Dr. James McPartland earned his B.A. and M.A. from Cornell before coming to Johns Hopkins, where he worked with Hopkins sociologist James Coleman and wrote his dissertation on the resegregation of schools. For years he served as Executive Director of the Center for Social Organization of Schools at Hopkins. He describes working on the 1966 Coleman Report ("Equality of Educational Opportunity"), extending its findings into CSOS projects with Baltimore city schools, and controversies surrounding race and integration. He concludes with thoughts about the CSOS's first 50 years and the future of it and other programs. This oral history is part of the Hopkins Retrospective oral histories series.

Dr. Joyce Epstein, who earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from Johns Hopkins (1974), is a research professor of education and sociology at the JHU School of Education and director of both the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships and the National Network of Partnership Schools. She discusses joining JHU's Center for Social Organization of Schools in 1974, working with James Coleman, a CSOS project with the Howard County School District, changing technologies and methods for performing quantitative research, challenges of conducting research and partnerships with school districts, and the impact of CSOS during its first 50 years. This oral history is part of the Hopkins Retrospective oral history series.