The Black Male Initiative formally began at UofL in 2011 as the African American Male Initiative. In its 10 years, the student success program’s objectives haven’t wavered – increase the retention, graduation, engagement and overall success of Black males.

The program has done this in a number of ways; for example offering academic coaching, community service and leadership workshops. However, perhaps the most effective initiative is the BMI’s laser-sharp focus on creating connections among peers.

Those connections have become ever more critical now in a largely virtual environment, and Brandyn Bailey, assistant director at the Cultural Center and adviser of the BMI, touts the work the team has done to ensure programs and discussions on topics like mental health continue. One such initiative that is ready to launch, for example, is a new video series on YouTube called Wednesday Wisdom. The idea is to increase access to mentors – both on and off campus – virtually, and cover topics like financial literacy, healthy relationships and internships.

Bailey has overseen the BMI since October 2018 after a stint at the Muhammad Ali Institute. Prior to that, he was part of a program called the Campaign for Black Male Achievement and was selected from a national pool to be a part of the inaugural Building Beloved Community Leadership Fellowship. He has taken much of what he learned from that program to create his vision for the Black Male Initiative into its second decade.

“I want to make Black male achievement at UofL the expectation and not the exception and doing so by building out an infrastructure that supports Black male students who are not athletes or are not on scholarship,” he said. “Those are the students most affected by adverse circumstances outside of the classroom.”

Such circumstances can make it hard to even get into UofL, let alone get a degree. Bailey said a number of students he works with have to work to make ends meet, and that’s when balancing classes and grades becomes a particular challenge.

To navigate this challenge, he has recruited staff and faculty across campus who identify as Black males and who represent a variety of professional fields to be mentors.

“I want to create a large enough network so if a student tells me he wants to be a social worker, I can connect him with someone on campus who looks like him and who has social worker experience so they can show what that profession looks like on a daily basis,” Bailey said. “The goal is for them to build relationships with those individuals, and myself, so they have multiple people as accountability partners and so their idea of success no longer remains in this esoteric space, but is something that is achievable.”

Bailey pulls his motivation and this strategy from his personal experience growing up in Louisville and attending Noe Middle School, where he witnessed fights “literally every day and a lot of students living far below poverty levels.”

“All of this stuff was happening, these traumatic pieces that you take in at 11 or 12 years old, and you’re still expected to pass a math test in the middle of the afternoon. My priority is making sure our students have folks around them to not only make sense of all of their experiences but also helping them get through,” Bailey said. “We have to take this hands-on approach because these students might not have people in their lives who reflect the future that they want to have.”

The BMI uses a platform called Cardsmart to match students to specific advisors or academic coaches who work with students based on an identifying marker. Bailey said there is a lot of growth opportunity with this networking program. At the beginning of the 2020-21 school year, there were about 980 students who identified as a Black male. A few are distance or nontraditional students, others are student-athletes or scholarship awardees, and 100 or so are Metropolitan College students employed by UPS.

“That leaves about 400 or 500 students I’m trying to get to. The others are going to be OK. I want to get to them, but they have resources, or at least not as many barriers,” Bailey said.

Bailey has also put into place a BMI Wise Council, which gives students even more networking opportunities.

“I believe the council will be a difference maker. In theory, if there are more people to choose from for mentorship or coaching, then we’ll be able to see more students a year,” he said. “We have to accept that a vast majority of education in the scope of higher education happens independently of the classroom. That’s where the rubber meets the road. In that scope, I want to provide healthy and artistic platforms for our students to build community and self-esteem with that ultimate goal of graduating everybody.”

It’s hard not to see some progress here. According to a recent report card from the University of Southern California’s Race and Equity Center,. Scores were based on factors like the percentage of Black undergraduates and the six-year graduation rate for Black students.

Still, much work remains. In 2018, UofL’s six-year graduation rate for Black students was about 47%, compared to the school’s overall graduation rate of 53.2%. Boosting these rates is a priority of President Neeli Bendapudi, and the Black Male Initiative has been .����

Bailey is up to the challenge and is extremely optimistic about the program’s future.

“We have a foundation now and it’s time to grow it and scale it,” he said. “We also want to sustain it to make sure sophomores and juniors in high school see UofL where they can come and foster a path to success, so they know there are folks here to support you.”

McShan, who is the programming director and oversees the African American Male Initiative, has added a bevy of signature programs to the Cultural Center’s schedule, including the Civil Rights Bus Tour, performing arts night during Black History Month, diversity dialogue series and the Fall Fest Multicultural Expo.

“Signature programming was always my objective because it helps us serve a dual responsibility – to serve as an inclusive body on campus and to increase student success, retention and graduation rates,” McShan said. “Personally, I want to increase engagement on campus. There are silos here and that comes with higher education, but building networks and meeting people make a huge difference and I want to help our students learn how to do that.”

One of his mentors, Tierney Bates, UofL’s former Cultural Center director who is now the assistant vice chancellor for Student Affairs at North Carolina Central University, helped him network here once he arrived on campus. In fact, McShan said Bates is the reason he ended up at UofL to work toward his master’s degree. While he was an undergraduate student at LSU, McShan met Bates at a conference and the two hit it off.

“I saw a young man who needed the right environment to hone his skills and develop him into a rock star. During my first phone conversation with Dom I had a gut feeling that this guy is the right person for the Cultural Center and the right person students would be attracted to work with,” Bates said. “Dom is very engaging and understands student development theory, understands the needs of underrepresented students, can speak to programming impact, and has the ability to walk through many doors on a personal and professional level in relating to people.”

Once he settled in at the Cultural Center, McShan’s first line of business was to benchmark programs that were successful at other institutions, including LSU. He also leveraged his networking skills to take new programs to the next level; for example, the Anne Braden Institute pitched in resources for the successful Civil Rights Bus Tour, and the Native American Student Organization helped facilitate the first signature Native American heritage event organized by the Cultural Center last year.

“The goal is to expand and cover more identity groups, but everything comes down to resources, budget and student interest and participation. We need student buy-in. Last year, we had that with the Native American event, which brought in different nations with different traditions and it was a big deal and very successful,” McShan said. “We were able to do that because of our connections with the student organization.”

The event was not held again during the fall semester, but he hopes to bring it back next year. Transitions in student leadership of RSOs pose a challenge with programming, he admits.

“I want to make sure smaller groups are represented,” McShan said. “With manpower and financial resources, these goals have been challenging so we have to think about other ways to come together and support each other. Collaboration is a big goal of mine; I want to foster more collaboration among multicultural student organizations.”

Collaboration tends to yield impact, which is what motivates McShan.

“When I organize an event and I am personally impacted, or I hear folks saying ‘Wow, I didn’t know that’ – that is what drives me to do this work,” he said. “That Native American Heritage Event is a great example. I never knew there were different traditions within different tribes. On my own journey, I am still learning so much.”

African American Male Initiative

During the summer 2017, McShan’s roles increased to include overseeing the AAMI, which was created in 2011 with a specific objective of “increasing retention, persistence, graduation, engagement and overall success of African American males by addressing various scholastic and social challenges through academic engagement, mentoring, peer connection and student involvement.”

The “mentoring” part comes naturally for McShan, who is pursuing a master’s of education degree in counseling and personnel services with a concentration on college student personnel. The subject matter has taught him how to take a holistic and institutional approach to his AAMI work.

“The data shows that these students’ issues aren’t always about academic performance. A student could have a strong GPA and SAT score, but they still are at risk for dropping out or not graduating. We have to look at what else is going on – are there personal problems, financial problems, are they having a hard time getting through processes like FAFSA,” he said. “A lot of these students just don’t have guidance. They’re first generation students and sometimes they’re going through very significant things.”

Historically, African American male college completion rates are lowest among both sexes and all racial/ethnic groups in the U.S. To help with retention and success rates, the AAMI program includes a dedicated advisor who has a high-level view of the student’s grades and who helps the student get connected with the necessary campus resources.

“Being a first generation kid himself and navigating his higher education experience is part of the reason I wanted him to work for me,” Bates said about McShan. “Those who can share similar experiences with our students and work with them are the ones who get the most out of our students, become role models, parental figures and more.”

In April, McShan will lead a group of at least 10 students to a Students of Color Conference in Clemson. Some of them will even have the opportunity to speak. The Cultural Center is planning fundraisers to offset their costs, including an awards banquet and gala in February. Aside from this trip, McShan’s other major goal is fundraising for year-round programming.

“The New Year will be spent trying to figure out how to expand what we’re doing, but with reduced resources,” he said. “I don’t want to just expand, though. I want to ensure our programs are sustainable and we have a foundation that, even when I leave, they’ll be in place.”

That’s not to say he’s leaving anytime soon, however.

“I eventually want to get back to Texas, which is much closer to home. But for now I plan on staying here. I have to see these initiatives through,” McShan said.

Bates has big expectations for McShan, calling him the “next big talent to work in higher education.”

“He will be a VP or top faculty one day at an institution or my chief of staff,” he said. “Dom McShan is a gem and the University of Louisville better do all it can to keep him.”