About Us
SERVE’s mission is to work collaboratively to provide high quality research, evaluation, and customized support that drives positive educational outcomes for all learners.
We believe:
- Servant leadership is foundational to our success. We value our SERVE colleagues and partners and genuinely enjoy helping one another succeed as we create positive synergy.
- SERVE hires and partners with the very best in our field. Given that, our focus must include:
- showing up for one another, acting with empathy, and bringing our authentic selves to work each day.
- a healthy working environment that is collegial, honest, and determined, while also humble and respectful
- an appropriate work-life balance that is recognized and valued
- a commitment to evolving and adapting, growing through our mistakes, and truly serving one another.
- As we work with our colleagues and partners, each of us is responsible for creating an environment that identifies, includes, and enhances the talents and skills of individuals who represent a wide range of backgrounds and experiences.
- Growth and learning opportunities are an important and necessary part of our professional and personal continuous improvement.
- Educational research, evaluation, and customized support must provide new learning and actionable insights for positive impact.
- Effective communication and collaboration are required in delivering high quality, thoughtful, user-friendly products and services to those we serve.
- Relationships are strongest when partnerships are built to be reciprocal and mutually beneficial. We are active listeners who offers brave spaces for problem solving and crucial conversations.
- A diverse portfolio of projects allows us to broaden our outreach to various communities and connect them to each other and to resources.
The SERVE Center at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro provides high quality research, evaluation, and customized support that drives positive educational outcomes for all learners. Permeating everything we do is our commitment to engaging collaboratively with our clients to do high quality, important and useful work.
Our research efforts include everything from large scale experimental studies to small scale qualitative work on topics ranging from early childhood to high school reform. We conduct project evaluations for states, districts, schools, and organizations. We also publish syntheses of research and specialize in making complex topics accessible. Our goal is to support your efforts to improve education.
SERVE has been awarded well over $200 million in contracts and grants, successfully managed 16 major awards including four consecutive contracts for the Regional Educational Laboratory for the Southeast (REL-SE) funded by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) at the US Department of Education (USED), five awards from USED for the National Center for Homeless Education (NCHE), a five-year Technology Grant for Coordinating Teaching and Learning in Migrant Communities, and most recently, a five-year project to operate the Region 6 Comprehensive Center. In 2022, the Early College Research Center was launched, building on nearly two decades of research on early college outcomes and a national reputation for expertise in the field.
In addition, SERVE secured contracts from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction to operate the North Carolina Homeless Education Program in 2008 and the North Carolina Foster Education Program in 2016, and multiple contracts to support Title I programs, 21st Century Afterschool programs and the North Carolina Migrant Education Program. Through these initiatives and many others, SERVE has provided extensive technical assistance at the local, state, and national levels, and has developed and disseminated hundreds of thousands of products aimed at improving youth opportunities and outcomes at school, home, and in the community.
For more than 30 years, we have worked with educators and policymakers to improve education and we are committed to continuing these efforts. As we work with our colleagues and partners, each of us is responsible for creating an environment that identifies, includes, and enhances the talents and skills of individuals who represent a wide range of backgrounds and experiences. Doing so underscores our commitment to all learners and lays the foundation for our work.
We are committed to engaging collaboratively with our clients and our number one goal is quite simply, to SERVE.
