Sacramento State Leads CSU System’s New Black Student Success Initiative

By Norman Williams | Special to The OBSERVER Just one year after appointing its second Black president, Sacramento State University has been chosen to lead the California State University (CSU) system’s new Statewide Central Office for the Advancement of Black Excellence.& The Office will use an initial budget of $1.3 million to coordinate and support efforts by all CSU campuses to build and sustain Black students’ success. It’s a portion of the CSU’s Chancellor’s Office’s recent $10 million one-time allocation to Black student success initiatives at the campuses.& & Sacramento State, which enrolls the CSU’s largest population of Black students, competed for the honor with the other CSU campuses. “It was a very competitive process and we’re grateful that the system selected us,” said Dr. Luke Wood, president of the university.& He noted that Sacramento State already has the nation’s first Black honors college that isn’t housed at an Historically Black College or University (HBCU). “What we’ve been saying routinely, to everyone, is that while Sacramento State cannot be an HBCU, we can be everything but the historical part.” The new office will oversee the system-wide implementation of key recommendations from CSU’s Black Student Success report, which was issued last...