The Impact of the Remote Learning on African American HBCU Social Work Faculty

Overview: This presentation seeks to explore how African-American HBCU Social Work Faculty navigated the sudden shift to online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study examines the availability of necessary workspace tools for effective teaching and learning. Faculty will describe their experiences ensuring students were well-prepared despite racial and educational discrimination.Proposal text: For nearly 180 years, historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have educated the majority of Black populations (foreign and domestic) in the United States. With meager resources, HBCUs developed in the mid-Atlantic and southern regions of this country to meet the needs of oppressed and disenfranchised Black communities, supplying cities and towns with highly skilled doctors, lawyers, preachers, teachers, and business owners (Lomax, 2003). For the most part, HBCUs contributed to the explosive growth of the Black middle class from the early to mid-1900s (Herbold, 1994). HBCUs can also be credited with developing students who would become leaders and change agents in their local communities and on the global stage. If it were not for the education received by Black men and women at HBCUs, many would not have been afforded the opportunity to move from poverty to self-sufficiency (Watkins, 2001). This qualitative research study uses a phenomenological research design that allows participants to have a voice in mainstream research.
Many HBCUs have found it difficult, for many reasons, to stay afloat. Many have been challenged by limited alumni giving, lack of equitable resources (e.g., at state institutions), growing costs associated with faculty programs (e.g., accreditation), desegregation, technology, and urbanism (Sturgis & Lamb, 2021; Welkener, 2021). Coupled with the issues presented, the COVID 19 pandemic has added to this already fragile situation for many HBCUs. With the digital divide, HBCUs had to invest heavily in technology to conduct online education despite already having under-resourced faculty development programs for years prior to the pandemic (Sturgis & Lamb, 2021).
During the height of the COVID 19 pandemic, the core responsibility of HBCU Social Work Faculty, which is teaching, was challenged by the move to online learning. Prior to the pandemic, public, private, and for-profit institutions alike have taken advantage of the opportunity with online learning to expand enrollment and offset cuts in state and federal funding, and offer convenient scheduling for students. However, even as they face ongoing declines in student enrollment and persistent questions about their long-term viability, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) are rarely among them (Jones and Davenport, 2018). With that said, the move to online learning may have presented challenges not only for students, but also for faculty who scantly used any learning management platform; in addition, HBCU faculty take immense pride in the preparation of their students and now using the online formant presented challenges (Smith et al., 2021). Although there have been questions about HBCU Faculty’s resistance to change, much of this resistance was a result of fear, which ultimately led to retirement (Sturgis & Lamb, 2021). This study will explore the dispensation and utilization of resources. Furthermore, it highlights the feelings of African American HBCU Social Work Faculty regarding the preparation of their students for professional practice or graduate education. This study is linked to social justice because of the lack of resources for HBCUs and will offer key strategies to better support African American social work educators during times of crisis.