MACH-3 CENTER TAKES A CLOSER LOOK AT WHAT’S OVERLOOKED:

DR. FRED A. BONNER II Endowed Chair at PVAMU

MACH-3 Takes A Closer Look at What’s Overlooked: Center

BLACK MALE ACHIEVERS IN HIGHER EDUCATION

There has long been a recurring theme in national news media stories regarding minorities in public schools: Grim stories about at-risk, low-achievers who struggle through the system and the resulting long-term challenges they face as adults.

YET, ONE PROMINENT SCHOLAR IS SUCCESSFULLY CHALLENGING THAT NARRATIVE.

His name is Dr. Fred A. Bonner II, and he joined the faculty at Prairie View A&M University in the College of Education in early 2015 after serving two years as the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Endowed Chair in Education at Rutgers University’s Graduate School of Education.

Bonner recently won a Chancellor’s Research Initiative Grant for his Minority Achievement in Higher Education (MACH-3) plan. As an endowed chair at PVAMU, Bonner brings a well-defined and razor-sharp agenda to his role as director of the new MACH-3 Center.

Beginning in spring 2016, Bonner will teach one course each semester and will continue many of the educational initiatives that he began during his time at Rutgers — notably, the HBCU Dean’s Think-Tank and the Black Male Summit.

“The core of what I do is find ways to improve the success of marginalized populations in an educational context from pre-kindergarten all the way through graduate school,” Bonner said.

– DR. FRED A. BONNER II

“What really struck me is that there was such a very small number of students of color, particularly African-American males who identified with gifted and talented or advanced placement.”

MACH-3ORIGIN OF THE Concept

Bonner’s study of black males in higher education’s version of “gifted and talented” originated with his own post-graduate experiences.

“I got my doctorate in higher education because I thought I’d become a VP of student affairs,” Bonner said. “I had a really good adviser who said, ‘we’re going to do the Ed.D. program, but I’m still going to make you take every research course.”

That research training ultimately shaped Bonner’s career. He recalls taking a course which examined the whole student spectrum — from those in special education courses to those in gifted and talented courses. “What really struck me is that there was such a very small number of students of color, particularly African-American males who identified with gifted and talented or advanced placement,” Bonner said.

“At the time, I was completing a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction, which is a K-12 program. But I decided to go on to get my doctorate and I selected higher ed administration,” he said. “So, I was trying to find a way to hang on to that focus on gifted and talented (K-12 black male students), but I knew my field was going to be higher ed.”

With helpful input from his adviser, Bonner found a new approach: rather than looking only at high-achieving black males in the public school system, he would examine the path of high-achievers in post-secondary colleges and universities. As an early blueprint, he used a rough master’s paper he’d written titled, Who is More Effective at Cultivating Giftedness: HBCUs or PWIs?

“From that master’s paper, I’ve basically crafted an entire career,” said Bonner, who has become a prolific author of several books on the subject of black males who manage to excel in the post-graduate world.

Pictured are members of B3: Black and Brown Brothers, the organization provides multi-level mentoring for African American and Latino male college students.

WHY MACH-3 MATTERS AND THE GOALS FOR PVAMU

“My goal is for Prairie View A&M and the MACH-3 Center to be the epicenter for research among minority-serving institutions,” said Bonner. “I’ve always had a personal commitment that I would prove to myself that I can be successful at large-scale university research programs and then move on to an HBCU,” Bonner said.

Meanwhile, students of the MACH-3 Center will be encouraged to seek out their own field of interest, using Bonner’s approach as a template, he said. “I tell my students, ‘Look, my agenda is high-achieving black males. My goal as a mentor is to get you to find what your agenda is,” Bonner said. “I can teach you the research methods, but I want you to find out what you’re passionate about.” For example, one of Bonner’s previous students focused on high-achieving Hispanic women in the engineering field.

Bonner said he recognizes the importance of studying low-achieving minority students, but sees an urgent need to take a harder look at minority students who excel despite adversity. “I think the problem is that we really only look at this very small margin,” Bonner said. “We have to move all students away from talking about what I call a ‘deficit perspective.’ We need to move from a deficit model to an asset model.”

“I want to know about the child who’s sitting in your class who comes from ‘that side of the tracks,’ from a one-parent household, very low-income, and who has to go through craziness just to even get to school, but he’s sitting in your physics class with a 99.9 percent average. I need to know what he’s doing.

“If you can isolate the success factors of students who are building on resilience, you could potentially use that model to raise academic achievement levels among all ethnic and socioeconomic groups,” Bonner said.

With Bonner’s prominent and well-respected scholarship setting the tone, the MACH-3 Center is primed to rapidly raise PVAMU’s profile in a field of research many other institutions have yet to fully appreciate. o