Conference Brings Together CSU’s Young Males of Color

This article is reposted from calstate.edu.

With an aim to create new dialogues around the student learning experience, the CSU Young Males of Color Conference brought nearly 600 people to Cal Poly Pomona to discuss impactful changes in higher education.

The conference explored the theme "Strength in Solidarity: Collectively Elevating the Voices, Experiences & Conditions of Men of Color." It drew faculty, staff and students from across 23 universities-as well as partners from more than 20 California community colleges-to address access, retention, transfer and graduation rates for Black, Latinx, Asian Pacific Islander, and Native American men.

"At our 5th annual conference, we witnessed a truly magnificent gathering, with over 300 students joined by an equal number of faculty, staff and administrators from the CSU and California community colleges," says William Franklin, vice president for Student Affairs at CSU Dominguez Hills, who serves as director and principal investigator for the CSU Young Males of Color (YMOC) Consortium. "This event annually represents a significant step where we unite to leverage the CSU's expansive reach and influence to foster systemic change across the state."

The conference aims to highlight evidence-based practices that will equip practitioners to provide students with practical tools for their success and is an extension of the consortium's year-round efforts dedicated to improving outcomes for young men of color.

"Every campus plays a vital role in advancing the goals of the CSU Young Males of Color Consortium," Franklin says. "We acknowledge and commend the transformative initiatives across our institutions and aim to celebrate these achievements throughout the conference. By deepening our understanding of the challenges faced by young men of color and sharing best practices adopted by campuses to support them, we can continue working toward a more equitable educational environment."

At the conference, keynote speaker Joe Louis Hernandez called attention to often-overlooked student populations that receive minimal support throughout the higher education pipeline. Hernandez, who has extensive expertise in developing programs for formerly incarcerated students, co-founded Rise Scholars at Rio Hondo College and currently serves as the director of Rising Scholars at Mt. San Antonio College.

Conference sponsors included the ECMC Foundation, Ballmer Group, Ichigo Foundation, College Futures Foundation and the California Community Foundation.

Consortium Aims to Effect Systemic Change

The CSU Young Males of Color (YMOC) Consortium, housed at CSU Dominguez Hills, aims to leverage the CSU's expansive geography and impact to create systemic changes throughout the state. Using its Collective Impact framework, the 23-university consortium collaborates with regional community colleges and community-based organizations to construct a common agenda, advance mutually reinforcing activities and champion a shared measurement system. Its mission is to educate, empower and engage those dedicated to this work while also inspiring the students whose futures the group aims to impact.

The work of the YMOC Consortium echoes many of the priorities of the student-success-focused Graduation Initiative 2025. At last month's Graduation Initiative 2025 Symposium, leaders from the CSU reflected on how the system is progressing toward meeting its ambitious goals and previewed the work being done to develop a new framework for student success that will go beyond traditional higher education success metrics.

The CSU continues to collect and disaggregate systemwide data that will provide a more granular view across the 23-university system and help get to the root of persistent equity gaps and other barriers that may keep students from earning a college degree.​