What Umoja Means to Us
The Umoja Scholars Program is committed to enriching, fostering, nurturing the educational experience of all students, especially African American and 1st generation college students. To the students….
Building Community
One of the major focuses of the program is to build community among the students. This is done by allowing the students to organize and participate in various social, cultural, and academic events.
Umoja classes are designed using the Culturally Relevant Pedagogy theoretical framework. This looks like a lively class environment with students engaged and actively involved in their own learning. Projects are assigned that connect to the students cultural background.
Fostering Academic Support
Umoja strongly encourages students to take advantage of the available resources by offering intrusive counseling and mandatory tutoring. Students from study tribes where they get together in the Umoja village to study in groups.
Building Relationships
One of the strongest aspects of Umoja is the relationships students and teachers develop with each other. Teachers and students support, encourage, and help one another so that everyone can succeed.
Building Identity
To differentiate between the cohorts, each group comes up with a cohort name, symbol and mantra. So far we’ve had three cohorts: Aya, Sankofa, and Sesa. The next cohort will begin this summer.
Our Journey
Through surveys, videos, interviews, and discourse we have been investigating the environment most conducive for the success of African American math students.
Our Vision Realized
Where we see ourselves in the future based on what we’ve learn, seen, done thus far.
