What We Do
students can keep moving forward.
ABOUT CEO
Potential exists everywhere, but opportunity does not always reach students in the same ways.
The University of Michigan Center for Educational Outreach connects university faculty and staff with each other and with K-12 students, schools, and communities around a shared goal: helping more young people across the state to find opportunities that match their goals and interests, connecting them with the people, information, and experiences to pursue them.
What Does This Look Like On a Typical Day?
Each Connection Can Lead To Another
Connection builds momentum. Momentum moves access forward. That is what “Access That Moves” means at CEO.
“Access That Moves” shapes how we think about students, partnerships, and what educational outreach can make possible.
There is no single route to a good future. Students need room to explore, change direction, and define success for themselves.
What This Looks Like: A student explores a university, community college, technical program, career, or another path to discover what fits. Across Michigan, CEO connects schools, colleges, universities, nonprofits, and state partners so students can move between opportunities with stronger support.
The right connection can make an unfamiliar next step feel possible. Students find information, ask questions, build confidence, and keep moving forward.
What This Looks Like: A student meets with CEO or one of CEO’s partners who helps them understand a next step they were unsure how to take. CEO brings educators, families, communities, and U-M partners together so those connections happen more often.
Students need more than polished success stories. Honest stories about uncertainty, changing plans, setbacks, and growth can help them see more ways forward.
What This Looks Like: A student hears from someone whose path was not straightforward and recognizes part of their own experience in that story. CEO creates opportunities for students, educators, alumni, families, and partners to share what their journeys actually looked like within high schools, in campus visits, through digital storytelling and more.
New people, places, ideas, and experiences give students more information about what their future could hold.
What This Looks Like: A student steps onto a campus, enters a lab, explores a new subject, or meets someone in a career they had never considered. CEO helps U-M faculty, staff, and community partners create experiences that make unfamiliar opportunities easier to see, understand, and explore.
CEO’s History: A Legacy of Connection
2009: CEO Begins
The Center for Educational Outreach (CEO) was founded in 2009 in response to Proposal 2, as the University of Michigan considered new ways to strengthen educational access and opportunity. Under the leadership of founding director Dr. William Collins and with the vision of Dr. Lester Monts, CEO began with a belief that still shapes the center today: students should have opportunities to see themselves in higher education and understand what it takes to get there.
2010–2016: The Early Years
Some of CEO’s earliest programs included Camp Kinomaage, Maximizing Academic Success, Rising Scholars, and College 101. Students came to campus, explored college, built academic skills, and met people who helped make higher education feel more familiar. Those early programs helped establish something that continues across CEO today: access grows when students have real experiences and real people alongside them.
2016–2024: Connecting Outreach Across U-M
From 2016 to 2024, CEO was part of the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and its role across the university grew. Alongside programs that worked directly with students, CEO increasingly connected people doing educational outreach across U-M. The center supported communities of practice, strengthened outreach systems across campus, and worked with faculty, staff, schools, and community partners to make educational outreach more connected and easier to navigate. That period reinforced something that continues to shape CEO today: possibility expands when people across campus work together, build on one another’s momentum, and extend the reach of what any one program could do alone.
2025–Today: Building What Comes Next
Today, CEO continues this work as U-M’s hub for K–12 educational outreach within the Access and Opportunity unit inside the U-M Office of the Provost. CEO connects people and efforts across the university and communities throughout Michigan, strengthens partnerships, and helps more students encounter the information, relationships, and experiences that can move them forward.
In 2025, CEO marked its 15-year anniversary with the storybook Celebrating 15 Years of Educational Outreach, bringing together stories from students, advisers, faculty, staff, and 26 U-M campus partners.