“What are your plans after high school?” is currently the main question seniors need to answer. Many will say college, others will say a gap year, and some will start working right away. Baltimore School for the Arts’ (BSA) Black Student Union (BSU) has started assisting with this question.
Recently, the BSU has started taking field trips to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) as a way for students to be able to tour and experience an HBCU, as well as to highlight HBCUs (specifically their art programs) to prospective students of color.
Jocelyn Providence, one of the BSU’s faculty advisors, said that to be able to visit these schools she applied for a grant with the Courtney Cast Grant Foundation, which is a part of Teach for America Baltimore.
Teach for America Baltimore is a non-profit that aims to defeat the norm of how your surroundings depict your life by constantly educating kids and allowing them to reach and experience things they might not have been able to do alone. These visits to HBCUs are allowing students to do just that, giving BSA students special opportunities.
“I think that [trips to] HBCUs are a great opportunity for students that I think are overlooked, and the ultimate goal is exposure,” Providence said.
She added, “I think understanding that there are universities that have cultural significance, academic excellence, even artistic excellence in them that students don’t know about, I think that it’s important for students to know about them and have the opportunity to visit them and feel what it’s like on campus.”
Additionally, all these trips have been specified to focus on the schools’ arts programs. Providence continued, “For these trips, I contacted most of these HBCUs that I listed during the summer, specifically their art departments. Since we’re an art school, I wanted to go to a place where there might be students like, ‘Yes, I want to pursue my art and want it to be my major,’ and maybe there are some students who just want to minor in their art and what would that look like at these different HBCUs.”
Each HBCU has something different to offer prospective students, and it depends on what their future goals are and if that involves art. Additionally, sometimes HBCUs are recognized for their programs, while others are not. “These HBCUs offer high-quality art programs too that don’t get the recognition they deserve simply because people don’t talk about them,” said Providence. Damien Ford, the other BSU faculty advisor, and herself are giving HBCUs recognition.
So far this year, students have been able to experience HBCU life at two different colleges: Howard University in Washington, D.C and Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. Yet, those are not the only goals of the BSU. The major goals are for students to be able to travel to farther colleges as well as experience black history firsthand.
“On the grant, I applied for an amount that hopefully would send Mr. Ford, myself, and around eight other students to Atlanta to visit Spellman, Morehouse, and Clark Atlanta. And also look at some really important historically significant and culturally significant sights in Atlanta,” said Providence.
Along with these long distance overnight trips, if a student can’t attend, Providence has shorter distance options in mind. “I would also love for us to go to Morgan State University as well,” she said.
Even though Morgan State University is on the top of the visiting list for HBCUs in Maryland, there are many more in the area.
Coppin State University, Bowie State University, and University of Maryland Eastern Shore, along with Morgan State University, are HBCUs, yet they’re all in the surrounding area in case students don’t want to go to college out-of-state.
The most important thing about the tours is helping prospective students. Shantrice Washington, a senior stage designer who attended the visit to Howard, said, “I feel like it helped me really understand what type of projects they were doing at the school. Cause I’m picking a school that’s going to fit specifically what I want to do. So it really helped to see the culture of the different artists and the theatre because I want to see the theatre before I go to the school, if I go to the school.”
When picking a college, it’s important to experience the campus, and to make sure it is a good fit for you. Washington said she wanted to “visualize where I could be in the next four years.”
Additionally, sophomore stage designer Tylar McFadden, who attended the field trip to Lincoln, said, “The trip to Lincoln was very helpful in finding colleges. They have a lot of non-art degrees but their arts departments are very nice. We were actually able to visit some classes and see what the students of Lincoln were doing.”
Not only do these field trips allow students gain the knowledge of college life, but they also bring upon new experiences that wouldn’t occur on the everyday tour. McFadden added, “It was very nice because we were able to see a recital. They had a jazz ensemble and about six vocalists that sang. That was very nice to see people outside of BSA perform and that was actually my first time seeing people outside of BSA perform.”
The new HBCU trips the BSU has incorporated into the club have been a great way for Black students at BSA to start planning their future in the way they want, and have allowed students to experience the culture and life at an HBCU. Allowing students to take note of the different art, academic, and clubs each school offers is vital to help them figure out what they will choose after BSA.
This addition is only going to get better with the field trips expanding to farther states, but as of now, these trips are a wonderful way to explore local HBCUs. If an HBCU is one of your top college choices, contacting Jocelyn Providence and Damien Ford is a wonderful opportunity for you to utilize.
To contact this writer, email Muse Newspaper at musebsa@bsfa.org.
This story was written in partnership with The Banner Youth News Lab.
Featured photo courtesy of Jocelyn Providence.
