Here is an article in today's local paper regarding an award we received yesterday to retrofit our campus.
The Prez
Higher-education sites win federal repairs aid
BY TRACIE DUNGAN AND CAROLYNE PARK
ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Public and private universities and colleges in Arkansas will get $42.5 million in federal stimulus funds to use for renovation, expansion and energy upgrades of campus facilities, Gov. Mike Beebe announced Monday.
The University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and Arkansas State University at Jonesboro will each get $4 million of that amount. The University of Central Arkansas at Conway is getting $3 million.
In addition to the money for higher education institutions, the governor said some state agencies, service providers and specialty schools will receive $26.6 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds.
Altogether, it’s roughly $70 million in recovery funds this round. The governor’s office said Beebe still has $6.3 million left to allocate.
In all, Arkansas’ estimated share of recovery funds for a wide range of agencies and services is $2.9 billion, according to the Web site recovery.arkansas.gov.
Campus representatives welcomed news of the federal dollars Monday, saying crumbling or decrepit facilities will get a boost in a time of tight budgets.
“It will be extraordinarily helpful,” said UALR Chancellor Joel E. Anderson. “Money to address critical maintenance needs is the hardest kind of money to get.”
UA-Fayetteville will use its stimulus funds to shave a little off the price tag for its multimillion-dollar campus-maintenance proposal, said Don Pederson, vice chancellor for finance and administration.
In January, the campus unveiled the most ambitious building-upkeep proposal in school history to the UA board of trustees. Then estimated at $218 million, it was described as a backlog of repairs and renovations that has been postponed for decades. The 15-year plan targets 16 buildings initially.
The money is one-time funding, and there are certain restrictions, Pederson said. For example, athletic facilities or new construction are not allowed.
UA-Fayetteville will use some recovery money for a dozen elevator upgrades in nine campus buildings: Mullins Library, the health, physical education and recreation building, the Sam M. Walton College of Business building, Kimpel Hall, the science building, the plant science building, Memorial Hall, the administration building and the off-campus Continuing Education building that the university bought about two years ago, Pederson said.
Other UA projects include roof repairs and replacement for the physics building, Kimpel Hall, the health, physical education and recreation building, Memorial Hall, the Engineering Hall, the Human Environmental Sciences building, the music building, the Old Fieldhouse, the plant science building, and the Speech and Hearing Clinic, he said.
In Little Rock, UALR’s $4 million in stimulus funds will be used to replace an aging and inefficient heating, ventilation and air-conditioning system at Fribourgh Hall on the west side of campus, Anderson said. The building is about 70,000 square feet and includes science classrooms, labs and faculty offices.
“Fribourgh is 36 years old, and it’s in bad need of a new HVAC system with much more energyefficient equipment,” he said.
The project is expected to save UALR money by reducing energy costs, Anderson said. It’s at the top of a list of more than $9 million in proposed projects UALR officials submitted to the Higher Education Department in early March.
ASU will use its $4 million for several projects on the Jonesboro campus, including renovations and upgrades to physics, chemistry and biology labs, Provost Daniel Howard said.
“We have labs that date back to the early 1970s that we have not been able to upgrade,” he said. “This is a tremendous infusion of $4 million. It has both immediate and long-lasting impact for our university.”
ASU also plans to replace an aging boiler that serves several buildings on campus, upgrade elevators, and install more energyefficient windows in one of the residence halls, he said.
UCA plans to make its $3 million in stimulus funds “stretch as far as possible” across several projects, said Jeff Pitchford, UCA’s vice president for university and government relations.
Earlier this year, UCA submitted 47 proposed projects to the Higher Education Department. Among the top priorities are replacing roofs on the Burdick Business Administration building, Stadium Park Apartments and McCastlin Hall, which is one of the oldest buildings on campus, he said.
Twenty-two buildings, including several dormitories, will be waterproofed, and more energyefficient lighting will be installed in several buildings.
“It’s going to fund some projects that have been on our wish list for a while, but we’ve never had enough money for,” he said.
UCA will request bids for the projects as soon as possible.
“Hopefully, in between 30 and 60 days, we’ll have crews here doing this work,” Pitchford said.
At Philander Smith College in Little Rock, construction already is under way on several projects designed to cut energy costs, said Walter M. Kimbrough, the college’s president. This spring, officials completed a full assessment of campus facilities and upgrades needed to improve energy efficiency.
The college’s $500,000 share of the stimulus money will help pay for those projects, which total about $1.2 million.
“This helps us jump-start what we’re trying to do immediately, and then there will be some savings for us as well over time. It was perfect timing for us,” Kimbrough said.
While many of the college’s buildings were either built or renovated within the past decade, many weren’t built with energyefficient features, Kimbrough said. Lighting systems campuswide have been replaced this summer, and new heating and air-conditioning units are being installed in some of the older buildings, which date back 40 or 50 years.
The projects are expected to save the college more than $100,000 in reduced energy bills annually, he said.
“That money makes a big impact for us,” Kimbrough said. “We’ll be able to apply our stimulus funds immediately.”
Henderson State University at Arkadelphia will use its $2.9 million in stimulus funding for campus renovations to Foster Hall, as well as energy-efficiency renovations to heating, ventilating and air-conditioning units, and lighting systems, said Charles L. Welch, HSU president.
At ASU-Mountain Home, the funds will be used to replacing a heating, ventilating and air-conditioning system and make other energy-saving changes. The school also will replace carpet in hightraffic areas that “has deteriorated to a point of being a safety issue,” said John Davidson, vice chancellor for administrative affairs.
“We expect that these modifications would decrease energy consumption and provide the college with cost savings that would exceed the initial investment within the next five to six years,” he said.
“Unfortunately, we do not have the cash on hand to make these modifications currently and maintain sufficient cash flow for operations.”
Matt DeCample, the governor’s spokesman, said that while the governor couldn’t quantify the jobs this batch of recovery funds would create, he estimated that “hundreds would likely be helped, both in job creation and creating work that could help retain other jobs.”
Information for this article was contributed by Michael R. Wickline of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and Julie Stewart for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Stimulus funding
Gov. Mike Beebe today announced the distribution of $42.5 million of America Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds for highereducation institutions and $26.6 million in funding or potential funding for other Arkansas projects.
SOURCE: Gov. Mike Beebe’s offi ce Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Here is a report from Marian McPherson who spent a month in Atlanta.
The Prez
This summer (June 28- August 1) I worked with MARTA, which is the transit authority for greater Atlanta metropolitan area. I was able to gain experience in many different areas, from Public Relations to Research and Analysis. I learned a wealth of knowledge about the Transit industry, how a major Public Relations department works, as well as how to do Data Analysis.
In addition to my work experience, I also got to gain some life experiences by living in my own apartment in downtown Atlanta, learning how to get around by train, and meeting some amazing people in the ATL!
Here is a great story about one of our Rwandan students that appears in the current issue of SYNC Weekly.
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Building bridges
Arkansas college program helping to transform Rwanda
By Spencer Watson
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
LITTLE ROCK — Fifteen years after a systematic genocide led to the deaths of an estimated 1 million people, or around 20 percent of the population, in the small landlocked country, an Arkansas-based program is helping that nation to rebuild through education.
“The program was actually started by President [Paul] Kagame himself in 2006. The concept was that Rwanda would identify its best and brightest students in science and arrange to have those students educated abroad in other countries,” said David Knight, vice chairman of the Hendrix College board of trustees, who was on a visit to Rwanda in 2006 when he heard about the program launching at Oklahoma Christian University and contemplated how Hendrix could get involved.
Ultimately, the agreement was that a group of U.S. educators would travel to Rwanda and interview the students who scored highest in math and sciences on the country’s post-high school national examination. The very best of those would be offered scholarships, could earn a degree here, and would return home afterward to help rebuild their country. The focus on math and sciences, said Knight, was the choice of Rwanda, which lost many of its leading minds in the genocide. And unlike business or finance, advanced education in most sciences takes work in labs that just aren’t available in Rwanda.
So in the fall of 2007, a pilot group of four students came to the Conway college to study under the Presidential Scholars Program. They were so successful academically, Knight said, that last year 25 more students came over — and by then four other schools in Arkansas and one in South Carolina had joined the program. This summer, 52 more students have come and will start in the fall. At the same time, the number of participating schools has grown to 12 — a mix of both public and private universities and colleges — in five states. Since the students are educated in French, they first come to Arkansas for an intensive multi-week course in English before spreading out to their respective schools.
While the key to growth has been making it easy for schools to participate by handling all the program administration through Hendrix, Knight said, the key to success has been the students themselves. Collectively, at the end of last fall the group had a grade point over 3.7. Twelve of the 29 students here then had a perfect 4.0.
“Absolutely I’m a believer that this is a two-way bridge,” said Knight, who pointed out that while the students and their home country will benefit greatly from their American education, the schools themselves benefit from having these minds on campus. “They’re extremely intelligent, diligent and hard working.”
Photo by Shannon Sturgis
Alex Mugengana, Philander Smith College
Alex wants to help people. Studying chemistry, he hopes to be able to take his studies further into medical school and become a doctor, something that isn’t always available back home.
“People have to travel abroad from Rwanda to get medical care. There is not enough,” he said.
So coming here was “a great opportunity. We have colleges and universities back home, but they cannot compare with universities here,” he said, pointing to differences in labs, which actually allow you to practice what you study, and closer interaction with professors. And then there is the library where he works. An avid reader, he notes how accessibility to books is so much greater here.
But he hasn’t spent all his time reading. Like a lot of 20-year-old college students, he loves the Wii and has become a fan of TV’s 24 and Prison Break. He also has taken a liking to American football and basketball. Baseball, not so much.
The fourth oldest of nine children, Alex was not actually born in Rwanda, but in Tanzania, where his parents had fled in 1959, when the civil conflicts that persisted into the ’90s began. They moved back to the capital city Kigali in 1995, the year after the genocide, an event Alex doesn’t talk much about.
“It was a disaster for us,” he says, simply and sadly.
Being separated from his family is probably the hardest part of being here, he said, but he keeps in touch with them — less frequently the longer he’s here, not unlike most American college students.
“They are very proud of me. They encourage me to work hard,” he said. “It is a privilege to come and study abroad and get an advanced degree.”
Terica and David are interns at the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center. According to their site (http://www.mosaictemplarscenter.com/):
The museum is dedicated to collecting, preserving, interpreting, and celebrating African American history, culture and community in Arkansas from 1870 to the present, and informs and educates the public about black achievements – especially in business, politics and the arts. Through special events, education programs, and ongoing research, the museum celebrates African American heritage in Arkansas.
Terica and David were Public Information Officer Interns. They both will have opportunities to work throughout the school year, since the museum is just a few blocks from campus. We recently received a great letter from their supervisor praising their work, and we love that kind of feedback.
The Prez
This article appeared in Sunday's paper. I'm thankful the paper agreed to publish my piece, especially in light of the fact that I am criticizing their editorial staff for a limited world view. So they get points for printing my dissenting view.
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Sorry, Michael Jackson, it matters if you’re black or white
BY WALTER M. KIMBROUGH SPECIAL TO THE DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
Count me in that number of people worldwide who have been consumed with the events surrounding the death of Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson provided a great deal of the soundtrack of my life, from my first dances as an elementary school student where songs from Off the Wall were played, to Thriller being released when I was in high school and my neighbor Junior learning the entire zombie dance routine. In college, my fraternity exited a step show to Bad, and I Remember the Time I started my professional career.
Michael was an otherworldly entertainer. His music was fun and energetic, and he danced like no one before or since. He took the fledgling music-video format and created masterpieces that have not been matched. He is the world’s bestselling musical artist, with over 750 million albums sold. Within a week after his death, his albums dominated the Billboard charts again, selling almost 1 million copies.
I realized the brother was a little strange. Okay, a lot. But the stories of an abusive father pushing a 5-year-old to become a star explain Michael to me. A commentator on BET recently remarked that this was the real life curious case of Benjamin Button. The young Michael was so mature for his age; the older Michael very childlike. Yet this complex man could claim me as a fan, as well as millions of people worldwide. Michael Jackson matters . . . except to the editors of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Frank Fellone, deputy editor of the paper, recently noted in a column that some had called and written asking about the lack of coverage of Jackson’s death. Fellone explained why his death (and subsequent memorial) was not front page news. He indicated that the death of an entertainment figure “would not fit the definition of important, significant or consequential.” He also shared that the paper should be consistent, so Jackson was treated like Frank Sinatra in 1998.
Why does our paper have such a narrow, homogeneous, and, frankly, white privileged view of important, significant, and consequential? I was once told by an editor when the paper did not cover James Carville’s lecture last year that he wouldn’t try to tell me how to run a college and I should defer to the professionals. So I looked at other papers to see how they covered the Jackson memorial.
The USA Today, New York Times, and Washington Post ran front-page stories. My hometown Atlanta Journal-Constitution, as well as the Virginian Pilot and Cincinnati Enquirer, places I have lived, had front-page coverage. Our comparison cities for Better Together Metro Little Rock—Columbia, Tulsa, and Austin—all covered the memorial on the front page, as did neighboring papers in Dallas, Houston, and Oklahoma City.
That’s a lot of front-page coverage, a lot of professionals saying Jackson was “important, significant and consequential.” In fact, Jackson’s memorial was front-page news in Berlin, London, Madrid, Brussels, Salvador, and Bogota. The mere fact that Michael caused 1.6 million people worldwide to request two of 17,000 tickets to attend his memorial, is statistically significant. Thirty-one million people watched the memorial on television—sounds important. He holds the record for most charities supported by an entertainer, and charitable giving is consequential.
Fellone and company unfortunately determine what is newsworthy based on their limited world view. It doesn’t make them bad people; it just means they lack an appreciation of the diversity of our state and the world. For Fellone to suggest that Frank Sinatra is comparable to Michael Jackson is absolutely ridiculous. People in China didn’t give a damn about Sinatra. They passed out when they saw Michael. Sinatra was good. MJ created things we had never seen or heard before. He was the best. Fellone’s world view caused him to miss this point, and there aren’t different views at the paper to challenge his.
Michael Jackson wanted to believe it didn’t matter if we were black or white. It does, and our statewide daily paper reminds us of this every day. Few stories are covered of importance to people of color. No substantive editorials considered the impact of Michael Jackson, yet an 800-pound pig that ends up in a pool is worth discussing. The pig ended up as front-page news. The day after the world watched the memorial and most newspapers had a picture from the event on the front page, we had a picture of a cloud of smoke from a bomb being destroyed in Afghanistan where we have been for almost eight years.
Fred Zipp of the Austin American-Statesman wrote a piece in June entitled “What Makes Front Page News.” He listed 10 characteristics of a front page story. Off the bat, they use broader criteria to determine what qualifies as front page news. Zipp explains, “Done right, the page should inform and explain, surprise and delight. Done best, it’s a revelation.” The revelation for me is that until the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette embraces a diversity of thought, the public is cheated. They cheat themselves too.
Defining what is newsworthy depends on your worldview; it’s completely subjective. Simply put, it often matters if you’re black or white when it comes to being printed in black and white.
Sorry MJ.
Walter M. Kimbrough is president of Philander Smith College in Little Rock.
Good article about the way HBCUs need to operate in the future. PSC gets a great mention as well.
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New Approach on Black Colleges
July 21, 2009
Inside Higher Ed
WASHINGTON -- Asked at the end of his first day in office to compare his agenda to those of his predecessors, John Silvanus Wilson Jr. declines to do so. But the Obama administration's director of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities is very clear in an interview that he's looking for a new approach to talking about black colleges.
The standard "against great odds" narrative, he said, needs to be replaced. It suggests a focus on "survival and maybe victimization," said Wilson. "Black colleges will never be as strong as they can be unless that narrative changes.... We need to shift from how to survive to how to thrive."
Wilson, formerly an administrator at George Washington University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, turned to film soundtracks as a metaphor. When black colleges "go out and seek support, the soundtrack that philanthropists and prospects hear is dominated by violins, and we need to go out and seek support where the soundtrack is trumpets. I helped raise a lot of money at MIT, and we never played the violin. The trumpet is about greatness and the violin is about pity. We don't need support that comes from pity, but investment that comes from a belief in what we can do."
And while Wilson wouldn't talk about the previous focus of the White House black college office, asked about its work trying to help black colleges win more federal grants, he said, "the challenge has got to expand beyond working with 32 federal agencies."
While Wilson's career has been at predominantly white institutions, he has been deeply involved with black colleges, too. He has worked on several foundation efforts to help build the fund raising capacity of black colleges. He is a trustee of Spelman College. His mother went to Morgan State University and his father to Virginia Union. Wilson is a Morehouse College graduate (with a Harvard University doctorate) who takes seriously the ethos of the Morehouse Man.
"Going to Morehouse was very special for me, because the culture on the campus was one of high achievement. They expected us to do well there at Morehouse and beyond, to go out and make a mark," said Wilson.
Unlike many alumni (of all kinds of colleges), Wilson doesn't appear to view his alma mater through rose-colored glasses. When this reporter made a reference to Morehouse doing quite well, Wilson said, "I'm going to push back there." He explained: "I think Morehouse is doing quite well relative to other black colleges, but not quite well to the best of the industry, and I will insist on looking at Morehouse and other black colleges relative to the best in the industry," he said. "We should not trying to be the best black institutions, but the best institutions."
Many black colleges are facing a series of common problems, Wilson said: "low faculty salaries, insufficient financial aid, often poor facilities." And "the common denominator is capital impairment." He said that even the wealthiest black colleges have a fraction of the funds found at leading American colleges and universities.
The only way more funds will be found, he said, is "to look at the value proposition of black colleges," which at most institutions "has been minimally addressed for a long time."
A focus on the value proposition may be especially important, he said, for those colleges that are struggling right now. Paul Quinn College is facing the threat of losing its accreditation. Clark Atlanta University this year dismissed 70 faculty members, including tenured professors. Shaw University's president quit in May, amid mounting debt and student and faculty criticism.
Asked about these colleges, Wilson said: "I'm concerned about their survival, just as I am concerned about the survival of any institution that is doing good things. This is about America, and therefore any institution, black or white, that is helping Americans to get an education and contribute more to society and get us out of this hole needs to not only to survive, but needs to thrive."
He added: "The issue, even for those institutions that are struggling not to go under, is the value proposition. What is it, even at this fiscal point, that they can say to the wealthiest individuals in America, what can they say that they have been doing to cause those wealthy individuals to pull out their checkbooks, and pull them back from death row, and position them to thrive? If they can't answer that question, then it's going to be a difficult road ahead. That's precisely why we need to force the question of our value proposition."
Another part of that question needs to be graduation rates, he said, echoing President Obama's statements about the importance of completion rates for all students. "Low graduation rates go to the heart of value proposition because you can't make a very good case for yourself if 85 percent of the people who start in a freshman class are gone by senior year," he said.
Wilson praised the efforts of Philander Smith College and its president, Walter Kimbrough, to adopt a series of new policies and programs to raise the graduation rates of black male students. "I think the crisis of attrition is noteworthy, but what is as, if not more, noteworthy is the fact that he is creatively instituting a program that addresses that problem and he's going after it, and making it a priority," Wilson said. "There are a lot of institutions that have not had a creative response to some of the more difficult problems on their campuses, and that's not just HBCU's. That's what leadership and governance require."
While the discussion ahead may be challenging, Wilson stressed that financial stability -- and eventual financial strength -- won't happen without this discussion. "I don't think a stronger financial base is remotely possible in the absence of a review of the value proposition issue, a fundamental overhaul of the value proposition."
— Scott Jaschik
Today, Susan L. Taylor spoke for a national meeting of Blacks in criminal justice. She arrived yesterday, and met with a group of about 50 community leaders last night to launch Little Rock Cares as part of the Essence Cares movement. She opened by citing Marian Wright Edelman, who said that today's Black children are in their worst crisis since slavery. She cited the stats we all know, and talked about Essence Cares.
This is not another mentoring program, but rather a way to connect people with the programs already in existence. The emphasis is on Black mentors, noting that when the call for mentors goes out, the order of response is (1) white women, (2) white men, (3) black women, and (4) black men. Essence Cares has partnered with a number of groups, including 100 Black Men of America, to really address this issue.
We hosted the meeting at Philander Smith College, where we just learned this week that Chinelo Bivens, a junior from Sacramento, CA, is the 2009 BBBS of Central Arkansas Big Brother of the Year for a school-based program. So we are realy pushing students, faculty and staff to find ways to serve as mentors.
Please consider being a mentor.
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Great story about our program. Inside Higher Ed is a daily on-line news source founded in 2004. It has a very wide readership.
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News
Reaching Black Men
July 14, 2009
When Walter M. Kimbrough became president of Philander Smith College, a historically black, private institution in Arkansas, he was dismayed by the graduation rates. “Just looking at all the data on our campus and the low rate of graduation for black men on the campus – it was in the teens – I asked people, 'What are we doing about this?' ” he says.
In 2006, Philander Smith’s six-year graduation rates were 11 percent for black men, 21 percent for black women, and 16 percent overall.
Despite the concern, such numbers are not unheard of among institutions that admit many students who haven't been well-prepared for college. “We deal with a lot of first-generation students, a lot of students who come from what I would consider to be horrible K-12 systems," Kimbrough says. Still, he continues, “If you admit students like that, you’ve got to do extra things for them. That’s the part that I didn’t see [happening]. We’ve admitted them, so what are we doing extra, to really boost them?”
Philander Smith in 2007 launched its Black Male Initiative, a low-budget but institution-wide, presidential-level program aimed at personally reaching the black men on campus. “The goal is to touch at least half of the men on campus each semester. Which is an aggressive goal,” Kimbrough says. Last year, over the course of 15 events, about 56.5 percent of the approximately 200 black men on campus participated (the total student population last fall was 587).
“It’s really based on the research on African-American men in higher education” – with non-cognitive variables, including attachment to the institution, levels of social adjustment, and supportive relationships with mentors playing significant roles in predicting student satisfaction and success. “Those are the things that you really have to address, that men really need to have these supportive and nurturing environments. It’s not just as simple as they need more tutoring. You could provide the tutoring, and the guys won’t come,” Kimbrough says.
Philander Smith's Program
Nationally, the six-year graduation rate for black students enrolled at four-year institutions is 40.5 percent, compared to 56.1 percent overall (and 59.4 percent for white students). Furthermore, the rates for black men trail those of black women. At four-year public universities, the graduation rate for black men is 31.4 percent, compared to 43.1 percent for black women; at private non-profit colleges, the national rates are 38.6 percent for black men, and 49.3 percent for black women.
In response to these glaring discrepancies, an increasing number of colleges have started Black Male Initiatives or other targeted programs. They run the gamut from student-run programs or clubs to initiatives managed by university systems (specifically the City University of New York and the University System of Georgia).
“People are becoming more and more aware of the need to make specific overtures toward African American men,” says Michael Cuyjet, an associate professor at the University of Louisville’s educational and counseling psychology department, and editor of the book African American Men in College (Jossey-Bass, 2006), which profiles a number of programs. “The core issue seems to be giving them some way to develop a sense of community on campus. The general research on student behavior indicates that students do better if they feel that they’re connected to the campus somehow, through academics, through extracurricular activities, through social networking -- somehow. And studies have also shown that African American men seem to have a difficult time doing that, for a number of reasons. Generally speaking, one is that a large number of African American men are socialized to not ask for help.
"It becomes necessary for campuses to provide programs like this, to take the initiative. We have to be active and not passive with this particular population," Cuyjet says.
Philander Smith’s Black Male Initiative is modest in scale, but it has the president’s bully pulpit behind it. Organizers hold a series of events throughout the year. Last year's included a “Swagger Like Us” fashion contest, judged by local celebrities, a session on how to tie a tie, a beginning golf lesson and outing (“Are You the Next Tiger?”), a number of lectures, and a bowling night. The goal, again, is to get as many black men involved as possible. “When they see our Black Male Initiative logo, we want them to say, ‘Oh yeah, that’s for me,’ ” says Michael Hutchinson, executive assistant to the president and chairman of the initiative. Hutchinson adds that they send a birthday card with the Black Male Initiative’s logo to every black male student at Philander Smith, as well.
“We first of all want to create a sense of community so that they can have a family-like atmosphere and feel that they belong,” says Hutchinson.
"When institutions have these kinds of programs for any group, the so-called usual suspects attend, the guys who are already involved, who are in leadership positions, who are doing well academically" says President Kimbrough. "What we're trying to do now is have events and then personally ask guys who never come to anything to come.
"We're a small campus so we pretty much know everyone or know something about them. We clearly know the people who no one knows anything about. We know who they are."
Retention rates have climbed at Philander Smith in recent years, although a number of variables are in play aside from the Black Male Initiative -- most notably, the university tightened admissions standards (the average high school GPA is up about 20 percent from when Kimbrough arrived in late 2004, he says), and has revamped its orientation. Whatever the reasons, or combination of reasons, first- to second- year retention rates have increased, from 50 percent in 2004-5 to a high of 75 percent in 2006-7 (in 2007-8, however, they dropped to 62 percent).
Philander Smith's six-year graduation rates have also increased, and the gender gap has narrowed. The overall rate is now 28 percent, and it's 30 percent for women, and 23 percent for men. (Ninety-seven percent of the students enrolled at Philander Smith are black.)
The budget for Philander Smith's Black Male Initiative is just $20,000 per year.
“What Philander Smith has confirmed for us, or at least for me, is it’s not about the money. It’s more about the strategic investment of institutional energies. And about being intentional in working with a particular population, to close the gaps between that group and students from other groups,” says Shaun R. Harper, an assistant professor of higher education management at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert on black male college access and achievement. Harper, who spoke at Philander Smith for a Black Male Initiative event last year, recently received a grant from the Lumina Foundation for Education to work with six different colleges to, he says, “essentially do what Philander Smith is doing, to create a culture of success for black students.”
"They actually have a strategy," Harper says of Philander Smith, "that isn't a one-time program, or a sort of isolated activity that resides in one part of the institution. Their initiative is institution-wide, it involves not only student affairs administrators but also faculty and staff, alumni of the institution and most impressively the president of the institution. It really is an all-hands-on-deck kind of initiative that is very strategic."
Amid Controversy, Continuing On
Black Male Initiative programs can be controversial, however, and a complaint levied against the City University of New York's in 2006 remains under investigation by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. Michael Meyers, executive director and president of the New York Civil Rights Coalition, filed the complaint, which alleges that the program discriminates based on race and gender in violation of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and Title IX of the 1972 Educational Amendments. While his complaint was filed against CUNY's Black Male Initiative specifically, Meyers opposes such programs in general, and has watched with dismay as more have developed nationwide. “All the characteristics of these programs are the same. They're steeped in paternalism, steeped in stereotypes about black men, that because they’re back and because they’re male they are quote-unquote an endangered species.
“I think it’s racist and it’s sexist. I mean, it’s clearly racist and it’s clearly sexist, but our colleges and our universities don’t care about that,” he says.
“The officials of these colleges know better, too. But unless they’re caught, unless they’re snagged, unless they get a kind of slapping on the wrist, instead of just a slap on the back… unless they’re given slaps on the wrist or slaps across the face and told, ‘You’re violating the law, both the spirit and the letter and the law,’ they’re going to keep doing this, with pride.”
Elliott Dawes is university director of CUNY’s Black Male Initiative, which is currently sponsoring or funding 25 projects, across the various campuses, intended to increase the enrollment and retention of students from underrepresented groups, especially African American, Caribbean and Latino males. The programs, while focused on these groups, are available to students of any race and gender, Dawes stresses. For instance, 25 men and 10 women participated in the first two cohorts of a program to develop future teachers.
The initiative has been funded by a succession of four grants from the New York City Council, the latest, for the upcoming academic year, just approved at $2.5 million.
“Our primary concern is making sure that we support projects that provide access for students from various populations, particularly the most severely underrepresented populations in higher education,” Dawes says. “Who would be against that?”
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