The University of the West Indies creates exchange programs with HBCUs

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UWI To Establish Study-Abroad Programmes With HBCUs​


June 2, 2022
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L-R: Chairman of U.S. President Joe Biden’s Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities and President of Delaware State University Dr. Tony Allen, Jamaica’s Ambassador to the United States Her Excellency Audrey Marks and Pro Vice-Chancellor and Principal of University of the West Indies (Mona) Professor Dale Webber

Professor Dale Webber, Pro Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, visited several universities in the USA last week to explore expanded collaboration in research and exchange programmes.
He placed particular focus on a group of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in the United States, to start the process of creating opportunities for Jamaican students attending the UWI to incorporate a study-abroad experience.
This will entail the creation of exchange programmes for students at UWI Mona and students attending HBCUs to have reciprocal stays of a semester, a year or two years at the participating universities, while completing their degree programmes.
The framework for the collaboration was laid following a series of meetings organised by Jamaica’s Ambassador to the United States, Her Excellency Audrey Marks, between the UWI and several HBCUs institutions in Washington DC, Maryland and Delaware in the USA.
Professor Webber, along with UWI Campus Registrar Dr. Donavon Stanberry, and bursar Catherine Park-Thwaites, were in the United States meeting with top-level officials of the HBCUs since last week Monday, to work out the details of the proposed collaboration.
Chairman of US President Joe Biden’s Board of Advisors on HBCUs, Dr. Tony Allen, said: “What’s clear to me, particularly for Black students, whether they are in Jamaica or the United States, is that they have the same opportunity for success as we relate to one another and we build capacity for them to seize opportunities.”

Dr. Allen, who is also President of Delaware State University, pointed out that “There are strategic interests between the West Indies, Jamaica, and Black America as it relates to how we educate our children. To be able to connect the broader HBCUs to what is effectively the sixth region of the African diaspora is important to us. That is why relationships like the one we are building with the UWI here with Delaware State will be equally valuable, and if done well will serve as a model for other HBCUs around the country.

“The opportunities being offered are to do joint degree programmes, where you start a degree programme at Delaware State, and you can complete that programme at the UWI. Our university has done similar programmes with other universities outside of the US, and implementing this with the UWI would be a win-win situation,” Dr. Allen said.

His international affairs department will be visiting Jamaica early next month with a view to finalising the discussion, which will result in the signing of an MOU. He described the meeting with the Jamaican delegation and the Ambassador as very fruitful and a strong beginning for what will be beneficial to both universities.

Ambassador Marks said she was very pleased that the HBCUs had accepted her invitation to have a direct conversation with the UWI, Mona, given the important role that HBCUs continue to play in educating members of the Jamaican diaspora in the United States.

“We strongly believe that we have so much more similarities than differences between the University of the West Indies and the HBCUs but, to date, we have not fully organised ourselves to utilise these similarities to build strengths.
“It is important that African-American students can travel to Jamaica or the Caribbean, not only to get a degree but to broaden their education experience and world view, where they are not constrained by being a minority.

“It’s also very important for the UWI to have more exchanges where we give our young people an opportunity to go abroad for even a semester or a year and get that different experience; they come back transformed not only for themselves but also for their families, their communities and the wider country,” Ambassador Marks observed.
HBCUs are higher-education institutions within the United States that were originally established with a mandate of providing opportunities to African-American students. This was done in the 19th century to offset the historical injustices of slavery and later segregation and their resulting impact on education within the Black community.
There are currently just over 100 HBCUs in the United States, representing approximately three per cent of US higher-education institutions. These are concentrated around the south-eastern United States. While predominantly catering to Black/African-American students, non-Black students make up approximately 24 per cent of enrolment at HBCUs
 
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get these nets

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Some more context to this story, as detailed in previous threads.

African Americans and West Indians were collaborating to create what would have been the 1st HBCU in 1831, in New Haven, CT.

Whites in the town organized , voted against it, and blocked it.



There was a study published in 1933 about the history of West Indian students at Howard University from 1867 to 1933.


I updated that thread with a new related video. In it, the same gentleman from UWI and a woman representing Howard U. discuss the relationship between their schools that goes back 90+ years.

The OP article is about formalizing and expanding exchange programs between schools from the different countries, but this is hardly something new.
 
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