A renewed focus to help men of color
By Madeline Patton, Published March 4, 2010

Helping someone without offending him or her requires sensitivity, awareness and keen personal skills. The challenges involved in developing the right approach for helping men of color to succeed in college was the subject at several discussions at the recent Achieving the Dream (ATD) Strategy Institute.

“If you treat them as if they need to be fixed, it won’t work,” said Stephanie Hawley, associate vice president of college access programs at Austin Community College (Texas), during a discussion about successful initiatives for men of color.

She suggested that programs focus on minority men’s strengths rather than on negative and societal factors.

“We need to understand that African-American men have strengths, creativity and adaptability. If they have sense enough to come—and we are inviting them to come—then we need to focus on what will work for them,” said Hawley, whose doctoral dissertation focused on African-American students’ persistence.

Making classroom instruction more engaging for men of color is “an opportunity for the institution to strengthen and improve the quality of the learning experience they create for all students, regardless of race or socio-economic status,” Hawley added.

Achieving the Dream’s emphasis on data analysis and open conversation among stakeholders as part of decision-making processes typically carries over into frank exchanges at the annual ATD meeting, where faculty and staff from participating colleges learn from colleagues, classroom coaches, data facilitators and others. More than 100 community colleges have participated in the initiative since 2004.

At the annual institute last month, officials from several ATD colleges said men of color are the focus of new or expanding programs on campuses because their persistence lags behind other cohorts, and their six-year graduation rates linger in single digits.

It is important to address the needs of low-income students and students of color—particularly minority men—because their responses are often early indicators that college practices or programs are not working, said Bill Ingram, president of Durham Technical Community College (North Carolina). These students are often “the first to suffer when a policy is not tied to student success,” he said.  

Tracking data gathered to advance equity and excellence is a key aspect of Achieving the Dream. The initiative places equity at the heart of student success because different students have different needs for resources and support.

ATD recently launched an online Equity Resource Center to help colleges recognize, assess, act, evaluate and sustain equity interventions for low-income students and students of color. The American Association of Community Colleges, which works in partnership with ATD, also collects information on community college programs to help improve the success of minority male students on its new Minority Male Student Success Database.

Colleges with experience developing programs for minority male students that are featured on the ATD Web site and AACC’s new database include:

• Durham Tech, which is integrating its Early Alert Initiative with an orientation program that is required for all first-time students. One-on-one counseling that students receive in response to faculty referrals during the first six weeks of the semester seems to increase persistence and academic success, according to the college. Durham Tech has found that if students attend four, 30-minute tutoring sessions, they generally pass courses.
• Montgomery County Community College (Pennsylvania) is scaling up its mentoring program this spring to provide 500 African-American men enrolled in two or more developmental courses with mentors. The expansion is driven by the strong performance of mentees during a demonstration project and by findings from focus groups that found students want help from a caring person who is a good listener, said Steady Moono, vice president of student affairs at the college.
• In Michigan, Jackson Community College’s Men of Merit program includes tutors and brings successful African-American businessmen to campus to teach workshops and to mentor African-American male students. The program is in response to recommendations from a community summit and to data that identified the need to connect African-American male students with positive role models. Only 16 percent of the young men in the college’s service area grow up with a father living at home, and few of them have positive male figures in their lives, according to Lee Hampton, director of multicultural relations at the college.
• Oklahoma City Community College (Oklahoma) has found that raising awareness about the availability of financial aid is helping more minority students persist. Prior to the college’s all-out effort to remove financial barriers, many students who qualified for financial aid never applied for it, mainly because they were apprehensive about filling out forms, said Harold Case, the college’s dean of financial support services.