The National Center for Educational Alliances works to expand higher education opportunities in the United States and abroad by increasing the number of disadvantaged students who enter and successfully complete college and by promoting collaboration among schools, colleges, and other community and local organizations.

The National Center for Educational Alliances began in 1975 as an educational agency based at Bronx Community College and in 1991 the Center was established by the City University of New York to help two- and four-year colleges prepare disadvantaged students for college degrees and to promote K-16 partnership development.

The Center managed the Urban Partnership Program, a decade-long Ford Foundation initiative begun in 1991 to foster educational reform through broad-based collaboratives in 16 urban sites in the United States and Puerto Rico. Drawing upon lessons learned from the landmark UPP initiative, the Center then oversaw the initial phase of the federally-funded GEAR UP program (1998-2000) by offering pre-application workshops and conducting partnership development institutes for 165 GEAR UP grantees.

In the decade from 1995-2005, the Center’s embarked on sustained international work in South Africa. With support from The Ford Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development, the Center drew upon its UPP experience to help establish the South Africa Partnership program (1995-1998), arranged an 11-day study trip in Cape Town, Durban, and Pietermaritzburg for 150 US and South African partnership leaders (1998), offered technical assistance to and arranged staff exchanges with colleges in South Africa’s Midlands (2000-2005), and currently work with institutions in KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape to increase student mobility from one type of institution to another and to promote inter-institutional dialogues.

At Bronx Community College, the Center applies lessons learned from its national and international work and reaches out to faculty and staff as it coordinates and prompts campus-based international efforts. The Center promotes study abroad for students and faculty oversees an annual International Education Week, manages spring seminars for BCC students at the United Nations and in Salzburg, Austria, deploys visiting Fulbright scholars in BCC classrooms, and in 2005, in conjunction with the International Commission on Transitional Justice, launched the BCC Tolerance Center.

As part of its dissemination effort, Center directors Richard Donovan and Barbara Schaier-Peleg and senior fellows Dennis McGrath and William Van Buskirk wrote The Collaborative Advantage: Lessons from K-16 Educational Reform (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), a book designed to assist those interested in instituting or improving K-16 collaboration or other inter-institutional efforts in their communities.