Fifty years ago, when the University of Houston-Downtown was founded, its mission was to meet the needs of Houston’s diverse and dynamic workforce. That mission quickly expanded to a focus on becoming a premier, metropolitan university, appealing to traditional and nontraditional students, including working professionals. Echoes of that mission remain today with an added emphasis on driving socioeconomic mobility; contributing to the social, intellectual, and cultural lives of local communities; and growing as an anchor institution. In that vein, UHD’s current strategic plan considers what it means to be a comprehensive regional university driven by public purpose in the fourth largest and most diverse city of the United States. The question that drives our work is simply, “How do we serve the complex needs of our city while maintaining academic excellence and optimizing the success of both our current student body and our alumni?”
UHD’s answer to that question is multi-layered, including academic programming that is intricately tied to local workforce needs and career competencies, a heavy and growing emphasis on service learning across a number of fields, student success initiatives ranging from the provision of basic resources and non-traditional aid to holistic advising and academic support services, and a growing portfolio of local partnerships. Most recently, through a partnership with Downtown Houston Plus, UHD relocated three offices focused on post-degree success into a space nicknamed The Launchpad. Located at 1801 Main Street, The Launchpad now houses UHD’s Career Center Annex, Office of Alumni Relations, and Office of Continuing Education. Moving these critical offices deeper into Downtown Houston is strategic, driving smoother transitions into the workforce for current students and improved career mobility for alumni, while simultaneously stimulating the academic and professional development interests of downtown residents and workforce members.
The Launchpad is also where the university will begin to establish a Center for Crime, Urban Research, and Education (C-CURE). This center will provide technical assistance to local agencies and foster innovative solutions to the complex challenges of the greater Houston area through rigorous research and evaluation. One of the C-CURE undertakings, for instance, would include aggregating data from multiple law enforcement agencies in Harris County to complete research briefs and advance viable solutions that improve safety within and across our urban communities. Currently, crime and victimization data in Houston and Harris County is largely disaggregated across multiple agencies, such as the Houston Police Department (the largest law enforcement agency in Texas and the fifth largest nationwide), the Harris County Sheriff’s Office (the largest sheriff’s office in Texas and the third largest nationwide), and eight Harris County Constable Precincts, including the nation’s largest constable's office by population size and personnel, Precinct 4. To further complicate the matter of data aggregation and analysis, the Houston metropolis, spanning neighboring counties of Austin, Brazoria, Chambers, Fort Bend, Galveston, Liberty, Montgomery, and Waller, includes additional city and school district police departments, college police agencies (one being the University of Houston-Downtown’s Police Department), specialized agencies, such as Houston Metro Transit Authority, and multiple Texas Department of Public Safety divisions. As even one with no law enforcement background can imagine, while the size of the Houston metropolitan area requires separate policing agencies, the division of agencies also poses a challenge to meaningful analysis of crime and victimization data. Yet, increased data aggregation is necessary to inform policy, employ predictive technologies most effectively, and improve preventive work and cooperation between agencies. Currently, the University of Houston-Downtown is gathering insight and recommendations from various Harris County community stakeholders across the disciplines of criminal justice, education, and social work, to gain a deeper understanding of agency needs and data challenges, informing avenues for support of community initiatives and gathering information necessary to create the infrastructure for aggregating crime and victimization data effectively and meaningfully in support of local agency needs.
The University of Houston-Downtown’s locale positions us to lead in this important work. As home to a law enforcement academy and nationally recognized criminal justice degree programs, UHD has consistently produced leaders in the criminal justice field, including such proven leaders as Chief of Police Noe Diaz Jr. of the Houston Police Department, Sheriff Ed Gonzalez of the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, and Constable Alan Rosen of Harris County Precinct One, to name a few. Through this center, we will advance our progress in preparing the next generation of highly trained professionals in criminal justice and related fields, engaging collaborative initiatives to bridge the gap between experiential learning, community engagement, and practical solutions. Not only will C-CURE promote Houston’s safety and economic development, as the Center grows, it will provide internship placements and hands-on learning opportunities to competitive scholars majoring in criminal justice and related fields, such as data analytics, artificial intelligence, and social work, increasing our academic excellence and optimizing career preparation while generating digestible data to unpack the complex interconnectedness between crime, education, and urban issues and to advance practical solutions. As Houston is the fourth largest city in the nation and the largest city in the state of Texas, C-CURE will undoubtedly have a reciprocal benefit to the state of Texas.
As a member of the Coalition for Urban and Metropolitan Universities, UHD not only believes in the public purposes of higher education, but we also work to carry out that belief with strategic, place-oriented action and service-minded programming. As we often say in our Gator community, “UHD is more than a university in Houston; UHD is a university for Houston.” The University’s plans to establish a Center for Crime, Urban Research, and Education and its move of offices focused on career transition and post-graduation success into the heart of Downtown Houston underscores the university’s commitment to serving the city of Houston well.