Established in 2016 through a collaborative initiative, the Center for the Advancement of STEM Leadership (CASL) was founded, backed by substantial funding from the National Science Foundation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities Undergraduate Program (HBCU UP). The foundational institutions include:

• University of the Virgin Islands
• Fielding Graduate University
• North Carolina A&T State University
• American Association of Colleges and Universities

Deriving its authenticity and credibility from the lived experiences inherent to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), CASL shifts HBCUs from being on the periphery to being at the core of expanding participation, research, and discussion in STEM higher education through practical and research-informed approaches.

The mission of CASL is to substantially broaden the participation of minoritized students who have been historically marginalized from US STEM higher education. Firmly grounded in our authentic knowledge and experience, this Broadening Participation Research Center makes use of the HBCU institutional context as a guiding framework in determining the correlation between leadership and broadening participation in STEM.

Our work represents a collective worldview that recognizes that academic leadership for broadening participation in STEM is effective only when it authentically and faithfully presupposes that all students – regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, religious belief, socioeconomic status, birth order, or sexual orientation – are essential for and entitled to global vitality.