UNCF Scales Up Student Success Coaching for HBCUs

United Negro College Fund (UNCF) has announced a four-year initiative to help students at historically Black colleges and universities access and complete college. The project will expand on a yearlong pilot that utilized student success coaching from InsideTrack to help former HBCU students re-enroll in higher education.

Supported by funding from Strada Education Network, the Macquarie Group Foundation and Blue Meridian Partners, the new program will provide one-on-one success coaching services over four years for 10,000 prospective HBCU students, 4,000 freshman and sophomore HBCU students, and 3,000 stop-out HBCU students who have not completed their degrees. UNCF will work with InsideTrack to create a shared services model for HBCUs that will provide training and staff development support to build institutions' internal capacity for student success coaching and help make student success efforts financially sustainable for the long term.

Participating institutions include Benedict College, Bethune Cookman University, Claflin University, Clark Atlanta University, Dillard University, Florida Memorial University, Jarvis Christian College, Johnson C. Smith University, Lane College, Morehouse College, Philander Smith College, Stillman College, Talladega College, Voorhees College and Wiley College.

"Research — and lived experience — tell us that HBCUs offer a strong positive return on investment for their graduates, while also making a powerful contribution to social mobility across generations," said Edward Smith-Lewis, vice president of strategic partnerships and institutional programs at UNCF, in a statement. "This work is about equipping our member institutions to scale high-impact support services that can help current and prospective HBCU students achieve their education and career aspirations. It's also about helping HBCUs sustain the long-lasting change for alumni, families and communities that we know they are uniquely capable of producing."

"To make good on the promise of HBCU access and completion, we must use every tool at our disposal to enhance the student experience and remove barriers to student success," commented Dr. Glenell Pruitt, provost and vice president of academic affairs at Jarvis Christian College. "This collaboration with other HBCUs and national partners will enable us to pull out all the stops and build our capacity to deliver high-impact student services on our campus."

About the Author

Rhea Kelly is editor in chief for Campus Technology, THE Journal, and Spaces4Learning. She can be reached at [email protected].

Featured

  • abstract illustration of a glowing AI-themed bar graph on a dark digital background with circuit patterns

    Stanford 2025 AI Index Reveals Surge in Adoption, Investment, and Global Impact as Trust and Regulation Lag Behind

    Stanford University's Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) has released its AI Index Report 2025, measuring AI's diverse impacts over the past year.

  • modern college building with circuit and brain motifs

    Anthropic Launches Claude for Education

    Anthropic has announced a version of its Claude AI assistant tailored for higher education institutions. Claude for Education "gives academic institutions secure, reliable AI access for their entire community," the company said, to enable colleges and universities to develop and implement AI-enabled approaches across teaching, learning, and administration.

  • lightbulb

    Call for Speakers Now Open for Tech Tactics in Education: Overcoming Roadblocks to Innovation

    The annual virtual conference from the producers of Campus Technology and THE Journal will return on September 25, 2025, with a focus on emerging trends in cybersecurity, data privacy, AI implementation, IT leadership, building resilience, and more.

  • From Fire TV to Signage Stick: University of Utah's Digital Signage Evolution

    Jake Sorensen, who oversees sponsorship and advertising and Student Media in Auxiliary Business Development at the University of Utah, has navigated the digital signage landscape for nearly 15 years. He was managing hundreds of devices on campus that were incompatible with digital signage requirements and needed a solution that was reliable and lowered labor costs. The Amazon Signage Stick, specifically engineered for digital signage applications, gave him the stability and design functionality the University of Utah needed, along with the assurance of long-term support.