Black and Latino Male Initiative members Kwame Sparkes, Kiev Davis, and Cyle Paul On a Thursday morning in mid-August, the third floor of James Hall is quiet. But listen carefully, and you can hear music drifting down the corridor. If you follow the music and peek around the corner, you’ll hear the hum of conversation and see daylight spilling out from an open door. Welcome to the Brooklyn College Black and Latino Male Initiative (BLMI), where students come to relax, study, connect (or disconnect), and find their way. On this particular Thursday, Associate Director David Wells ’08, M.S. ’12, M.A. ’20 and Program Coordinator Shadiq Williams ’17 are leading a session of the BLMI Summer Institute. Students sit around a conference table and on couches. A sophomore who will later introduce himself as Cyle—pronounced Kyle—has claimed the chair at the reception desk. Breakfast is laid out, and Wells is explaining the current assignment as everyone settles in. The air is relaxed but focused. It’s in this atmosphere of ease and purpose that mentoring flourishes. Students receive guidance from one another, staff, faculty, and professionals outside of Brooklyn College. “They definitely spread the mentoring culture,” says recent alumnus HuShawn Wells ’23 (no relation to David Wells) of BLMI leadership. “It’s crazy how selfless they are.” Black an Latino Male Initiative leadership: Associate Director David Wells ’08, M.S. ’12, M.A. ’20 and Program Coordinator Shadiq Williams ’17 Full Circle When he was an undergraduate at Brooklyn College in the mid-2000s, David Wells was one of the first peer mentors at BLMI. So when he came to his current job as associate director in 2019, “it was a full circle,” he says. But now he has the benefit of many years of experience. Having been at Brooklyn College for 22 years, first as a student and then as an employee, “I know a lot of folks,” he says. This means that when students express particular interests—from computer science to animation to business—he can connect them with a mentor in that field. “We’re trying to create jobs, specific skills, and job-specific relationships,” says Wells. He explains why this connection between college and the working world is particularly important for students who come to BLMI. Research shows that many Black and Latino students, particularly men, either drop out of college or never enroll in the first place. Wells believes this is because they don’t feel there is a pathway to jobs through college. BLMI leadership is looking to counter this narrative by creating a clear bridge from college to careers—with the plan to extend this bridge in the other direction as well: Brooklyn College students mentoring high school students, mapping a path to college. Helping Students Find What They Want—and Don’t Want Like David Wells, BLMI mentor Kiev Davis ’11 drew his own full circle. As a student at Brooklyn College, he was instrumental in the original grant proposal to expand the newly established CUNY Black Male Initiative to the campus. He recruited students like David Wells to help during the funding process. When the grant came through, to establish what was initially called ERIS (Empowering, Recruiting, Investing, Supporting), Davis became one of the group’s first mentors. Currently a Linux systems administrator at NYU, Davis found that the path from college to career was not obvious to him. Without websites like LinkedIn and mentors in his chosen field, Davis had to find his own direction. “There was no easy way,” he says. And so he has “always tried to be there for students and give them what I never had.” One student who benefited from Davis’s mentorship is sophomore Cyle Paul. Paul had initially planned to be a computer science major, but “after a deep conversation about life” with Davis, he came to understand that he had chosen computer science because his parents wanted him to. As a result of talking with Davis, Paul decided to pursue what he truly wanted: a degree in finance, with a minor in human resources. Safe Haven Another key element of mentorship at BLMI is peer support. A cohort of juniors and seniors serves as formal mentors for their peers. But students describe sharing knowledge, advice, and support as so ingrained in the organization that mentoring happens in countless daily interactions. Senior Kwame Sparkes remembers his first visit to the BLMI office. He found it refreshing to talk to people who had experienced “some of the same struggles I was going through,” he says. He appreciated hearing “Oh, yeah, me too. I went through that” and “I can guide you through this. I know what it’s like.” Now Sparkes is in a position to pass along what he has learned. He makes sure to talk to other students in the program about his experiences. Sparkes calls BLMI his “safe haven.” HuShawn Wells ’23 So does HuShawn Wells, who graduated last spring with a B.A. in art. “There are times when I have gone in there and cried and broken down,” he says. “I’ve had those heart-to-heart conversations. I’ve taken naps. I’ve had some of the best conversations of my life.” Wells’s first year at Brooklyn College was in 2015, but he struggled to find his academic direction, and the following year he took some time off. He returned in 2019, just in time for the COVID-19 pandemic to shut things down. With the help of the leadership at BLMI, though, he managed to make a new start, finding his confidence and his path as an artist—and making the Dean’s List twice. Program Coordinator Shadiq Williams, who first joined as an undergraduate in 2012, remembers the program expanding his world in life-changing ways. When he was still a student, it put him in a position to get to know, and feel at ease with, assistant deans, VPs, and directors. Now, he encourages students to get involved in the college community. “For some of them, they just never had anybody say that,” says Williams. So when somebody does, their confidence “skyrockets.” Primary funding for BLMI comes from the City Council, says Shadiq Williams, which made the program a permanent part of the budget in 2018. And for the first time, he says, “New York State has allocated an additional $500,000 to support CUNY BMI in 2023.” The Kurz Foundation funds the BLMI Summer Institute, Leadership Academy, and Study Abroad Scholarship. In recognition of the importance of programs like the Brooklyn College BLMI, CUNY BMI is set to initiate a partnership with the Mentor Collective, which will foster connections among BMI programs across CUNY campuses.
