Enhancing Black College Leadership

A joint effort of CIC and The College Fund/UNCF, this program provided service to historically black institutions in three distinct ways:

Leadership Services. Enabled wider participation by Historically Black College and University (HBCU) leaders in CIC institutes and workshops (Presidents and Deans Institutes, Information Technologies and Regional Faculty Workshops).

Interinstitutional Exchange. This article,* "Improving Education Through Interinstitutional Exchanges," from the September/October 1999 issue of CIC's newsletter, summarizes CIC's experiences with interinstitutional exchanges.*(This is a PDF Document. In order to read it, you must have the Adobe Acrobat Reader, available for free download from the Adobe Web site.)

Participating Institutions

Participating institutions included most of the members of The College Fund/UNCF and scores of other private liberal arts colleges and universities.

Project Activities

Since 1988, CIC worked with The College Fund/UNCF to support the leadership and faculty of historically black private colleges and universities (HBCUs). The program assisted presidents, deans, other administrators and faculty from private HBCUs to share and glean ideas with colleagues at national conferences.

Beyond professional development, the project worked to create productive links between private HBCUs and other private liberal arts institutions. Toward this end, CIC supported more than 25 interinstitutional exchanges of administrators and faculty as a key means to connect these colleges. Although modest in number, these collaborations had dramatic results. Colleges reformed their curricula based on what they learned from participating in an exchange. Faculty have counseled each other on teaching effectiveness. One pair of colleges co-developed a new course that was taught on each campus. Administrators shared ideas for tackling problems. Rural students had eye-opening experiences in the inner city; urban students had the chance to practice teaching in a rural school system.

Program Outcomes

For a summary of what we learned in this project, see the CIC report Coming Together, available from CIC's publications department.

Download a related publication:

In December 1996, CIC published a handbook, Building Bridges: Meeting Interinstitutional Needs by Collaboration Through Interinstitutional Exchanges, written by Ida Rousseau Mukenge, on lessons learned from the initial 21 exchanges.