Inside the Development of HBCUv, a New Online Learning Platform for HBCUs

• 10/11/22

CT: When are you expecting to complete this platform?

Young: This is going to take decades to fine-tune. We imagine HBCUv being a platform that doesn't just exist for a couple years and go away; this is a long-term investment that is going to serve students at HBCUs for generations.

In terms of when are we going to see the first glimpses of the technology in action, we'll execute the first classes in HBCUv within 2023. We're basically working as rapidly as we can to get a minimum viable product out. From there, we're working with our institutional partners to pilot it, and then we're going to expand beyond those first three development partners into the nine steering committee HBCUs, and beyond those nine into potentially every HBCU out there in the U.S. So that's a quite the journey that we have to go on. It's going to take time, but we've got the resources, the expertise, and the passion to stay committed to that for the long term.

CT: How do you think this platform will change the future of online education for HBCUs?

Smith-Lewis: As we think about the challenges that many of our students face — mostly financial, responsibilities at home, a need to be close to family — HBCUv removes the need to be physically on campus at an HBCU. We fundamentally believe HBCUv will accelerate HBCUs' entry into the online space and diversify their revenue model to really think differently about student enrollment and student engagement. It will lead these institutions to be more inclusive, as we start to think about different ways of increasing flexibility for current students, students that we lost, and adult learners in terms of lifelong learning engagement, upskilling and reskilling. We believe a student at any one of America's 6,000 higher ed institutions would love to take a class from a professor at a historically Black college. And opening up that opportunity for HBCUs will not only spread the learning experience that that they provide, but also that community uplift and enrichment that they instill in every graduate.

Young: It's really about access — it's going to increase the opportunity for more students to attend an HBCU. If you're on the West Coast, it's very difficult for you to imagine attending an HBCU in the South. When you open it up to an online opportunity, it is just going to increase the access exponentially, not just to folks on the West Coast, but to folks globally. I think influence is the next area where we're going to be able to make a huge impact. Not that many people get an opportunity to listen to some of these incredible faculty members speak about subjects that often aren't taught at primarily white institutions. Being able to increase the influence that these faculty members have by opening up to a broader audience is really incredible. And I think the last area that we're going to make a tremendous impact is on opportunity: opportunities for students, both in terms of the ability to connect with folks and enable entrepreneurship, but also to connect with good, well-paying jobs. Every company out there right now is complaining about how they don't have access to enough Black talent in their workplace. By creating a connected online community, we have an opportunity to connect the students who are enrolled in an HBCU to those top employers, teach them skills that are going to give them a leg up in those entry-level positions, and give them a clear path from enrolling in college to realizing a better, more prosperous life. Those three things are really at the core of what HBCUv can promise for the future of education and for Black futures in particular. And that's what makes me excited to go to work every day.