About seven years ago, Columbia University welcomed its first HBCU Fellowship cohort, allowing students who had graduated from historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) to pursue select master’s degrees in the university’s School of Professional Studies (SPS), all the while getting financial, career, and academic support.
Zelon Crawford
"Graduate and undergraduate degrees are expensive,” Crawford says. “And so, we were trying to ensure that the students can focus on their academics, learning and meeting one another, networking, getting a job, and getting into graduate school. We're trying to defray as much of the financial burden from them as possible."
These advantages provided by the program — one of SPS’s “enrichment” programs — follow the fellows while they pursue their master’s degree at SPS and last a set number of semesters expected for degree completion.
Fellows are expected to engage with and give back to the campus community. From the start, applicants are asked about matters of leadership, community, and impact on Columbia and beyond, Crawford says.
Cohorts range from 17 to 20 fellows each and draw graduates from several HBCUs. In its first few years, the program only saw applications from students coming from the “usual suspects,” such as Howard, Hampton, Spelman, and Tuskegee universities, according to Crawford.
But through information sessions, graduate fairs, and partnerships with groups like the United Negro College Fund (UNCF), Columbia has been making a deliberate effort to recruit students more broadly.
