Nearly 500 of the almost 1,200 Black males who are enrolled at Ohio State University have a cumulative grade point average of 3.0 thanks to the work of Dr. James L. Moore, III and the staff at the school’s Todd Anthony Bell National Resource Center on the African American Male.
Moore, who holds the College of Education and Human Ecology Distinguished Professorship of Urban Education at Ohio State University (OSU) and currently serves as associate provost and director of the Bell Center, revealed the encouraging numbers to dozens of scholars who have gathered this week in St. Thomas for the second annual international colloquium on Black males in education. .
While the six-year graduation rate of Black males at OSU still hovers at about 67 percent, Moore says that progress has definitely been made. “You have to know where we’ve come from,” he says matter-of-factly, often telling his students: “Your GPA is like your social security number. It sticks with you.”
In 2005, the university named the Bell Center after Todd Anthony Bell, the former OSU football player who later went on to play professionally for the Chicago Bears. It was founded to address issues in society that impact quality of life issues for Black males.
“Males in general and males of color in particular, are not functioning at an optimal level,” says Moore, who appeared on a panel with other noted researchers from colleges and universities across the country who shared best practices for recruiting and retaining African American males to their campuses. “We’re losing Black males at every generation.”
The three-day colloquium, organized and spearheaded by Dr. Jerlando F. L. Jackson who directs Wisconsin’s Equity & Inclusion Laboratory and holds the Vilas Distinguished Professorship of Higher Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is largely focused on highlighting successful program outcomes that offer solutions aimed at solving the series of problems that confront Black males in education.
