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H.O.W.L Initiative enhances minority graduate student success

The Holt Official Watch List, or H.O.W.L. Program founded in 2016 to help women, students of color, and often first-generation students gain admission into post-graduate programs, has achieved major feats recently through its focused mentorship and student success initiative. According to H.O.W.L’s founder, Dr. Lanier Frush Holt, an Associate Professor at Ohio State University, he has witnessed significant accomplishments among his mentees who are part of the graduate school preparation program which he administers singlehandedly. These include full-time positions at Lincoln Financial Group, the NFL’s Detroit Lions as social media coordinator, and a federal judicial clerkship for the U.S. Southern District of Ohio.

In spring 2024, former HOWL mentees also graduated from law schools at UCLA, SMU, and the Masters of Public Affairs program at the University of Southern California (USC).

Previous mentees have attended or graduated from Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, Columbia University, Virginia Commonwealth, Emory University, Georgia

Institute of Technology, the Medill School at Northwestern, the University of Chicago Law School, law school at Notre Dame, and several programs at The Ohio State University.

H.O.W.L has an undergraduate graduation rate of higher than 98%, and every student HOWL mentee who has attended a post-graduate program of any kind, has graduated. In spring 2016, HOWL had its 40th student admitted into graduate, MBA, or law school program.

In recent years, the foundation has broadened its scope of student mentees, but remains largely comprised of women and students of color.

This year, students were admitted into graduate programs at Wake Forest University, the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, the Department of Communication at the University of California-Santa Barbara, and law school at the University of Minnesota

The Commission applauds Dr. Holt for leading this important mentorship initiative, and congratulates H.O.W.L. alumni and current mentees.