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Posts tagged as “Xavier University”

Rutgers University Report Finds HBCUs Aid Upward Economic Mobility of its Graduates

(image via rutgers.edu)

According to The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, a new report from the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University in New Jersey has found that Historically Black Colleges and Universities are doing a terrific job fostering the upward mobility of their students, especially considering a significant share of their students that come from lower-income backgrounds.

The study also found that HBCUs are furthering upward mobility of their student population, which is drawn from the lower economic rungs, than the general college-going population at predominately White institutions.

A key finding of the report is that despite the fact that nearly 70 percent of students at HBCUs attain at least middle-class incomes after graduation. Two-thirds of low-income students at HBCUs end up in at least the middle class.

The report also identified HBCUs that are doing a particularly good job of having their graduates move up the ladder of economic success. For instance, 16.7 percent of the student body at Xavier University of Louisiana is low-income and almost one-third of these students move into the top fifth of income earners.

Tuskegee University, Bennett College, Florida A&M University, Dillard University, and Clark Atlanta University also do a particularly good job fostering upward mobility for their large share of low-income students.

The full report, Income Mobility at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, can be downloaded here.

To read more: https://www.jbhe.com/2019/10/report-finds-hbcus-do-a-great-job-in-aiding-the-upward-economic-mobility-of-their-graduates/

Five Xavier University Students Rush to Save Crash Victim as Live Wire Sparked a Few Feet Away

Xavier University local heroes (photo via fox8live.com)

by Brian Naquin via fox8live.com
A bloodstained shoe served as a reminder of just how dangerous the rescue near Xavier University‘s campus was Monday night. “Without us, he probably would have bled out and stayed in the car until the police got there,” Markevion Kennebrew said. Just before 10 p.m., Kennebrew, Moses Michael, Ronald  Haroon, Demetrious Brown and another Xavier student selflessly sprung into action after a man smashed his sedan into a utility pole then crashed upside on the embankment of the drainage canal along Washington Avenue in New Orleans.
“I told my friend I think someone is there. We just got to help then I saw these two guys,” Michael said as he pointed at Brown and Haroon. “[The driver] was like ‘please help’ and I don’t know how you can turn you back away from that,” Haroon said. “We actually made a chain and one person was holding onto the wall because it’s really steep. Dom, that’s the guy who is not here right now, he gave me his jacket and we had to pull the door open and we helped [the driver] up.”
The rescue was not only daring because of the steep embankment and mangled car below them but also because a live-electric wire that sparked in the water just feet away. “The car could have slid down in the water. He could have gotten shocked,” Brown said. “But I feel like it’s our public duty to help people in need. We weren’t thinking (about the wire). We were just thinking to get him out and get him on the street and make sure whoever’s in the car is alright.”
“I know my mom is going to be like you could have been shocked as well,” Kennebrew said. “My mom will probably be mad that I went down there but she’s still going to be happy that I helped people out just being there.”The crash knocked out power to much of the area. Emergency crews rushed the driver to the hospital. The students said he was bleeding from his head and had a large gash on his arm but was able to speak.
Before the rescue, Kennebrew and Michael did not know Brown nor Haroon and vice versa.  But after Monday, their bond formed along a dark canal is something that will never be swept away.”Once we heard someone was in there, I just think all four of us realized what we had to do,” Haroon said.
To see video of these young heroes, go to: Five Xavier students rush to save crash victim as a live wire sp – FOX 8 WVUE New Orleans News, Weather, Sports, Social

FEATURE: How HBCU Xavier University Sends More Black Students to Medical School Than Any Other U.S. College

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Students at Xavier University of Louisiana in a pre-med class. (BRIAN FINKE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)

Norman Francis was just a few years into his tenure as president of Xavier University of Louisiana, a small Catholic institution in New Orleans, when a report that came across his desk alarmed him. It was an accounting of the nation’s medical students, and it found that the already tiny number of black students attending medical school was dropping.

It was the 1970s, at the tail end of the civil rights movement. Francis, a black man in his early 40s, had spent most of his life under the suffocating apartheid of the Jim Crow South. But after decades of hard-fought battles and the passage of three major civil rights laws, doors were supposed to be opening, not closing. Francis, the son of a hotel bellhop, had stepped through one of those doors himself when he became the first black student to be admitted to Loyola University’s law school in 1952.

Francis believed he was in a unique position to address the dearth of black doctors. Xavier served a nearly all-black student body of just over 1,300. At the time, most of Xavier’s science department was housed in an old surplus Army building donated to the college by the military after World War II. It had no air-conditioning, and the heater was so loud in the winter that instructors had to switch it off to be heard. But the science program had always been strong, if underfunded, and began producing its first medical-­school students not long after the university was founded in 1925.

Today, Xavier’s campus is mostly wedged between a canal and the Pontchartrain Expressway in Gert Town, a neighborhood in the western part of New Orleans. It has some 3,000 students and consistently produces more black students who apply to and then graduate from medical school than any other institution in the country. More than big state schools like Michigan or Florida. More than elite Ivies like Harvard and Yale. Xavier is also first in the nation in graduating black students with bachelor’s degrees in biology and physics. It is among the top four institutions graduating black pharmacists. It is third in the nation in black graduates who go on to earn doctorates in science and engineering.

Xavier has accomplished this without expansive, high-tech facilities — its entire science program is housed in a single complex. It has accomplished this while charging tuition that, at $19,800 a year, is considerably less than that of many private colleges and flagship public universities. It has accomplished this without filling its classrooms with the nation’s elite black students. Most of Xavier’s students are the first in their families to attend college, and more than half come from lower-­income homes.

‘‘The question always comes: ‘Well, how did this happen, and why are we No.1?’ ’’ said Francis, who recently retired from Xavier after 47 years as president. We were sitting in the dining room of his stately home in the Lake Terrace neighborhood on a sweltering day in August as he thought about the answer. ‘‘We decided we could do something about it. And what we did, what our faculty did, was just plain common sense.’’

Xavier University exists within a constellation of more than 100 schools federally designated as historically black colleges and universities. To achieve this designation, colleges must have opened before 1964 — the year Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, which banned racial discrimination in all public facilities and institutions — and must have been founded with the express purpose of educating black Americans, though students of any race can, and do, attend them.

Xavier University to Hold its Third Annual "Give. Love. Xavier Day" to Raise Funds for Scholarships

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HBCU Xavier University of Louisiana will hold its third annual Give. Love. Xavier Day – an online, social media-driven fundraising event – from 12:00 a.m. to midnight, June 2nd.
The event encourages alumni and friends to come together for one day to show their support for the University with financial contributions. Participants are encouraged to post about the event via social networks (such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter) to spread the excitement and encourage their friends and followers to give. Conversations also are encouraged by sharing the hashtag #GLXU15, connecting to @XULAalumni website, and visiting http://www.xula.edu/givelove to pledge and see real-time results.
This year’s theme is, “Thank You, Dr. Francis”, in honor of retiring XU President Dr. Norman Francis.
Xavier University President Norman Harris
Xavier University President Dr. Norman Francis

Dr. Kenneth St. Charles, XU Vice President for Institutional Advancement, said all gifts made online that day go directly to the Annual Fund, which supports scholarships and other important University programs. The donor goal for this year’s campaign is 2,470 individuals.
“Members of the Xavier community coming together like this showcases the spirit of our University,” St. Charles said. “Part of our mission is to prepare students to assume roles of leadership and service in the global society and these alumni are taking on the responsibility of preserving that tradition. Their donations to the Annual Fund make a vital difference in the lives of current students.”
Tom Joyner, chairman and founder of the Tom Joyner Foundation, said, “I’m hoping alumni, friends, family and other supporters, will show some love by making a gift to Xavier. This is a great way to help out this great HBCU.”
Last year a total of $275,100 was contributed by nearly 1,200 donors, far surpassing the $120,000 collected in the inaugural year of the event.
A key element of Give. Love. Xavier Day is the use of alumni captains to spur interest among fellow alumni, as well as the establishment of key Challenge Grant incentives: dollar for dollar matches that are realized when alumni and friends made their donations on Give. Love. Xavier Day. This year’s event has nearly $135,000 in matching challenge grants which will only be realized if Xavierites and friends make gifts on June 2nd.
“All of last year’s Challenge Grant Initiatives were met,” said Kim Reese, XU Director of Alumni Relations. “Those matches brought in an extra $90,000 in pledges, making many of our donor dollars twice as impactful!”

Top 10 HBCUs by Starting Average Salary

Graduate Frederick Anderson stands in the pouring rain as President Barack Obama acknowledges him during his Morehouse College 129th Commencement ceremony address Sunday, May 19, 2013, in Atlanta. After a difficult childhood Shelton graduating Phi Beta Kappa and is on his way to Harvard Law School. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Graduate Frederick Anderson stands in the pouring rain as President Barack Obama acknowledges him during his Morehouse College 129th Commencement ceremony address Sunday, May 19, 2013, in Atlanta. After a difficult childhood Shelton graduating Phi Beta Kappa and is on his way to Harvard Law School. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

A college education is viewed one of the essential stepping stones to a fulfilling career – but its cost traditionally does not come cheap.  In particular, the tuition of some of the nation’s many historically black colleges and universities range across the board but the rewards of a college degree often outweigh the costs.  While tuition costs and school population sizes are strong determining factors when considering which school to attend, one website, HBCU Lifestyle, has listed which HBCU graduates would earn the most in salary after earning college degrees.

Here are the top 10 HBCU’s by starting average salary:

Rank College Name Average Salary Tuition Location
1 Prairie View A&M University $49,300 $4,062 Prairie View, TX
2 Bowie State University $46,400 $4,547 Bowie, MD
3 Hampton University $46,300 $16,888 Hampton, VA
4 Tuskegee University $44,700 $17,070 Tuskegee, AL
5 Morehouse College $44,200 $21,616 Atlanta, GA
6 Xavier University of Louisiana $42,300 $16,900 New Orleans, LA
7 University of Maryland Eastern Shore $41,900 $4,362 Princess Anne, MD
8 Howard University $41,700 $19,150 Washington, DC
9 Morgan State University $41,500 $4,540 Baltimore, MD
10 Southern University and A&M College $41,400 $5,074 Baton Rouge, LA

Visit HBCU Lifestyle to learn more.
article by Lilly Workneh via thegrio.com

Anheuser-Busch Donates ‘Great Kings and Queens of Africa’ Art Collection and Scholarships to UNCF


ATLANTA – A popular and influential collection of artwork featuring African leaders and rulers has returned for public viewing at Morehouse College in Atlanta.  Valued at more than $1 million, “The Great Kings and Queens of Africa” collection of paintings was commissioned by Anheuser-Busch in 1975. Today, the company announced it has donated the entire collection to UNCF (United Negro College Fund), the country’s largest minority education organization, which will distribute pieces from the collection to six UNCF member colleges and universities: Morehouse College, Clark Atlanta University, Fisk University, Xavier University, Dillard University and Benedict College.