Urban Male Initiative: Seeing Students Where They Are To Get Them To Where They Need To Be - Higher Education

Urban Male Initiative: Seeing Students Where They Are To Get Them To Where They Need To Be - Higher Education: The Urban Male Initiative program at Community College of Denver wasn’t around to answer the Black, Brown and College Bound Conference’s first call to action seven years ago to rescue Black and Latino males from consistently ranking at the bottom of all indicators of educational attainment. However, it has certainly made up for lost time since its creation in 2011.

Spurred by statistics showing that 44.5 percent of Black males between the ages of 15 and 24 were enrolled in post-secondary education programs in 2011 and 45.7 percent of Hispanic males, leaders on CCD’s campus realized that neither group topped 10 percent of their student population despite the school’s mission to support the underserved and at-risk population. Sixty-three percent of Black males and 52 percent of Latino males are taking remedial classes at CCD, which actually shares campus space with Metropolitan State College and the University of Colorado-Denver.