007 -- The Ray Marshall Center has published Education and Work After High School: A First Look at the Class of 2006, by Christopher T. King, Deanna Schexnayder, Greg Cumpton, Tara Carter Smith and Chandler Stolp, as part of its research in the Central Texas Student Futures Project. The report is the first in a series which will analyze administrative and survey data linked to their postsecondary outcomes for Central Texas seniors. The researchers concluded that models linking information from individual school and employment records with additional student background information collected through the senior survey perform better than models that rely solely on administrative records. From the statistical models, researchers determined that education and student background factors are significantly related to overall 2-year and 4-year postsecondary education enrollments in different ways, and these factors work differently for seniors from different socioeconomic, race/ethnic, and family backgrounds.