HBCUs Use Federal Funding to Connect Students and Communities

Vendors and providers have also helped fill some gaps with regular visits to campus to provide learning opportunities.

“We have a large student workforce,” says Moore. “Students work in the software security center and the network operations center. That gives them hands-on skills in technology and project management, and they can even get certified before they graduate. It gives our students a lot of pride.”

Bennett College Upgrades Wi-Fi and Creates a Community Program

When Bennett College received its nearly $700,000 CMC grant in 2023, IT Director Mondrail Myrick earmarked the funds for campus Wi-Fi upgrades. However, he also used some of the grant for a unique, no-cost, one-year certificate program called E-CAMP, in which community members and Bennett students together study entrepreneurship, coding and artificial intelligence.

Bennett, an all-women undergraduate HBCU located in Greensboro, N.C., has already graduated its first cohort of students from the E-CAMP program.

Joan Williams, the E-CAMP program director and director of library services at Bennett, both managed and participated in the first year of the program.

“We started with about 25 in the coding class and 10 in the entrepreneurship class,” says Williams. “For the community, it was an opportunity upscale their skills and potentially move into a different arena.”

LEARN MORE: How community partnerships propel one college’s technology center.

Tioluwani Onadeji, a senior at Bennett majoring in computer science, was also in the first cohort of the E-CAMP program.

“It was an opportunity to get certified in Python,” says Onadeji. “We learned about how it was used for AI and cybersecurity.”

Because she was already familiar with computer languages, Onadeji helped other students during study sessions. She also learned from and networked with instructors from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, the largest HBCU in the area, which partnered with Bennett for the E-CAMP program.

“The A&T professor kept asking me what graduate programs I had applied to, and was inspirational in moving me forward. Another student in the class told me about a Ph.D. program where I could apply for a full scholarship,” says Onadeji.

The second cohort started in the winter of 2024. Williams is hopeful for the future.

“I want the community to see Bennett as a resource that can help people,” she says, “whether they want to move into something different or strengthen their skills where they are.”