“PROSPERING BECAUSE THAT’S ITS HISTORY”: BLACK RESILIENCE AND HONORS DEVELOPMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION: MORGAN STATE UNIVERSITY AND THE STATE OF MARYLAND, 1867-1988

This study explores the origins and development of honors education at a Historically Black College and University (HBCU), Morgan State University, within the context of the Maryland higher education system. During the last decades, public and private institutions have invested in honors experiences for their high-ability students. These programs have become recruitment magnets while also raising institutional academic profiles, justifying additional campus resources. The history of higher education reveals simultaneous narratives such as the tension of post-desegregated Black colleges facing uncertain futures; and the progress of the rise and popularity of collegiate honors programs. Both accounts contribute to tracing seemingly parallel histories in higher education that speaks to the development of honors education at HBCUs. While the extant literature on honors development at Historically White Institutions (HWIs) of higher education has gradually emerged, our understanding of activity at HBCUs is spotty at best. One connection of these two phenomena is the development of honors programs at HBCUs. Using Morgan State University, I examine the role and purpose of honors education at a public HBCU through archival materials and oral histories. Major unexpected findings that constructed this historical narrative beyond its original scope were the impact of the 1935/6 Murray v Pearson, the first higher education desegregation case. Other emerging themes were Morgan’s decades-long efforts to resist state control of its governance, Maryland’s misuse of Morrill Act funds, and the border state’s resistance to desegregation. Also, the broader histories of Black education, racism, and Black citizenship from Dred Scott and Plessy, the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation to Brown, inform this study. As themes are threaded together, Critical Race Theory provides the framework for understanding the emerging themes. In the immediate wake of the post-desegregation era, HBCUs had to address future challenges such as purpose and mission. Competing with HWIs for high-achieving Black students was one of the unanticipated consequences of the Brown decision. Often marginalized from higher education research literature, this study will broaden the research repository of honors education by documenting HBCU contributions despite a challenging landscape.

(inter)FACE: A Study of Black Families Advocating for their Children’s Education

Black students are consistently overrepresented in categories of academic underachievement. Parent engagement has long been touted as an effective strategy for improving the educational outcomes of Black children. However, most parent engagement research reflects deficit based perspectives frame Black parents as problems that must be fixed or mitigated before they can positively contribute to their children’s education. Consequently, parent engagement research and frameworks ignore the perspectives of Black parents and the assets they use to participate effectively in parent engagement. In this case study, I draw on individual and focus group interview data, documents, and observations, to examine how fifteen Black families, collectively known as FACE: 1) define and participate in parental engagement, 2) experience barriers to and opportunities for engagement, and 3) experience benefits of engagement for their children and their own personal development. Guided by Black Feminist and Critical Race Theories, I show how Black families in this study used a myriad of engagement strategies to improve their children’s educational experiences which were invisible to schools and how they used school-sanctioned engagement activities to meet their own objectives. Ultimately, I argue that school-centered parent engagement frameworks and models are ineffective for empowering Black families and accounting for the essential ways that these families contribute to the well-being of their children. Based on my findings, I discuss implications for theory, practice and policy, and research, and make recommendations for a more family-centered approach to parent engagement.

Ready for Transition: Factors that facilitate transfer to undergraduate engineering programs among Black African and American students

This study examines the factors facilitating the transfer admission of students broadly classified as Black from a single community college into a selective engineering college. The work aims to further research on STEM preparation and performance for students of color, as well as scholarship on increasing access to four-year institutions from two-year schools. Factors illuminating Underrepresented Racial and Ethnic Minority (URM) student pathways through Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) degree programs have often been examined through large-scale quantitative studies. However, this qualitative study complements quantitative data through demographic questionnaires, as well as semi-structured individual and group. The backgrounds and voices of diverse Black transfer students in four-year engineering degree programs were captured through these methods. Major findings from this research include evidence that community college faculty, peer networks, and family members facilitated transfer. Other results distinguish Black African from Black American transfers; included in these distinctions are depictions of different K-12 schooling experiences and differences in how participants self-identified. The findings that result from this research build upon the few studies that account for expanded dimensions of student diversity within the Black population. Among other demographic data, participants’ countries of birth and years of migration to the U.S. (if applicable) are included. Interviews reveal participants’ perceptions of factors impacting their educational trajectories in STEM and subsequent ability to transfer into a competitive undergraduate engineering program. This study is inclusive of, and reveals an important shifting demographic within the United States of America, Black Africans, who represent one of the fastest-growing segments of the immigrant population.

BLACK, MALE, AND HIGH-ACHIEVING: AN EXAMINATION OF A RISK FACTOR AND CULTURAL RESOURCES FOR BLACK MALE ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT

Black boys are confronted with unique educational circumstances. They are often misdiagnosed and misplaced into special education programs (Bush-Daniels, 2008; Patton, 1998; Terman et al., 1996). Additionally, they are less likely to be enrolled in gifted and talented programs, even if their former achievements reflect their aptitude to succeed (Black Alliance for Educational Options, n.d.; Moore & Flowers, 2012). Given these statistics, a considerable emphasis has been placed on the causes and the consequences of low/under achievement for this population. As a result, the experiences of Black males who are achieving have been greatly neglected. Moreover, little is known about the factors that facilitate academic achievement among high-achieving Black boys. In an effort to bring the heterogenic nature of schooling experiences for Black boys to light, the present study examined the influence risk and protective factors had on the academic experiences of high-achieving Black boys. Grounded in the risk and resilience framework and the Integrative Model for the Study of Minority Youth Development, this study explored whether the high-achieving Black high school boys in this sample (n =88) reported experiencing discrimination (i.e. academic-based) and how this academic-based discrimination related to their 1) academic performance (i.e. GPA), 2) perceptions of math ability, and 3) race-based academic self-concept. In addition to exploring how academic-based discrimination was linked to academic achievement, this study examined how cultural resources such as racial socialization messages and racial identity related to academic achievement. Specifically, cultural socialization, preparation for bias, egalitarianism, private regard and public regard were evaluated alongside the three academic outcomes under study. Finally, the study explored whether aspects of racial socialization or racial identity buffered the effects of discrimination on any of the outcomes. Interestingly, the race/ethnicity of the student mattered for how students perceived their math ability. The risk factor academic-based discrimination was linked to academic performance. Cultural resources cultural socialization, preparation for bias, and private regard were linked to various academic outcomes of interest. There was only one significant moderating effect: a high private regard buffered the relationship between academic-based discrimination and race-based academic self-concept. Limitations and implications of this study are discussed.