Jamon Pulliam attended a very large high school outside of Detroit. With 6,500 students to serve, his counselor was understandably stretched thin. This left him largely on his own to make choices about what came after graduation. He initially thought he’d follow in the footsteps of his cousins and aunt by attending Michigan State University or the University of Michigan—but one day he says he “stumbled upon” a visit from a Morehouse College admissions rep, and that got him thinking about Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). And while he may have been without personalized guidance from a college counselor, he arguably had something even better: A mother who was determined to, as he puts it, “walk him through the process.” So when he asked to visit some schools in the South, she was game.
“My mom was a single parent and didn’t have much. But she took me down to Georgia, and we visited schools, went to Georgia, Florida, and Alabama. We had a family friend who was at Alabama State University, and we were going to visit her. On the way my mom saw the sign for Tuskegee University, and she was like, ‘Oh, do you want to stop? We have a little time.’ I’m like, ‘Sure.’” The rest, as they say, is history.
Even though Pulliam thought he had ruled out Tuskegee, he felt an immediate connection when he arrived on campus. “No other school compared to it—the camaraderie that I saw, the history of the school, all the Black students, Black faculty. I was just blown away….It was just meant to be.” Now, as a proud alum of Tuskegee—and of the UCLA Educational Leadership Program (ELP)—Pulliam is a college counselor at Viewpoint School, and he makes it his mission to help other high school students find their perfect college fit.
Independent schools like Viewpoint have historically enrolled relatively few Black students—about 7% of their overall enrollment, according to the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS). “I saw very quickly how the experience of Black students was different,” Pulliam says.
As such, when he enrolled in ELP, Pulliam initially thought his dissertation would focus broadly on this topic. In particular, he was eager to build on his involvement with his school’s Black Student Union and with “advising and creating spaces for Black families and Black faculty.” It wasn’t long, however, before he realized he could combine his commitment to improving the Black student experience with his deep connection to HBCUs.
As Pulliam explains, these two topics are closely related: “Research has shown that Black families, Black parents, choose independent schools for long-term benefits, one of those being outcomes for college.” Indeed, NAIS reports that nearly 100% of independent school graduates attend college. But, Pulliam notes, “if Black students are not aware of all the possibilities, if they’re not made aware of all the options available to them, then we have done them a disservice.”
To this end, in his own work, Pulliam makes sure that the Black students he advises are aware of the benefits of attending an HBCU and that they consider these institutions for themselves. “I have students who will say to me, ‘I would never have applied to the school if you hadn’t introduced me to it, or if you hadn’t told me about it, or if you hadn’t told me to go to that visit.’”
In recent years, Pulliam has taken groups of students on tours of HBCU campuses; he has also introduced the Common Black College Application—which allows students to apply to 67 HBCUs with a single application—to his students and colleagues; and of course he consistently shares information about HBCUs with his Viewpoint colleagues.
Clearly, for Pulliam, the path to an HBCU involved quite a bit of serendipity, between stumbling upon the Morehouse rep and his spur-of-the-moment visit to Tuskegee. But he knows better than to assume that all students will have that same sort of luck. He knows that if they are going to be able to consider a full range of postsecondary options, their counselors must be intentional about sharing the relevant information. This is at the heart of his dissertation research. “I wanted to make sure that this work really showed the possibilities for Black students and that it could help counselors understand the importance of activating all their knowledge and being okay to say, ‘Hey, I’m not really that familiar with HBCUs; let me do a little research.’”
Pulliam decided to explore just how much knowledge independent school counselors have about HBCUs and how they might be interested in building on that. He describes those findings in his dissertation, HBCU 101: Understanding How Familiar Independent School College Counselors Are With Historically Black Colleges and Universities. He has summarized the study and its key takeaways in a new ELP Dissertation Brief, released this month.
When he began his study, Pulliam was worried that his colleagues across the country might be reluctant to participate: “Nobody wants to say what they don’t know.” But he was pleasantly surprised when 130 counselors responded to his inquiry and the majority of them volunteered to be interviewed. He narrowed that group down to 15, striving for a range of years of experience, racial background and, geographic location (the latter to better understand how proximity to HBCUs—many of which are located in the South—might affect what he would hear).
In interviews, Pulliam says his study participants were “so vulnerable,” and he’s incredibly grateful for that. At the same time, he was reassured that they were all able to share general information about HBCUs: “That really helped me sleep at night, knowing that if a student comes into their office, if a family has questions, they can at least explain what the acronym means, why HBCUs were created, why they should look into them—maybe give them a general sense of benefits and history. That was so important.” And, as he suspected, counselors whose schools are near to an HBCU did tend to know a bit more about these institutions.
At the same time, however, participants—even those who already had substantial knowledge—consistently said they wanted more information. “Again sharing their own vulnerability, they were open to say, ‘I would love to see conference topics. I would love to visit more HBCUs. I’d love to create more partnerships with HBCUs.”
A key takeaway for Pulliam is the importance of proactivity on the part of both college counselors and HBCUs. He recognizes that school resources may be a limiting factor for counselors, so he offers a range of suggestions for them. “Counselors need to have conversations about HBCUs. To start, they need to familiarize themselves with HBCUs, whether that’s creating more partnerships or creating opportunities to visit HBCUs themselves….Those partnerships are important, but I think counselors have to familiarize themselves to start.” And HBCUs, he says, must actively reach out to independent schools in order to further bolster these connections.
In speaking with Pulliam, it becomes immediately clear that all of his work—from his career choices to the focus of his dissertation research—emerges from a commitment to his students and his deep understanding of how important it is to find the right college fit. For him, of course, that was an HBCU.
“You know, we talk about a village, right? I really feel like when my mom dropped me off at Tuskegee, she was passing me off to another village.…I was able to really take advantage of everything that was offered there. I joined so many clubs, so many organizations, met so many people—and to meet people who look like me, but were so different from me, and to be in a place that I just felt like really poured into me.…It was just such a profound experience. I had so many mentors, so many friends. And I felt like I really found my voice there.”
This, of course, is what we would wish for any college-bound student.
Pulliam’s dissertation brief, “Bridging the Gap: Independent School College Counselors and the HBCU Conversation,” is available online on the ELP website.