Additional Materials

• Director's Notes
• Dana Center Brochure 139K PDF

About the Dana Center

The Dana Center provides Texas education leaders with new knowledge about teaching and learning. We also support K–12 teachers and leaders working to implement high academic standards for all students.

Our vision is for Texas to lead the nation in the achievement of its students and the quality of its workforce. Our mission is to support education leaders and policymakers in strengthening Texas education.

We are committed to an education system that nurtures students' intellectual passions and ensures that every student leaves school prepared for postsecondary education and the contemporary workplace.

History of the Dana Center

The Charles A. Dana Center began at the University of California at Berkeley in the 1970s. The Dana Center's director, Uri Treisman, then a UC Berkeley graduate student, developed an early version of the Emerging Scholars Program.

ESP began as a workshop program designed to increase the number of college freshmen excelling in calculus who come from groups underrepresented in mathematics-based disciplines. The Dana Center at The University of Texas at Austin was established in 1993 by UT mathematics professor Uri Treisman and UT administrator Jackie McCaffrey, then director of special projects in the College of Natural Sciences. Their purpose was to create programs that support the efforts of Texas students, especially ethnic minority and rural students, to achieve at the highest academic levels and to pursue advanced degrees in mathematics-based fields.

The Dana Center was established and continues at UT Austin with major funding from the Dana Foundation of New York.

Early in its history, the Dana Center took a leadership role in strengthening precollegiate mathematics and science education. In the late 1990s, the Center helped coordinate the development of the mathematics and science Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, which articulate what more than 4 million Texas children must know and be able to do in these academic subjects.

The Dana Center reinforced this work by collaborating with school districts and community-based organizations to increase educational access for all Texas students, especially those challenged by poverty. Today, the Dana Center has a presence in hundreds of Texas schools and in virtually every county across the state.