The NYU Hip Hop Education Center (HHEC), housed within the Metropolitan Center for Urban Education (Metro Center), today, announced the launch of “Getting Real,” its latest partnership series with the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison) and The Teachers College of Columbia University. “Getting Real” is a new Hip-Hop videoconference course that will be offered to students at all three universities beginning September 2012.

NYU’s Hip-Hop Education Center Announces Fall Launch of Tri-Campus Video Series, “Getting Real”

The NYU Hip Hop Education Center (HHEC), housed within the Metropolitan Center for Urban Education (Metro Center), today, announced the launch of “Getting Real,” its latest partnership series with the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison) and The Teachers College of Columbia University. “Getting Real” is a new Hip-Hop videoconference course that will be offered to students at all three universities beginning September 2012. The semester-long series is also free and open to the public. Students will receive priority. For additional information, contact Martha Diaz, director of the Hip Hop Education Center at Martha.diaz@nyu.edu.

“The Hip-Hop Education Center continues to keep us connected to the current work in the field, but this time through technology,” said Pedro Noguera, Metro Center director. “I’m looking forward to collaborating with our partners to engage our students and the public at large in this Hip-Hop conversation to illustrate how this phenomenon continues to impact education, culture, and society.”

Curated by Willie Ney, director of UW-Madison’s Office of Multicultural Arts Initiative (OMAI) and HHEC Director Martha Diaz, the series will be hosted by Noguera and Ernest Morrell, director of the Institute for Urban and Minority Education (IUME). Guest speakers will include MC Lyte on the campus of UW-Madison, Chris Walker, Marcella Runell Hall, Jen Johnson, Christopher Emdin, and Carlos “Mare139” Rodriguez. Class topics include: Promising Practices for Utilizing a Social Justice Hip-Hop Pedagogy: Notes from the Real World; Art for the Next Century: How Graffiti Transformed Contemporary Art and Remixed History; From the Source to the Course: Issues and Strategies for Collaborative Hip-Hop Scholarship; Rhyme, Rhythm & Resistance: Afro-Cosmopolitanism, Art and Public Pedagogy in South Africa’s Social Justice Struggles.

“UW-Madison is proud to be in partnership with the Hip-Hop Education Center and its partners for “Getting Real,” said UW-Madison Vice Provost Damon A. Williams. “Our role as the only university campus with a spoken-word and Hip-Hop arts residential learning community is magnified and supported through these innovative approaches to teaching an emerging discipline in cutting-edge art. This cooperative venture will bring learning into a virtual forum and result in the creation of a transcendent national instruction network.”

Since launching in 2010, the HHEC has cultivated Hip-Hop scholars, teaching artists, cultural workers, activists, and social entrepreneurs to utilize the Hip-Hop power to educate and transform communities. A key strategy for the HHEC is to partner with institutions of higher learning and community building organizations in order to professionalize the field of Hip-Hop education and contribute best practices to the education reform movement at-large. One of the main goals of the HHEC, OMAI and IUME collaboration is to develop a teaching certificate for teaching artists, in-service teachers, and students of education using Hip-Hop in the classroom and extended-day programs.

About The Office of Multicultural Arts Initiative (OMAI)
The Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives (OMAI) provides culturally relevant and transformative arts programming to promote positive social dialogue and to give cultural art forms a legitimate academic forum. By harnessing the broad cultural influence of spoken word, hip hop and emerging, as well as traditional art forms, OMAI initiatives create learning environments that improve retention and graduation success and prepares future leaders to reinvest in their communities. By continually refreshing this paradigm that integrates traditional academics and cutting edge arts activism, OMAI empowers transnational leaders with new tools for inclusive community building. Founded in 2005, OMAI is a unit of the Office of the Vice Provost for Diversity and Climate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. http://omai.wisc.edu.

About The Institute for Urban and Minority Education (IUME)
The Institute for Urban and Minority Education (IUME) was created in 1973 to serve the interests of those students who are often hidden, disregarded, or underestimated. IUME’s mission is to use research and practice to illustrate the most promising practices in schools and out-of-school settings where youth are learning powerfully and feeling good about themselves while doing so. IUME is also interested in rethinking the way we conduct research as well as how we often perceive those populations who are the focus of research in urban education. Through work with university based researchers, classroom teachers, students, parents, community advocates and elected officials they hope to create networks committed to the relentless pursuit of educational excellence.http://iume.tc.columbia.edu/index.asp

About The Hip Hop Education Center (HHEC)
The Hip-Hop Education Center (HHEC) cultivates and develops Hip-Hop scholars, teaching artists, activists, and social entrepreneurs in the effort to professionalize the field of Hip-Hop Education and inform the larger education sector. It achieves this through qualitative and quantitative research, program evaluation, community outreach and programming, teacher training and placement, policy development, advocacy, archiving, and social enterprising. www.hiphopeducation.org.

About The Metropolitan Center for Urban Education (Metro Center)
The Metropolitan Center for Urban Education (Metro Center) is a comprehensive, university-based center that focuses on educational research, policy, and practice. Housed within the NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, the Metro Center is a partner and resource at the local and national levels in strengthening and improving access, opportunity, and the quality of education in our schools. Our mission is to target issues related to educational equity by providing leadership and support to students, parents, teachers, administrators, and policy makers. For 40 years, the Metro Center has been a transformational force inspiring positive change in schools, districts, and regions across the country. To learn more, visit http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/metrocenter

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