For the last 20 years, I have volunteered in schools and community centers, served as a mentor to young men of color, been invited to speak in middle and high school classrooms, and have tried to understand how we can get more men of color into, and graduated from, college. All this to say that increasing access and success to college is personal to me.

I know what happens to boys and men of color when schools and social systems fail them, so I want more men of color to experience and gain all the social and academic experiences to move forward. Now, as a professor, I know that colleges and universities have a big responsibility to facilitate programs and services to help men of color gain access and graduate from their institutions. And little did I know that my past experiences would inform into my first large scale research project focused on men of color and retention programs...

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Being a student while also being a parent complicates the traditional college experience. A pair of researchers are examining how these student-parents adapt and overcome the inherent barriers and gaps they face in higher education.More than one in five college students (22%) are parents according to analysis of National Postsecondary Student Aid Study data, with roughly 70% of those being mothers. The largest share (42%) are enrolled in community colleges. The data also shows the median debt among student-parents was more than two-and-a-half times higher than debt among students without children. Despite a range of practical and financial obstacles that impede their ability to graduate on time, student parents achieve higher grade point averages (GPA) than other students...

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A new paper from researchers at USC, UCLA, and the University of La Verne, including the Pullias Center’s Adrian Huerta, seeks to explore a specific barrier to planning and preparation for higher education encountered by young gang-associated Latino males. The research paper, titled College is…: Focusing on the college knowledge of gang-associated Latino boys and young men, shares a qualitative study that focused on the narratives of 13 Latino high school boys and young men with the goal of understanding what college knowledge they possess...

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The Men of Color study is going strong more than two years after receiving a grant to research best practices for improving college persistence and graduation rates for minority men. The Pullias Center news story announcing that a $300k grant from ECMC Foundation would be put towards the new Men of Color study ran in December 2018. It highlighted that the Pullias Center’s director, William Tierney, and a relative newcomer to USC, Provost Postdoctoral Scholar Adrian Huerta, would be leads on the project...

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It’s almost midnight as a final figure emerges from Waite Phillips Hall on the USC campus. He would be the last person to be in the offices of the Pullias Center for a while. The governor had just issued a stay at home order that took effect in under an hour. An unusually low and dense fog had settled in this March evening. He turned for one last look at the building before leaving. Its blocky and imposing design jutted straight into the clouds and, in an almost defiant gesture against the gathering real and metaphorical dark, lit them up. “It looks like a beacon,” he thought to himself, aware of how appropriate that metaphor was...

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The application window for the 2020 Delphi Award is now open but will close on July 17, 2020. The $15,000 cash award is given annually to two individuals or groups who have worked to support adjunct, contingent and non-tenure-track faculty in promoting student success. Starting the application is easy.

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The Pullias Center has gathered a range of resources for everyone in higher education, including students, faculty, and administrators, impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. These have been created and curated from internal and external sources.

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