New grant to aid young Black males

Georgia College & State University received a grant from the University System of Georgia Board of Regents to create a program that will focus on getting African American males to attend and graduate from college.

The $20,000 grant will create an Academic Initiative for Males Academy, a program that will begin in the summer of 2006 with the aim of encouraging students to attend college. Twenty African American males will be chosen from middle and high schools in Baldwin, Hancock and Putnam counties.

“It’s an innovative approach to service learning combining civic engagement,” said Allia Carter, director of Diversity and Multicultural affairs. “Students have to go through courses related to social sciences and language arts. We take those and relate them to a current issue in their community. They have to build a project about that and how they would resolve the issue.”

The two week program will allow students to experience college life and connect them with successful African American males in the community. Organizations such as the Milledgeville 100 Black Men of America, the Macon Alumnae Chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity and the Mu Gamma Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha will participate in the program.

“The three of the (organizations) will work with us in creating the mentorship component of the program,” Carter said.
“They will be paired up with a student coming through the program.”

“Basically they’re using us as role models,” said Brandon Jackson, a member of the Mu Gamma Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity. “We’re going to be involved in the 14 day program just to show them some examples of successful black men.”

The program will provide participants with a positive outlook on higher education and give the students an opportunity to make a difference in their communities.

“I personally have always thought that there was always a problem within the African American male community in the sense that somewhere along the way we go astray,” said Jackson, a senior psychology major. “I feel that around the beginning of high school, maybe late middle school, it becomes not cool to be smart.”

AIM Academy will include students from GC&SU, professors and high school teachers to give participants positive role models and address the needs of their social surroundings.

“(We want to) just take a group of 20 students and show them the attention that they really need,” Jackson said.

“I believe that youth has answers that many times we overlook,” Carter said. “What we wanted to do was design an opportunity for these (students) that are typically affected by community issues to actually come up with a resolution.”

Students in the program will be paired in groups to complete their projects, and the winners will be sent to the Middle Georgia Economic Development Conference to present their proposals.

Carter hopes that these participants will gain more from the program than receiving an award.

“I hope that these students can go back into their schools and impact the students that they are around,” Carter said. ” I want (the program) to increase the enrollment of them going to college.”

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Dec 2 2005. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry