Making College a Reality, Not Just a Possibility
CSI's Black Male Initiative gives students who come from historically underrepresented groups the academic boost they need

Staten Island Advance - Sunday, February 10, 2008

Joe Chin is cool.

When he arrives at Port Richmond High School several times a week, students' eyes light up.

Especially Adeyemi Juxon-Smith, an 11th-grader, who appreciates Chin's knowledge of quarterback skills as much as he does his explanation of Pythagorean theory.

They joke about whose football team ran the most yards and whose fumble cost a win. The two discuss strategies for the next game time. They laugh about after-school jobs and future social plans. They might even talk about what life will be in the future.

That all makes it easier for Adeyemi to ask Chin about a complex equation to solve for "x" or defining a secant or cosine.

Adeyemi is on a mission to pull up his math grade from about a 70 average to 89. With Chin's help, he's on his way.

Chin, a student at the College of Staten Island, is a teaching scholar, one component of CSI's Black Male Initiative program. Because Chin excels in math, he can now act as tutor and mentor in the classroom at Port Richmond High School.

"It's cool," says Adeyemi, who is a defensive tackle for his team and hopes to play in college and one day run his own business. "The teacher can't be everywhere. It's cool to have a tutor who is right there. They answer your questions and really help you step it up."

Turns out there are many other cool students like Chin, who enjoy solving the problems of numbers and probability and can explain them to others. Chin is one of 36 tutors who fan out from College of Staten Island to Port Richmond and Curtis High School math classes. They sit in class and help ensure theories and formulas have clear meaning for the students.

On the surface, Chin and the group of one-on-one teaching scholars from the CSI -- with grade point averages of at least 3.0 -- are tutors. But the efforts go much deeper.

CSI officials are hoping that consistent contact with the tutor/mentor will help high school young men focus their sights on attending and graduation college while giving tutors a sense on involvement and connection that will also keep them focused toward graduation.

For three years, CSI has offered the Black Male Initiative program in hopes of retaining and graduating black male students. But as an extension, officials decided to reach into the high schools with an already established program.

CSI's Black Male Initiative arose in 2004 from commitment to creating a diverse student population and seeing a shortage of black males on all campuses of City University of New York. Further investigation led officials to see a similar lack of Latino males on campus.

A task force of CUNY scholars and administrators was called into action by Chancellor Matthew Goldstein. To date, CUNY BMI has funded projects at 16 colleges at the university, each with its own unique programs designed to focus on recruitment, retention and graduation of black males. The formula for retaining college students is a mix of mentoring, participation and involvement, said Dr. James Sanders, who was one of the initial authors of the proposal for the CSI project.

"Our plan here is two-fold, one to provide support for black males already on campus and the other that is unique to the City University, we recruit high-performing college students and pay them to go into high school classrooms and help teachers," said Sanders, director of the Discovery Institute at CSI.

The on-campus support consists of receiving tutoring, when necessary, enlisting faculty and professional staff as mentors, targeting successful black males in the community as mentors and bringing them on campus as speakers, monthly student meetings, workshops and round-table discussions.

While the program is Black Male Initiative, some of the tutors are female. Some participants are Latino.

Early protests that the BMI program at CUNY was race-based and thus discriminatory, have caused officials to continue to call it the Black Male Initiative but target all students who come from "historically underrepresented groups," Sanders said.

Each year, CSI applies for $125,000 to fund programming and pay tutors a $10 per hour wage.

While it's too soon to have data in terms of retention and graduation rates, Debra Evans-Greene says reports cards and test scores have already made marked improvement along with other benefits.

"Many of the students are now passing Math A regents," said Evans-Greene, director of Minority Access Programs including BMI. "Most of the students being tutored are now talking about attending college. The college students begin to perfect their game and are feeling good about themselves because they are making a difference in someone's life."

The hope is to expand this arm of the program to other subjects like science and English.

Tina Gavioli, Port Richmond High School assistant principal for math, helps schedule 22 tutors and pairs them with students who are struggling with the math portion of the Regents exam.

Those efforts are also paying off.

Last year as a freshman at Port Richmond, Naquan Davis went from a "touch and go" time with math to this year's 85 average and better test scores.

Math is "still kinda hard, but not as much as it was," Naquan admits.

And while many of the high school students feel support from parents and coaches, having a contemporary tutor makes sense, says Solomon Juxon-Smith.

"You can really relate," said Solomon who along with his twin brother plays football and sometimes finds math confusing. "Just a few years ago (the tutors) were going through the same thing we are."

That connection makes Joe Chin feel special.

Chin, who hopes to be a physical therapist, knows the power of mentors and counts his parents, his stepfather, former CSI athletic director Dr. Harold Merritt, Ms. Evans-Greene and Michael Jordan among his list of personal mentors.

"In order to be a good mentor, you have to be mentored," said Chin, a Rosebank resident who gets his love of numbers from his father, an engineer. "I like being a role model and someone students look up to. I can see how they have matured. It makes me feel like I actually made a difference." 

By Lisa Ann Williamson
Reprinted here with permission from the