“Arizona State is a Hispanic-serving institution,” Hill said. “As we are looking at institutions, we want to look at the support that exists for our students once they transfer to that institution. So that was one of the big draws of Arizona State. It’s an HSI. But we also had students who were already going there outside of us having a partnership with them. So we’re trying to listen to and look at how our students are moving through the process. So if they are going to an institution that we don’t have a partnership with, but the partnership could increase services or support, then we need to create that partnership for students.”

Another attractive aspect of Arizona State is that the Madison College students wouldn’t have to move there to attend.

“It is the online program or the residential program,” Hill said. “If students want to get an Arizona State degree, but not move to Arizona, they could do the online program. And it doesn’t distinguish on their degree if it’s online or in-person.”

Madison College made a move several years ago to set up a partnership agreement with an HBCU that ended up being terminated because the college lost its accreditation. Undaunted, Dr. Jack Daniels III, the former Madison College president, informed Hill about a United Negro College Fund, UNCF, initiative that could prove valuable — and efficient — in establishing partnerships with HBCUs. While UNCF is primarily known as a fundraising mechanism for HBCUs, it also has some programmatic initiatives.

“In March 2024, Dr. Daniels told me about a conference called A Dream Deferred and has a link with the Student Focus Conference,” Hill said. “It brings HBCUs together. So I went to New York to try to build relationships and harass people. ‘Hey, we’re a campus in Madison looking to build relationships and pathways.’ Everything happens the way it is supposed to. I was waiting to talk to a presenter after their session. I was standing there and another woman was standing there. We struck up a conversation. I told her where I worked at and what I was doing. She was like, ‘Oh, I’m assistant vice-president of coalition building at United Negro College Fund, UNCF, and we’re doing some things around transfer. We exchange information.’ And from there, we met over the course of 6-8 months and built out the partnership, the UNCF partnership.”

Instead of cold calling with individual HBCUs on a hit or miss basis, the UNCF partnership created a pathway to HBCUs that allowed Madison College to be efficient with its time and allowed HBCUs to check out Madison College without any commitment.

“We created a pathway to connect with leadership,” Hill said. “Later in October, early November, we’ll be doing a webinar to their team level administrators at the HBCUs to talk about Madison College, show them the infrastructure on how our campus functions and our academic program. And then we’ll say, ‘We’d like to develop pathways with you. Are you interested?’ And then with those who raise their hands, we’ll start working with them to build out a pathway. So it gives us an opportunity to not make phone call after phone call and to have one catalyst that helps us create lanes and avenues of relationship building to maximize our efforts. And then not that they are putting pressure on the institution, but they feel it is a worthwhile venture for their institutions to engage with us. So they have almost already vetted us and knighted us to say, ‘This is a worthwhile institution to connect with and it’s a partnership.’ It’s this versus us kind of cold-calling for some of the relationships we were trying to establish. So it takes that layer out and creates an opportunity to engage in that dialogue about what we have to offer and why it is a worthwhile adventure for them. There is interest in the area, so we know that. I think it is a great opportunity in terms of the diversity of opportunities for our students.”

This is a special step for Madison College in developing the partnership with UNCF.

“This is the first time that UNCF has partnered with a two-year campus,” Hill said. “We signed the agreement in April or May of this year. Then we had graduation and other things going on. And we didn’t want to announce it and then it got hidden with everything that is happening. We’ll probably start to have some programs and different things happening early next year.”

It can be a win-win for each institution. For African American Madison College students, it might be a unique experience for them. Having attended predominantly white institutions for most of their lives, attending an HBCU provides them with a different experience where they naturally fit in.

“It’s like one less hurdle that a student has to worry about or deal with,” Hill said. “It’s like, ‘Okay, no one is wondering why I am here. I’m here to be a student.’ With everything going on in the world, sometimes it’s nice to take some of the stuff off that you don’t have to deal with. I think that is one of the ways that it helps take the stuff off. I think the other thing that is a benefit that we offer to the HBCUs is that some of them are also trying to diversify their enrollment So connecting with Latino and Latinx students, we have a  community of students here. And we also have international students on our campus. So there is an opportunity to once again for them to bypass some of the rapport building and engagement with the student population that are niche populations that they are trying to attract to their campuses.”

And the experience of the HBCU may also lead to stronger relationships between faculty and students.

“I think faculty even approach students differently at an HBCU,” Hill said. “It takes off some of those layers of doubt. You have a faculty member who is going to be on your butt in ways that you may bristle at if it is a different faculty member who doesn’t look like you. Or someone else might be a little more cautious about how much pressure they put on you. ‘We’re not playing with you. We’re serious about your future because you are a part of our community. We want to see you excel. And you don’t have to teach someone else about your culture. You are here to be a scholar. So we want to support your scholarly efforts.’ To be a part of that is exciting. And it connects students with as many resources as possible.”

One of the determining factors of success for the transferring student is the structure of support that they receive at their new campus. With an HBCU partnership agreement, it may be easier for Madison College to assist its transferring students to make those connections.

“When we went to St. Augustine and did a visit, it was interesting because we met a student who was from Milwaukee,” Hill recalled. “And that’s the other thing. Even if they didn’t come from Madison College, we have Wisconsin students at HBCUs. The other part of that relationship building is how do we connect with our Wisconsin students generally. But if they are from the Madison area, how do we connect our students with them? Sometimes it is easier when you can see someone else who has done it or to reach out to them and ask, ‘What was this experience like?’ To have that peer relationship, we can build out the articulation agreements with some programs that can match current students at Madison College with current students at HBCUs. And then there is a community of alumni in the area and in Milwaukee. We are hoping that we can build some relationships and some rapport that way so they can connect once again with students with that larger HBCU community.”

The partnerships that Madison College is establishing could also lead to students from marginalized communities attending top-rate universities — including Ivy School universities — at a price that they can afford.