Priorities

The Dr. Porter Lee Troutman, Jr. Center for Multicultural Education (aka "The Troutman Center") has three main priorities:

1. facilitating PK-20 multicultural education-focused scholarship-to-practice efforts;
2. serving as a campus and community resource for training, education, and professional development on issues of social justice; and,
3. producing and disseminating critically-conscious scholarship to inform local, state, national and international education policy.

Through these three areas, the Troutman Center prioritizes contemporary interdisciplinary work:

1. to dismantle educational inequity in PK-20+ settings by building interpersonal and intellectual educational climates that affirm historically and persistently marginalized and minoritized students (HPMMS);
2. situated in the "other" ways of knowing, cultural capital, community wealth, and related protective resistance and resilience characteristics of HPMMS that enable their affirmative persistence;
3. that cultivates durable and effective education pathways and community-embedded partnerships for HPMMS; and,
4. to revitalize and extend radically operative continuing multicultural education for campus and community constituents committed to the success of HPMMS.

Through the three priority areas, the Troutman Center also distributes resources to state leaders in all sectors of the economy to ensure better understanding of conditions of educational inequity and injustice in order to leverage resources for HPMM youth-centered educational reform and transformation.

The Troutman Center supports students and community through:

1. the study and practice of multicultural education in ways that both honor the Ethnic Studies roots of the field, and expand inquiry and action through intersectional analysis of, and intervention to eradicate, barriers to access, equity, and excellence in the PK-20+ educational experiences of HPMMS;
2. research, teaching, service, and advocacy to interrupt and dismantle systems of educational oppression that disproportionately affect HPMMS in Nevada; and,
3. development of a justice framework to inform its work.

According to the Research Justice Center of the Coalition of Communities of Color in Washington County Portland Oregon:

1. a justice framework "starts with the premise that research processes and practices must be just and equitable in order for outcomes to be just and equitable;"
2. a justice framework understands that "mainstream research practices have reduced communities of color to [research] 'subjects'..."; and,
3. a justice framework "creates space for communities to be leaders and partners at all decision points [in] research process[es]" (p. 12).

The Troutman Center works collaboratively to develop and actualize a justice framework through which to achieve all of its goals in service to and partnership with our students and their families here in Southern Nevada, as well as across the state, region, country, and around the world.

Initiatives

SCHOLARSHIP

• Research
• Current Projects
• Challenging Racist, Transphobic, and Queerphobic Dominant Discourses of “Parental Rights” and Child “Protection:” Queering Caregiving Justice by Centering Counternarratives of Black and Brown Queer, Trans, and Gender Non-Conforming Families
• A Racially Literate DisCrit Analysis: Pre-Service Teachers’ of Color Lived Experiences of Racist Ableism and Preparedness to Serve PK-12 Students of Color and their Families/Communities
• Examining Critical Race Theory (CRT) in Public Education in Nevada: Exploring Pre- and In-Service Teachers’ Understanding of CRT-Informed Education as Essential Knowledge and Effective Pedagogical Praxis for All Students
• Spring 2022 NITEP Day Conference Poster Presentation
• Executive Summary
• Marrun, N. A., Clark, C., Beach, K., Morgan, M., Chiang-Lopez, C., & Taylor, O., & González, C. (2023). Indifferent, (un)critical, and anti-intellectual: Framing how teachers grapple with bans on teaching truth, about race and racism, and Critical Race Theory. Race, Ethnicity, and Education.
• Teaching for Black and Brown Lives: The Importance of Ethnic Studies Curriculum in the Educational Success of Black and Latinx Students in Nevada
• Spring 2021 "Lit Learning" Series Session and NITEP Conference Poster Presentation
• Fall 2021 Office of Undergraduate Research (OUR) Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship Program “Lightening Talk” by Ms. Kendra Beach
• Fall 2021 Office of Undergraduate Research (OUR) Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship Program “Lightening Talk” by Ms. Lauren Patterson
• Executive Summary
• Ethnic Studies Teach-In
• Clark, C., Marrun, N., Beach, K., Flores, R., Kelley, A., Patterson, L., Goins, M., & Mireles, D. (2023). Appropriate, decriticalize, and erase: How white supremacy works to undermine Ethnic Studies in policy and practice. Berkeley Review of Education. Under Review.
• Equity Matters: Examining the Black Education Pipeline
• Promoviendo @ UNLV Promoviendo La Esperanza Equitativa/Advancing Equitable Teaching Practices to Reduce Systemic Inequities in Computer Science Courses for Latinx Students (NSF Award Abstract #2318422)
• Las Vegas Scholars Program @ UNLV Promoting an Increased Sense of Belonging for Students and Their Families to Increase Success in Computer Science and Computer Engineering (NSF Award Abstract #1742607)
• Harris, S., Jiang, Y., Clark, C., Jorgensen, E., Garza, T., Marrun, N. A., & Taylor, V. (2023). Promoting Success through Building Community for Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduates. American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE)
• Past Projects
• Abriendo Caminos/Opening Pathways for Students of Color Into the Teaching Profession: Giving Back to Community through Teaching
• Marrun, N., Mireles, D., Beck, J., & Clark, C. (2023). The (Non) numeric truths behind college and career aspirations: A QuantCrit analysis of the precarious pathways for high school Students of Color. Urban Education. Under Review.
• Marrun, N. A., Plachowski, T., Mauldin, D., & Clark, C. (2021). “Teachers don’t really encourage it”: A critical race theory analysis of high school Students’ of Color perceptions of the teaching profession. Multicultural Educational Review, 13(1).
• Marrun, N., Rodríguez-Campo, M., Plachowski, T., & Clark, C. (2021). Divergent values: A family critical race theory analysis of Families of Color and their perceptions of the teaching profession. Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education, 20(3), 11-36.
• Hernández-Johnson, M., Taylor, V., Singh, R., Plachowski, T., Marrun, N., & Clark, C. (2021). “Like where are those teachers?”: A critical race theory analysis of teachers of color who have left teaching.International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education.
• Marrun, N. A., & Clark, C. (2020). The rise of GYO-TOCs as pop-ups: Lessons in racial resistance from the Abriendo Caminos/Opening Pathways for Students of Color into the teaching profession: Giving back to the community through teaching project. Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education, 19(4), 65-93.
• Marrun, N. A., Plachowski, T., Clark, C. (2019). A critical race theory analysis of the PK-12 teacher-student “demographic diversity” gap: College students of color speak their truth. Race Ethnicity and Education, 22(6), 836-57.
• Hernández-Johnson, M., & Flores, R. Q. (2018). Parent engagement through “Abriendo Caminos/Opening Pathways: Giving Back to the Community through Teaching.” In K. E. L. Norris and S. Collier (Eds.), Social justice and parent partnerships in multicultural education contexts (pp. 227-41). IGI Global.
• Journals
• New Journal
• The Troutman Center's new journal is forthcoming, reconceptualized in the spirit of the Berkeley Review of Education, meaning the journal will be an online open access publication, provide a venue for the critical mentorship of graduate students by faculty, and, long-term, be largely run by and for graduate student early career scholars.
• Past Journals
• Journal of Critical Multicultural Education: Working at the Intersections of Resistance, Restorative Justice, and Revolutionary Change
• Journal of PRAXIS in Multicultural Education
• Special Issue of the Journal of PRAXIS in Multicultural Education: A Historical Perspective of NAME (National Association for Multicultural Education)

SCHOLARSHIP-TO-PRACTICE

• Critical Professional Development (CPD) Speaker Series
• 2016-Present CPD Series Speakers
• Lit Learning Series Sessions
• Ethnic Studies Virtual Teach-In and Community Dialogue
• Community-Embedded Engagement Teaching and Research Internship Options
• Education, Training, & Consulting Services
• American Physical Society (APS), Division of Plasma Physics (DPP), Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Organizing Collective Committee: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvR8g5PwmDk&feature=youtu.be

History

In 2004, Dr. Porter Lee Troutman, Jr., Professor Emeritus in the UNLV College of Education, founded the Center for Multicultural Education (CME). A UNLV faculty member from 1971 to 2016, Dr. Troutman was driven to establish the Center to focus attention–through research, teaching, service, and advocacy–on addressing long-standing educational inequities and injustices through multicultural education. As the second and, to date, the second-longest serving African American faculty member at UNLV, Dr. Troutman experienced–including as a faculty member–many of the inequities and injustices that he fought to dismantle through the Center's efforts. Under Dr. Troutman's leadership, between 2010-2014 the Center founded, edited, and published the Journal of Praxis in Multicultural Education, hosted the 11th (2001) and 20th (2010) annual international conferences of the National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME), and built a partnership with the Clark County School District's Equity and Diversity Education Department through which pre-eminent scholar-practitioners in the field of multicultural education, including Dr. James A. Banks, Dr. Geneva Gay, Dr. Donna Gollnick, Dr. Carl Grant, Dr. Sonia Nieto, and Dr. Christine Sleeter, provided an array of campus- and community-based professional development offerings. In one way or another, all of these endeavors continue to this day. "We are grateful for Dr. Troutman's foundational work to establish the Center," noted Dr. Danica G. Hays, Dean of the College. Furthering this gratitude, the Center was formally renamed in Dr. Troutman's honor as The Dr. Porter Lee Troutman, Jr. Center for Multicultural Education in 2023.

People

The Dr. Porter Lee Troutman, Jr. Center for Multicultural Education is co-led by Christine Clark (Co-Director), who is a Professor and Senior Scholar in Multicultural Education and Founding Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion, and by Norma A. Marrun (Co-Director), who is an Associate Professor of Cultural Studies, International Studies, and Multicultural Education. Dr. Clark and Dr. Marrun are faculty members in the COE's Department of Teaching and Learning and co-lead graduate certificate programs and master's and doctoral degree programs in the Cultural Studies, International Education, and Multicultural Education (CSIEME or "See Me") emphasis area. Dr. Tonya Walls, UNLV Part-Time Instructor and Community-Embedded Educational Activist, Dr. Tara J. Plachowski, an independent Equity-focused Educator and Scholar, and Dr. Noah Romero, Assistant Professor of Native and Indigenous Studies @ Hampshire College, and Dr. Danielle Mireles and Dr. Marla Goins, both Assistant Professors of Cultural Studies, International Studies, and Multicultural Education @ UNLV, are Troutman Center Affiliates. Dr. Walls is has worked to deepen the Troutman Centers's education-related community embeddedness, first through her Equity Matters: Examining the Black Education Pipeline research and praxis project, and more recently through her Code Switch: Restorative Justice for Girls of Color non-profit. Dr. Plachowski develops literature reviews to support Troutman Center scholarship. Dr. Romero is working, through an intersectional lens, to extend the Troutman Center's race-conscious focus on U.S. Black and Brown students and commmunities, to meaningfully engage with educational priorities for U.S. First Nations/Indigenous and Asian American students and communities; he has been central the development of the Troutman Center's new Skate Pedagogy initiative that will be piloted in 2024. Dr. Mireles and Dr. Goins have been involved with several Troutman-affiliate grant projects, including the "Racially Literate DisCrit Analysis: Pre-Service Teachers’ of Color Lived Experiences of Racist Ableism and Preparedness to Serve PK-12 Students of Color and their Families/Communities" Nevada Department of Education (NDE)-funded mini-grant for which Dr. Goins is project PI and Dr. Mireles is lead author for the first forthcoming publication based on project findings, as well as for new research projects that will begin in the Fall of 2023. All five Affiliates are also doing their own research and producing their own scholarship in areas related to the goals and objectives of the Troutman Center. Cecelia "Édan" González is the Troutman Center's Graduate Research Assistant, a Ph.D. student in the CSIEME program, and a state Assemblywoman (District 16).

Guiding Circle

Troutman Center workers are supported by esteemed national and local guides who inspire, advocate for, support, and inform their work.

JOIN US!

The Troutman Center for Multicultural Education has a foundation–roots if you will–so some clear directions it will pursue. AND the Troutman Center for Multicultural Education has no ceiling–thus it has wings–so we would love to hear about other directions you would like to see the Troutman Center pursue through collaboration with you. While we can never know for sure what such collaboration might look like, we are sure we can figure that out through meaningful engagement with you and that, together, what we build will have transformative impact. Contact us at UNLVcme-group@unlv.edu to get involved.