Our nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) continue to graduate African American science and engineering baccalaureates at disproportionately higher rates than all other institutions of higher education (NSF, 2015). Despite a national imperative to diversify the STEM disciplines, however, these institutions continue to be excluded from national STEM education reform efforts. 

AAC&U respects the deep cultural traditions of HBCUs. As such, the Preparing Critical Faculty for the Future (PCFF2) program not only focuses on the historical missions of these institutions to educate underrepresented and underserved communities, but also seeks to capture the learned lessons in of these institutions, particularly in retaining and graduating underrepresented minority STEM baccalaureates, to expand its own capacity to promote liberal education for all students. Specifically, the PCFF2 program engages in collaboratively planning with campus leaders to design the actions needed to achieve the specific aims of: leadership development for STEM women faculty of color; systemic change in undergraduate STEM education reform; expanded support for undergraduate STEM reform beyond the STEM disciplines; and long-term institutionalization and sustainability of these efforts.

Project Goals

The overall goals of the project are to:

• advance the PCFF² STEM women faculty of color as institutional change agents for undergraduate STEM reform; and
• advance the development and integration of models of undergraduate STEM educational innovation into mainstream STEM higher education reform.

Participating Institutions

Albany State University
www.asurams.edu

Benedict College
www.benedict.edu

Bennett College
www.bennett.edu

Coppin State University
www.coppin.edu

Edward Waters College
www.ewc.edu

North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University
www.ncat.edu

North Carolina Central University
www.nccu.edu

University of Maryland Eastern Shore
www.umes.edu

Winston-Salem State University
www.wssu.edu

For more information about the AAC&U PCFF Program contact Ariel Kirkland at [email protected].