Students at EC got the opportunity to explore transfer options at the Historically Black College University Fair (HBCUs) and were able to attend an admissions workshop in the Distance Education Room last Thursday.

Some of the top ranking HBCUs in the country including Howard, Hampton, Tuskegee, Stillman, Tennessee State, North Carolina A&T State University, and others were on board to bring historical awareness and explore the advantages of attending a HBCU.

“The purpose of the HBCU fair is to provide awareness and to let all students, regardless of race, know about transfer options and what they might want to consider, especially with the decrease of acceptance of students at the Cal-state system,” Elaine Moore, academic counselor, said. “Some people, not knowing, think that they can’t get a job coming from a HBCU, but many corporations, companies and businesses are committed to diversity and with that in mind, they will go to HBCUs to seek out qualified students to hire.”

The first HBCUs date back as far as 1837. The predominantly black colleges and universities explore alternative paths to education offering students two-year, four-year, graduate and professional degrees.

Ulysses Cozart, board member of the national alumni association of North Carolina University, said the majority of people you see in leadership positions today have some kind of ties to one of our HBCUs at one point in time. “HBCUs are just another viable alternative to any other educational institution,” Cozart said.

Former EC student and now Howard University Alumni, Carolyn Jacobs, said she decided to attend Howard University because they had a great journalism program. “I wanted to visit Washington D.C. and further explore my options,” she said.

“I’ve given it a lot of thought to attending a HBCU because I want to be exposed to something historically relevant to the struggles of African Americans in traditionally white colleges,” Judith Nzegwu, 24, nursing major said. ” “I’m a little nervous about leaving California, but that’s probably why I find it exciting,” she added.

Students seeking to transfer to an HBCU can take advantage of the Transfer Admission Guarantee program (TAG).

“It’s a process whereby that allows students to transfer in a much faster and easier way with fewer units depending on the University they will be applying for,” Moore said.  “It provides a pipeline for students for the 10 schools that we have agreements with and 3 of the 10 will accept the inter-segmental general education transfer curriculum” (IGETC).

“By attending an HBCU, I learned quite a bit about myself and my culture,” Brandon Williams, Tuskegee University alumni, said. “We have a saying over at Tuskegee, if you can survive Tuskegee, then you can survive anywhere in the world.”

Keith Cox, from the Southern University Alumni Chapter, encourages students to go online and take advantage of the technology. “I advise students to Twitter and use Facebook because Southern University is currently trending with those technologies,” Cox said.