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Since the mid-1800s, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have been educating a majority of Black Americans. These 105 institutions serve more than 300,000 undergraduate, graduate, and professional students from diverse backgrounds, various socio economic levels, and academic achievement levels. And, it is important that they continue on this challenging journey of addressing the unique needs of the HBCU student by becoming more efficient and focused on their program offerings with minimal state support and shrinking federal funding. Further, systems mandates, board governance, affirmative action, and civil unrest oftentimes camouflage the historic role of the HBCU. Questions arise as to the relevance of these historic institutions when the student, faculty, and staff demographics begin to shift in an effort to compete for the quality and quantity of students enrolling at majority institutions. It is imperative that we continue having crucial conversations surrounding the essence of this challenge. Diversity is our strength and a reality that should not be ignored. What better institution to exemplify inclusive excellence than a HBCU? This chapter will address how these historic institutions can continue to celebrate their legacy while embracing the rich dimensions of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

There is a wide consensus among higher education constituents that inclusive learning is essential for all students (Landorf, Doscher, & Jaffus, 2017). Despite this consensus, few theory-to-practice models exist demonstrating how to achieve this goal. Faculty and administrators from a public, land-grant university located in the Midwestern United States are addressing the challenges associated with implementing equity and inclusion at their institution through the development of a model that includes intentional use of theory for designing inclusive learning environments. A primary component of this model was to develop a campus-wide policy across all departments and disciplines. This policy was collectively created with stakeholders across divisions, departments, and disciplines to integrate universal inclusive learning throughout the institution to achieve the aim of inclusive excellence. The outcomes of this policy are in the preliminary stages, but the goal is that far-reaching educational gains will occur in helping students acquire the broad knowledge, higher-order thinking skills, and real-world experiences they need to thrive in a diverse global society. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a helpful way of examining how intentional application of theory might work in higher education institutions to achieve high quality, high-impact inclusive learning for all students.

Historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) possess an advantage in preparing students of color for the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce (Gasman & Nguyen, 2014; Upton & Tannenbaum, 2014). It has been suggested that implementing additional strategies to increase the availability, dissemination, and quality of information related to successful HBCU outcomes will allow HBCUs to sustain themselves into the future (Gasman & Nguyen, 2016). We discuss the use and benefits of a novel framework THRIVE Index tool (Byrd & Mason, 2020). THRIVE uses seven dimensions (e.g., Type, History, Research, Inclusion, Identity, Voice, and Expectation) to illustrate best practices of academic pipeline programs and increase the availability of HBCU success outcomes in a comparable format. Academic pipeline programs come in several varieties, but their goal is to propel individuals from one level of the academy to another and into the workforce. Using a common framework like THRIVE also allows for the creation of a clearinghouse of what successfully works for us at HBCUs from the perspective of HBCU pipeline program directors. We describe strategies for how this option for knowledge transfer to stakeholders (e.g. parents, corporations, educational institutions, etc.) can aid in long-term sustainability efforts like recruitment strategies and partnership efforts.

With reference to selected principles and considerations from the university social responsibility concept, this study aims to discuss aspects of social responsibility from the perspectives of participatory teaching. This study describes the effects that a participatory teaching practice has on the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge and how universities can exercise their social responsibility and influence in this context.

For this study’s argumentation, this study refers to the experiences and findings from a participatory teaching and transfer project (QuaBIS) and a participatory research project ParLink. In QuaBIS, the authors evaluated and descriptively analyzed courses taught by subject matter experts on inclusion and education , then led and evaluated topic-centered interviews, social responsibility, power relations, diversity sensitivity, inclusive university, participatory teaching in ParLink, the authors conducted three focus group discussions that included lecturers with and without attributed learning difficulties, students and other professionals working in the field of education. The group discussions were fully transcribed and analyzed using qualitative content analysis in collaboration with a participatory research group.

The results are classified into micro, meso and macro levels of inclusion-sensitive higher education development. While the micro level focuses on changing practices in the area of university teaching, the meso level highlights structural and cultural changes in inclusive universities. At the macro level, the role of universities in the process of social opening and inclusion is studied.

Participatory teaching projects are only gradually becoming established in the discourse on inclusion-sensitive higher education. This study focuses on participatory teaching as an important contribution to social responsibility by universities and dedicate itself to the mutual transfer process between university and society.