Four historically Black colleges and universities will each receive $300,000 from the United Negro College Fund to create a campus-based or virtual liberal arts innovation center that focuses on merging the technical discipline of STEM, healthcare, education, and finance into the liberal arts. The goal of the program is to enable the HBCUs to expand research, provide training and development opportunities to faculty and staff, and to incubate and test approaches to implementing embedding technical disciplines into the liberal arts.
The HBCUs that are participating in the program are Fayetteville State University in North Carolina, Voorhees College in Denmark, South Carolina, Talladega College in Alabama, and Dillard University in New Orleans.
“The economic mobility for students who have a base in a liberal arts education is evident. UNCF is eager to cross-pollinate liberal arts pedagogy into professions that will provide the all-encompassing skill sets that 21st-century employers value,” said Dr. Michael L. Lomax, president and CEO of the United Negro College Fund.