CONTEXT
Since its inception in 2000, the University of Southern California’s Center for Urban Education (CUE) has built up a robust suite of racial equity tools to help practitioners (university faculty and staff) move toward racial equity in higher education by building equity-mindedness. Those who’ve used the tools have had great success applying their new knowledge—but they’ve needed a coach to walk them through the comprehensive materials. This has made these invaluable tools impossible to implement at scale. Touch was asked to work with the existing content to produce a straightforward and impactful online resource that would efficiently engage users and empower them to drive toward racially equitable outcomes on their campuses.

OUR APPROACH
Our team began with an audit of existing content—including research about the use of the current tools—and workshops to clarify goals and audience. Next we developed a system architecture, which helped us explore how best to connect information and resources, and improve the overall functionality of the tools. From there, our Design and Strategy teams worked together to produce the full website, focusing on making the what, how, and why of the tools clear. We leveraged the credibility of the existing USC brand through thoughtful use of imagery, texture, and typography, extending the familiar into a modern look and feel.  

Our Video team joined and helped bring the story of the tools to life on the homepage, couched in important context and quotes from leaders. The tools themselves are aimed at inspiring action-oriented change in faculty, staff, and leaders—all of whose collaboration is essential to achieve racial equity in higher education—and the site welcomes in a variety of users to engage with the content.   

With reports of success continuing to roll in from a variety of users, Touch has continued this engagement by synthesizing large bodies of research into shorter case studies about CUE’s racial equity work, including one focused on Colorado community colleges’ success using these tools. Touch also helped build on a large CUE effort reviewing California community college equity plans, spotlighting Santa Monica College’s exemplary plan and providing a short overview and a checklist for others developing similar plans. To date, the Center for Urban Education’s site has received 22,000 page views, and the Racial Equity Toolkit PDFs have been downloaded over 6,000 times.