FORT LAUDERDALE—If you ask Spelman College student Genesis Thigpen about some of the pressing challenges that face historically Black colleges and universities, retention is at the top of her list.
“I think students have to understand how important it is to stick it out and get the degree,” says Thigpen, a rising junior from Jackson, Miss., who is majoring in economics. “Going to an HBCU can be a difficult thing, especially if someone doesn’t have the money to stay in school. It can be very easy for someone to just drop out.”
Thigpen, a summer intern at the United Negro College Fund’s Atlanta office, had a captive audience of HBCU presidents from 37 of the UNCF member schools who gathered here for three days to share best practices and to train a spotlight on the use of data in their decision-making processes.
The 3rd annual UNCF Career Pathways Initiative Convening & Data Institute brought together HBCU leaders to strategize about the 21st-century workforce, large-scale change and how to prepare students for a rapidly changing, technology-driven world.
The theme of this year’s conference was “Purposeful Disruption” and included breakout sessions focused on how institutions are integrating strategies to improve student success and career outcomes. There were also opportunities for institution leaders to discuss how they made mistakes, failed, and were able to rebound.
“We need to have more opportunities to talk to each other,” says Laverne Maon-Jamison, assistant director of Institutional Effectiveness and Research at Livingstone College, a small, private, historically Black college in Salisbury, N.C. “Sometimes HBCUs get a bad rap, but we don’t do a good job at always telling our story. We are accepting students into college and giving them a chance to succeed.”
Promoting collaboration across institutions was the point of the convening, which was sponsored by the Lilly Endowment, Inc. Other goals included finding ways for institutions to effectively use technology on their campuses and developing skills on how to best execute data-analysis projects.
