By Kaya Do-Khanh | Special to The OBSERVER
The seminar room of Sacramento State’s new Black Honors College was packed shoulder to shoulder Feb. 19, with people eager to hear details about the nation’s first school specifically designed to serve all students who are interested in Black history, life and culture, and to support Black and African American students to greater success.
“This is not a program, this is a college,” said Sacramento State President Luke Wood, adding that the new Black Honors College opening this fall is fashioned in the spirit of HBCUs of the South and Northeast.
Wood began his overview of the college by reviewing the California State University 2023 report, which found retention and graduation rates lagging among Black students across CSU campuses. Wood, who was a part of the office of the chancellor’s strategic workgroup for the report, said that there were several recommendations made by the report to advance Black student success, but Sacramento State did not want to pick multiple recommendations and implement them at a mediocre level.
“We’re going to pick one thing and we’re going to do one thing well,” Wood said. “And that was to do something that has never been done before outside of an HBCU, which is to have an honors college that is specifically designed to serve students who are from the Black community, who are interested in Black history, Black life and Black culture, and to use that as a way to protect the environment so that students are leaving having their brilliance, dignity and morality extolled.”
Wood said that the college is a significant investment with its own dedicated space and its own set of faculty. The general education courses in its curriculum are specifically focused on the Black and Pan-African experience and taught by faculty who have a demonstrated record of success in teaching and serving Black students.
“We have to acknowledge that we have structures and systems and policies and practices that are perfectly designed to reduce the outcomes of these students,” Wood said. “We want to change the outcomes so we have to change the system, and that’s what this is all about.”
The tagline for the college’s mission is “cultivating the courageous leaders of tomorrow.” Wood said that while the university is building this Black Honors College and building resource centers focused on minority students, there is a whole other part of the country doing the opposite, which includes challenging the validity of critical race theory and ethnic studies. He said that such perspectives and comments motivate and reinforce the importance of why they are doing what they are doing.
The program is open to students of all races, as race will not be identified on the application for the college, but staff director Ruth Williams said the idea for the college was sparked because of the lackluster Black retention rates cited in the CSU report, so there is a goal to close the achievement gap of Black students. In recruiting for the college, Williams said they are seeking out spaces where Black students congregate, such as attending Black Student Union events, local churches and the Martin Luther King Jr. Center on campus.
“We’re going where the Black students are located and being intentional with that, because we do want to support the success of all of our students and right now our Black student retention rates are lowest,” Williams said.
Vice President for Student Affairs Aneisha Mitchell also said that the college has a designated outreach coordinator who will recruit at high schools and community colleges across the state and, eventually, the country.
Williams said they want the students to not only be successful academically while enrolled in the Black Honors College but also to be set up for their future careers.
“I want for our students when they graduate to truly know who they are and what they are capable of,” Mitchell said.
The leadership board said they were overwhelmed by the support they have received from the public.
Looking to the future, Wood said that 20 years from now, they want to be able to look back and see that there are other Black honors colleges and universities across the country that can support one another. Sac State plans to create a set of standards for what would constitute a Black honors college; the university will take part in verifying and vouching for other institutions that would want to implement similar colleges to ensure they are created with the right intentions and resources, with a focus on the Black community.
“Thank you for being a part of history in the making at Sacramento State on February 19th,” Wood said.
Applications for the honors college are open.