New Report: Cultivating Affirming Community: Black Men During Their First Year of College
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Jacinda Nembhard | jacinda.nembhard@gse.rutgers.edu | 848-932-0774
New Brunswick, N.J., April 15, 2026 – A new report by Travis Dumas, Senior Research Associate at the Proctor Institute, explores the impact of a first-year seminar designed to support Black male students at a large Predominantly White Institution (PWI).
Cultivating Affirming Community shares the experiences of Black male students who completed a First-Year Resource Seminar (FYRS) between 2016 and 2021. FYRS was designed to acquaint participants with formal campus resources and to provide a space for students to cultivate community and engage with their realities in higher education.
Many participants described the seminar as a space where they felt comfortable engaging in discussions, building connections with peers, and navigating their transition to college. In addition, the program led to higher earned GPAs, and reports of feeling seen, supported, and empowered within an institutional context that often marginalizes them.
“While institutional investment in Black men in college has fluctuated over time, recent shifts in universities’ allocation of resources for vulnerable and historically underrepresented populations have created distinct challenges for Black male students,” says Dumas. “Despite this reality, I want this report to serve as a reminder of the importance, utility, and integrity that inclusive resources have on diverse campus communities.”
The report offers recommendations for how colleges and universities can more directly and responsively support historically underrepresented student populations through programs like FYRS. These include:
Prioritized safe spaces: when students feel safe to speak honestly, their engagement deepens, and they learn more deeply
Tailored content: when resource materials consider the intersection of race and gender on campus, students feel more seen and can trust their campus relationships
Engagement with Black graduate students, faculty, and staff: shared experiences and mentoring can strengthen a sense of belonging, campus engagement, and academic drive
“Dumas’s evidence-based recommendations offer a path to an empowering college experience for everyone,” said Marybeth Gasman, Samuel DeWitt Proctor Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor at Rutgers University. “The question is, with the current socio-political pressures, is university leadership willing to make these changes with intention and accountability?”
