Already-Pro Forward Benjamin Ndour Signs With FAMU

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The Benjamin Ndour FAMU signing brings a 6-foot-9 forward with real professional experience into a Rattlers program that keeps landing talent most SWAC schools can only dream about. Charlie Ward just added a player who’s already been paid to play basketball.

The Field of 68 reported Monday that Ndour, a native of Dakar, Senegal, has signed with FAMU. It’s another significant addition to a roster Ward is rebuilding piece by piece. Ndour most recently played for Etrusca Basket San Miniato in Italy’s Serie B Interregionale. That means he arrives in Tallahassee with real professional minutes already on his résumé, not just untested potential.

What Benjamin Ndour brings to FAMU basketball

The Field of 68 described Ndour as a two-way forward who rebounds, blocks shots, attacks the rim, and stretches the floor out to the 3-point line. That combination of size and skill is exactly what most college frontcourts lack. It’s the kind of profile that could make Ndour an immediate difference-maker in SWAC play.

Ndour isn’t new to European professional basketball, either. The 22-year-old spent several years working through the Italian system. He played for Fulgor Libertas Forlì in Serie A2 before joining Etrusca. During the 2023-24 season, he averaged 7.2 points across 29 games. Those aren’t eye-popping numbers. Still, they reflect real minutes against professional competition, a different level of seasoning than most college newcomers bring to a roster.

The Benjamin Ndour FAMU signing continues a pattern for Charlie Ward

This isn’t the first time Ward has pulled in a player most HBCU programs wouldn’t be able to land. Four-star point guard Jayden “JJ” Joseph committed to FAMU in August 2025. He’d fielded offers from Florida State, Mississippi State, Ole Miss, Oregon, UCF, and Southern California before choosing the Rattlers. Ward followed that up by landing Cam Cooper, a 6-foot-7 guard who also held offers from Florida State and Texas A&M. Cooper became the highest-rated recruit in program history.

The Benjamin Ndour FAMU signing extends that streak into new territory. This isn’t another high school prospect picking FAMU over Power Four programs. This is a professional player choosing an HBCU over continuing his career overseas. That’s a different kind of recruiting win. It says something about how quickly Ward has changed the calculus for talent considering FAMU. HBCU Buzz has tracked Ward’s recruiting run since his hire in its ongoing FAMU basketball coverage.

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Why Ward’s own background matters here

Ward isn’t a stranger to elite-level competition himself. He won the Heisman Trophy at Florida State in 1993. He went undrafted in the NFL, then played 12 seasons in the NBA with the Knicks, Spurs, and Rockets instead. That combination of football and basketball success at the highest level gives Ward real credibility with recruits and international players. Few HBCU coaches can match it.

His FAMU ties run deeper than the coaching job itself, too. Both of his parents met on FAMU’s campus. His father played football there under legendary coach Jake Gaither. Ward has described the job as the only collegiate position he was willing to take. He’s framed it as a homecoming, not a career stepping stone. That personal investment appears to be translating directly into roster-building most first-time college coaches can’t pull off this quickly. HBCU Buzz has covered Ward’s rebuild in more depth through its SWAC basketball coverage.

What Ndour’s arrival means for FAMU’s season

Ward’s first season at FAMU ended with a 15-16 overall record and an 11-7 mark in the SWAC, plus an ESPN HBCU Hoops Invitational title. Adding Ndour’s size and professional experience gives Ward another piece as he tries to push that record further in year two. A frontcourt player who can rebound, protect the rim, and space the floor fills needs most rebuilding programs struggle to address through the transfer portal alone.

For FAMU, the Ndour signing reinforces a broader message. This program is no longer just competing for the SWAC’s usual recruiting pool. It’s pulling in Power Four-level high schoolers and professional players from overseas in the same offseason. That combination is exactly the kind of roster construction that can turn a rebuilding year into a genuine SWAC contender.

There’s also a scheduling angle worth watching. FAMU faces a challenging non-conference slate this season as Ward continues testing his roster against tougher competition before SWAC play begins. A forward with Ndour’s international experience should help the Rattlers hold their own in those early games, rather than getting overwhelmed by teams with more size or physicality up front. If Ndour’s production translates the way his profile suggests it should, FAMU’s frontcourt could end up being one of the more complete units anywhere in the conference this season, giving Ward’s guards more room to operate and opposing defenses one more matchup problem to solve.

The Sam Jones NCCU Statue Brings a Celtics Legend Home

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The Sam Jones NCCU statue will do something no championship banner or box score ever could. It will give visitors to McDougald-McLendon Arena a permanent, physical reminder of where a 10-time NBA champion’s basketball journey actually started.

North Carolina Central plans to unveil the sculpture prior to the Eagles’ men’s basketball game against South Carolina State, according to HBCU Gameday. Family members and friends of Jones, along with university officials, will take part in the ceremony. The sculpture stands 30 inches tall and 22 inches wide and was created by award-winning Vermont-based artist Douglas Aja. After the unveiling, it will stay on permanent display inside the arena.

Who Sam Jones was before the Celtics

Before Sam Jones became one of the most decorated players in NBA history, he was an Eagle. The Wilmington, North Carolina, native played at North Carolina Central across two stints — first from 1951 to 1954, then again in 1956-57. He averaged 17.8 points per game over 98 contests under legendary coaches John McLendon and Floyd Brown. That coaching lineage matters. McLendon is himself a Hall of Fame figure in basketball history. Jones learned the game directly under him before taking it to the professional level.

Boston selected Jones eighth overall in the first round of the 1957 NBA Draft. That pick launched one of the most decorated careers the league has ever seen. Jones spent all 12 seasons of his professional career with the Celtics. He left with 10 NBA championships to show for it, a total matched by almost no one in league history.

The numbers behind “Mr. Clutch”

Jones earned the nickname “Mr. Clutch” for a reason. He finished his career with 15,411 points, 4,305 rebounds, and 2,209 assists across 871 games. He made five NBA All-Star teams and earned three All-NBA Second Team selections. His championship total ranks second all-time, behind only his own Celtics teammate, Bill Russell. That places Jones in some of the most exclusive company professional basketball has ever produced.

Jones’ recognition extended well beyond his playing days, too. He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and into the North Carolina Central Athletics Hall of Fame in 1984. He also earned spots in the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame, the NAIA Hall of Fame, and the CIAA Hall of Fame. The NBA itself has recognized him three separate times as part of its 25th, 50th, and 75th anniversary teams, most recently landing him on the league’s Top 75 list. HBCU Buzz has covered similar honors for HBCU basketball legends through its ongoing HBCU basketball history coverage.

Why the Sam Jones NCCU statue matters now

Jones died in December 2021 at age 88. That makes this unveiling a posthumous tribute rather than something he’ll see in person. That timing gives the ceremony extra weight. Family members attending the event will be honoring a legacy rather than celebrating alongside the man himself. The sculpture becomes something closer to a permanent memorial than a typical honor for a living alum.

The Sam Jones NCCU statue also arrives at a moment when HBCUs are increasingly claiming physical space for their own sports history. That history shouldn’t live only in record books and championship banners elsewhere. A statue inside McDougald-McLendon Arena does something a plaque or a jersey retirement can’t quite match. It puts Jones’ likeness permanently in the building where his career actually began. Every player and fan who walks through the doors going forward will see it. HBCU Buzz has tracked similar campus tributes across the conference in its MEAC basketball coverage.

What the ceremony means for NCCU basketball

Timing the unveiling around a home game against South Carolina State gives the moment a built-in audience, rather than treating it as a standalone campus event. Fans arriving for a MEAC matchup will get history alongside basketball. It ties Jones’ legacy directly to the program he helped put on the map, decades before either school played in that conference.

For North Carolina Central, the statue is more than a tribute to one alum’s career. It’s a statement about what the program considers worth remembering permanently. Not just banners hanging from the rafters, but a lasting physical presence that puts Sam Jones’ story in front of every future Eagle who steps onto that court.

That kind of permanent tribute also carries weight beyond NCCU’s own campus. Jones played his college ball in an era when HBCU basketball routinely produced players who went on to reshape the professional game, even when the broader sports world was slow to credit where that talent actually came from. A statue doesn’t rewrite that history, but it does make sure the connection between Jones and NCCU stays visible for as long as the arena stands, rather than fading into a footnote in Celtics record books that rarely mention where his game was built.

Edward Waters Enrollment Is 39 Students Away From an All-Time Record

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Edward Waters enrollment just hit a number the school hasn’t seen in more than 20 years. It’s now close enough to an all-time record that the gap can be counted in dozens, not hundreds.

Florida’s first HBCU welcomed 1,281 students for Fall 2026, according to HBCU Gameday. That’s a 5.4 percent jump from Fall 2025 and the largest student body at the Jacksonville school in more than two decades. Edward Waters is now just 39 students away from setting a new all-time enrollment record. That mark has stood for nearly the entire 160-year history of the institution.

A number two decades in the making

“Edward Waters University is no longer a story about potential. It is a story about performance,” EWU President and CEO Dr. A. Zachary Faison Jr. said in the university’s announcement. That’s a pointed line, and it reflects just how far the school has come from where it stood a decade ago.

Back in the mid-2010s, Edward Waters reportedly enrolled around 800 students. Aging campus infrastructure and accreditation warnings were actively working against the school’s recruiting efforts at the time. The university clawed back to 932 students by 2019, then kept climbing. It’s added nearly 350 more students since. “The market did not get easier. We got better,” Faison said, framing the growth as execution rather than luck or favorable timing.

Edward Waters enrollment growth by the numbers

The current 1,281-student total caps a run that’s been building steadily for years. In Fall 2021, the school reached 1,104 students, its highest mark in nearly two decades at the time. That number climbed to 1,187 the following fall. By Fall 2025, Edward Waters enrollment crossed 1,200 for the first time in more than 20 years, landing at 1,210. Each of those milestones got framed as a record when it happened. Each one has since been surpassed by the next.

That pattern matters because it shows sustained growth rather than a single lucky recruiting cycle. Edward Waters enrollment gains have compounded year over year since 2019, adding up to roughly a 30 percent increase over that stretch. HBCU Buzz has tracked that climb through its ongoing Edward Waters University coverage.

What’s driving the growth

Part of the story is Edward Waters’ 2021 transition from college to university status. That change came with the ability to offer master’s degrees for the first time, which opened new recruiting territory beyond the traditional undergraduate pipeline. Application volume backs up the broader momentum, too. The university reported more than 11,500 applications for Fall 2025 alone, the highest volume in its history at the time. Graduate program interest jumped 153 percent over that same stretch.

Athletics has played a role as well. Edward Waters gained NCAA Division II membership and rejoined the SIAC after an absence of more than 80 years. That gave the school what administrators have described as a “front porch” for attracting new students who might not have considered the university otherwise. HBCU Buzz has covered how athletics and academics have worked together to fuel that turnaround in its HBCU enrollment coverage.

What breaking the record would mean

Edward Waters isn’t alone in posting strong enrollment numbers this fall. Institutions including Alabama A&M, Coppin State, Delaware State, and Winston-Salem State have all reported record or near-record incoming classes this cycle. It’s part of a broader surge across HBCUs nationally. What sets Edward Waters apart is the scale of the turnaround relative to where the school stood just over a decade ago. Accreditation concerns and shrinking enrollment made its long-term survival a real question back then.

Closing a 39-student gap sounds modest on paper. For a school of Edward Waters’ size and history, it represents the difference between a strong recovery story and an outright record that erases the last two decades of struggle. Whether that record falls this year or next, the trajectory itself has already answered the question Faison posed in his own statement. This is performance, not potential, and the numbers now back it up.

The next test comes with spring registration, when the university will find out whether Fall 2026’s momentum carries into the second half of the academic year. Retention has been part of Edward Waters’ pitch alongside recruitment, and holding onto this year’s incoming class matters just as much as the record-setting headline. If Edward Waters enrollment keeps climbing at anything close to its recent pace, the all-time record won’t just fall — it’ll likely fall by more than a handful of students, turning a decade of steady rebuilding into a genuinely new chapter for Florida’s oldest HBCU.

The Nightcap HBCU Tour Kicks Off at Prairie View’s Baby Dome

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The Nightcap HBCU Tour has a first stop, and it’s a fitting one. Prairie View A&M will host the show live from the Baby Dome on Sept. 4. That kicks off what Shannon Sharpe and Chad “Ochocinco” Johnson are calling an HBCU Tour for their popular sports talk show.

“OH YEAH! Nightcap is hitting the road and going on an HBCU Tour!” the show announced on social media. “We’re pulling up to Prairie View A&M first LIVE from the Baby Dome on September 4th. It’s about to go down!” The live show will happen inside Prairie View’s William “Billy” J. Nicks Building. HBCU fans know it simply as the Baby Dome.

What the Nightcap HBCU Tour brings to campus

Nightcap features Pro Football Hall of Famer Shannon Sharpe and former NFL star Chad Johnson. Former NBA All-Star Joe Johnson has become a regular part of the show’s rotation too. The show has built a massive digital following since launching in 2023. Moving it beyond the studio is a real bet that HBCU campuses can deliver the same energy live that the show generates online.

That bet isn’t coming out of nowhere. Sharpe and Johnson have shown up for HBCU culture before. During Nightcap’s live Super Bowl show, the two encouraged their audience to donate to the Southern University Human Jukebox Marching Band after a standout performance. They then personally pledged $50,000 combined on the spot. The Nightcap HBCU Tour reads as a natural next step from that same instinct. It’s a way of pointing a massive platform directly at HBCU audiences, instead of just inviting HBCU talent into a studio for a segment.

Why Prairie View, and why now

The timing lines up well for Prairie View specifically. The university is celebrating its 150th anniversary throughout 2026. Landing the first stop on a high-profile media tour adds another marquee moment to an already historic year on The Hill. For a campus already leaning into celebration mode, a live Nightcap broadcast is exactly the kind of national attention that amplifies everything else happening this year. That includes everything from anniversary events to football season itself.

There’s also a personal thread running through this tour, and it traces back to Sharpe himself. Sharpe played his college football at Savannah State before any of that came. He went on to become an eight-time Pro Bowler, three-time Super Bowl champion, and Pro Football Hall of Famer. Years removed from his playing days, he’s now steering one of the biggest platforms in sports media back toward campuses like the one that shaped his own path. That personal connection gives the Nightcap HBCU Tour a different feel than a typical corporate media stop. This is someone returning to his own roots, not just visiting for content. HBCU Buzz has tracked Sharpe’s continued involvement with HBCU culture through its ongoing HBCU alumni coverage.

What a Nightcap stop could mean for HBCU exposure

A live taping at Prairie View isn’t just good television. Shows like Nightcap carry real reach. A live HBCU stop puts campus culture, band performances, and student energy in front of an audience that extends far beyond typical HBCU media coverage. That kind of exposure has tangible value for recruiting, for alumni engagement, and for putting HBCU culture in front of viewers who might otherwise never see it. A single viral clip from a live broadcast can do more for a campus’s visibility than months of traditional promotion. HBCU Buzz has covered similar national media moments spotlighting campus culture through its HBCU media coverage.

Where the Nightcap HBCU Tour goes next

Prairie View is confirmed. What happens after Sept. 4 is still a mystery. The show hasn’t named any additional stops, and there’s no public schedule for where the tour heads next. Given Sharpe and Johnson’s track record of showing up for HBCU moments, fans are already speculating about which campus gets the call next. Whether the Baby Dome stop is a one-off or the start of a longer run touching multiple conferences is the open question hanging over the whole announcement.

For HBCU football broadly, the timing couldn’t line up better. Sept. 4 falls right in the heart of the season’s opening weekend stretch, when campuses across the country are already hosting classics, kickoff games, and reunion weekends. A live Nightcap broadcast dropped into that window doesn’t compete with the football calendar — it amplifies it, giving Prairie View’s opener extra reach it wouldn’t otherwise get. If the tour does expand beyond one stop, the same logic would apply everywhere it lands: more eyes on HBCU football at exactly the moment the season is trying to build momentum.

Benedict College’s BEST Men Program Lands a $100K Boulé Foundation Grant

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The Benedict College BEST Men Program just landed real money behind it: a $100,000 grant from The Boulé Foundation. Benedict already enrolls something rare in higher education — a student body that’s majority male. This grant is aimed at keeping those young men enrolled, mentored, and moving toward graduation.

The B.E.S.T. Men Program is a newly established, comprehensive mentorship initiative at the Columbia, South Carolina HBCU. It wraps students in mentors, leadership development opportunities, academic support, career preparation, and wellness resources, all built around one core idea. Persistence in college rarely comes from talent alone. Students finish when someone consistently shows up for them, challenges them, and refuses to let a rough semester become a permanent dropout statistic.

Why Benedict built the BEST Men Program

Benedict College President Roslyn Clark Artis has been direct about the thinking behind this initiative. In a piece for UNCF, Artis argued that colleges shouldn’t wait until Black men become a headline or a statistic before investing in them. That’s the entire premise of the Benedict College BEST Men Program. Intervene early, and intervene consistently, rather than reacting after the fact.

Benedict’s own enrollment numbers back up why this matters specifically for this campus. The college enrolls a majority-male student body. That’s an uncommon distinction among private HBCUs and in higher education generally, where women typically outnumber men on campus by a wide margin. That reality means Benedict has a bigger stake than most institutions in getting male retention and graduation right. A larger share of its overall student success depends on it.

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The Boulé Foundation’s role

The Boulé Foundation is connected to Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity, and Artis specifically credited “the distinguished men of Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity” for backing the initiative. She framed their investment as more than a check. It’s a statement about leadership, she argued. That kind of leadership isn’t measured just by responding to tragedy after it happens. It’s measured by building opportunities for young Black men to thrive well before tragedy ever has a chance to find them. HBCU Buzz has covered similar mentorship and success initiatives across the HBCU landscape in its ongoing HBCU student success coverage.

A model Benedict wants other funders to copy

Artis didn’t stop at thanking one donor. She used the moment to push a broader challenge to funders. Imagine, she wrote, if corporations funded mentorship programs with the same enthusiasm they show when sponsoring memorial funds after a tragedy. Imagine if professional athletes endowed leadership programs proactively instead of waiting to create scholarships in someone’s memory. Imagine if foundations, faith communities, and philanthropists treated investment in young Black men as one of the nation’s most important forms of economic and social development. Not as an afterthought.

That framing matters because it positions the Boulé Foundation’s $100,000 gift as a template, not a one-off. Benedict is betting that other institutions and funders will look at the BEST Men Program’s structure and see something replicable — mentorship, leadership development, academic support, career prep, and wellness resources, funded together under one initiative rather than scattered across disconnected programs.

Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity, commonly known as the Boulé, is one of the oldest Black Greek-letter organizations in the country. It’s built around professional and civic leadership rather than undergraduate chapters. That history gives this particular gift extra symbolic weight. This isn’t a first-time donor experimenting with education philanthropy. It’s an established Black professional network putting real money behind a specific, structured program aimed at young Black men still working toward their degrees.

What comes next for Benedict’s male students

The grant gives Benedict real capital to build out programming rather than run it on goodwill alone. Mentorship initiatives at HBCUs often start as informal efforts led by a handful of committed faculty or staff. That makes them fragile and hard to scale. A dedicated funding stream changes that math, giving the BEST Men Program room to formalize mentor matching, track outcomes, and expand beyond whatever a small team could manage on volunteer hours.

For a campus where male students already make up the majority, the stakes of getting this right extend well past any single cohort. Benedict’s broader institutional turnaround under Artis backs up that confidence. Graduation rates have jumped 233% since 2018, and the college has reduced its debt by nearly $56 million. That track record suggests Benedict can execute on ambitious goals once it commits to them. The Benedict College BEST Men Program is the next test of that same execution, this time aimed squarely at the population that makes up most of the student body it’s trying to serve.

Three New HBCU Research Grants Show Where the Money’s Headed Next

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Three HBCU research grants landed in the same week. Together they cover a wide stretch of what these campuses are building toward — AI safety, clinical research, and STEM workforce pipelines. Tuskegee University, Howard University, and a joint effort between South Carolina State University and Voorhees University all secured new federal funding this month. Each award tells a slightly different story about where HBCU research is headed.

Tuskegee lands NSF funding for AI-assisted healthcare

Tuskegee University received a $699,999 grant from the National Science Foundation to improve the safety, transparency, and reliability of AI-assisted medical technologies. The award runs three years. Researchers at Tuskegee, working alongside partners from the University of North Texas, will build AI systems designed to generate responses grounded in reliable clinical evidence.

That’s not a small distinction. A lot of AI tools in healthcare settings still struggle with hallucinated or unsupported outputs. That’s a serious problem when the stakes involve patient care. Tuskegee’s project also focuses on supporting compliance with clinical guidelines and regulatory requirements. It builds in meaningful human oversight for high-risk healthcare decisions, too — the kind of safeguard regulators increasingly expect before AI tools reach real clinical settings. The grant will fund research opportunities for both undergraduates and graduate students working across artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, healthcare, and data science. This is one of several HBCU research grants Tuskegee has picked up in recent years. Its AI and biomedical portfolio keeps growing, and HBCU Buzz has tracked that growth through its ongoing Tuskegee University coverage.

Howard-Georgetown center renews $28 million NIH award

The bigger dollar figure this week belongs to Howard University. A research team spanning Howard, Georgetown University, and MedStar Health received a renewal of a Clinical and Translational Science Award from the National Institutes of Health. That renewal brings nearly $28 million in funding to the Georgetown-Howard Universities Center for Clinical and Translational Science.

The funding runs over the next seven years. That’s a long enough runway to support serious institutional planning rather than one-off projects. The center’s work spans several areas. It trains future clinical and translational scientists, engages communities directly as research partners, and builds collaborations that push scientific discovery further into practical use. This renewal also expands the center’s reach into newer research areas, including data science, artificial intelligence, precision medicine, and community-engaged research. A CTSA renewal at this scale signals something important. Federal reviewers see the Howard-Georgetown partnership as a proven, sustained research engine rather than an experiment.

South Carolina State and Voorhees join a $10 million STEM initiative

The third piece of this week’s funding news is broader in scope but smaller per-campus. South Carolina State University and Voorhees University are two of 11 colleges and universities participating in the South Carolina Collaborative Academic Pathways in STEM. It’s a $10 million statewide initiative funded by the National Science Foundation.

The initiative is built to strengthen research capacity and STEM workforce pathways at South Carolina’s primarily undergraduate institutions and HBCUs. Over the four-year grant period, South Carolina State will receive nearly $600,000. Voorhees will receive $305,000 for its part of the project. The work will engage high school students, transfer students, and current undergraduates to build research skills. It also targets retention, on-time graduation, and career readiness. Faculty development is part of the package too. That matters for smaller HBCUs, where research capacity often depends on a handful of committed faculty rather than large departments. HBCU Buzz has covered similar multi-institution HBCU research grants across the region in its HBCU STEM funding coverage.

Why these HBCU research grants matter together

None of these awards individually rewrites the funding landscape for HBCUs. Taken together, though, they show a pattern worth noticing. Federal agencies are funding HBCU research across a genuinely wide range. AI safety and healthcare ethics at Tuskegee. Large-scale clinical science infrastructure at Howard. Grassroots STEM pipeline-building across South Carolina’s smaller institutions.

That range matters because it counters a narrow assumption about what HBCU research looks like. These aren’t isolated grants for underfunded programs playing catch-up. They’re federal agencies backing HBCUs to lead on frontier problems, from AI trustworthiness to translational medicine. They’re also investing in the workforce pipeline that keeps that research staffed for the next generation. And each of these three grants comes with a multi-year runway — three, four, and seven years respectively — which is its own signal. Federal funders aren’t just writing one-time checks to HBCUs; they’re betting on sustained institutional capacity that outlasts any single grant cycle. Three grants, three very different scales, one shared signal: HBCU research grants are increasingly landing at the center of national research priorities, not the margins.

Jackson State NCAA Lawsuit: Four Players Race the Clock Before Kickoff

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Jackson State opens its season against Tennessee State in five days. Four of its players still don’t know if they’re allowed to suit up. The Jackson State NCAA lawsuit filed this week is their last shot at getting an answer before kickoff.

Linebacker Reid Pulliam, defensive back B.J. Washington, and defensive linemen Tymon Wells and Kazarius Bowie filed suit against the NCAA on Aug. 24 in Hinds County Chancery Court, according to documents obtained by The Clarion-Ledger. All four are part of the 2022 high school class, a group that’s been stuck in eligibility limbo for months as courts keep reversing each other on the same underlying question: does the NCAA’s four-years-in-five-seasons rule violate antitrust law?

A three-week window that slammed shut

This isn’t the players’ first attempt at winning back a season. On July 31, a U.S. District Court judge in Colorado granted an injunction in a separate case involving NCAA athletes nationwide, opening the door for players like Jackson State’s four to rejoin their teams. They did. Some reportedly quit jobs to come back and train.

Then, on Aug. 21, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit granted the NCAA’s request to stay that injunction. The door that had opened for three weeks slammed shut again, just days before Jackson State’s season opener.

Head coach T.C. Taylor didn’t hide his frustration. “I hate it for those young men,” Taylor said. “Those guys came in and participated in about a week, two weeks of camp with us. You had guys quit jobs in order to come back and play football. Now, here they are back at square one.” Taylor added that the program would have welcomed the extra depth this season, calling it a loss for the team as much as for the individual players.

Why the Jackson State NCAA lawsuit matters beyond one roster

The legal fight isn’t really about Jackson State specifically. It’s about a rule that’s been challenged in courtrooms across the country all year. Results have been wildly inconsistent, depending on which judge and which circuit a case lands in. That inconsistency is exactly what’s playing out here. One court grants relief, a higher court stays it, and players are left rebuilding their plans on a timeline measured in weeks rather than seasons.

Jackson State isn’t the only HBCU program caught in this mess, either. Southern head coach Marshall Faulk has been navigating a similar situation with defensive lineman Ckelby Givens. Givens is another 2022-class player chasing a fifth season. Faulk said Monday that Southern planned to wait as long as possible for clarity. “We’re going to take it up to the clock to see what happens,” Faulk said. “Hopefully things work out for the class of 2022, that those kids, they get an extra year and that Kelby gets to play with us another year.” HBCU Buzz has tracked similar athlete-rights fights across the conference in its ongoing SWAC football coverage.

The rules keep changing mid-season

Taylor summed up the broader problem in blunt terms. “These rules and laws change it seems like every 10 minutes,” he said. That’s not an exaggeration this year. Eligibility law has become one of the most volatile corners of college athletics. Injunctions, stays, and appeals are moving faster than programs can plan around them. Coaches are now building rosters around legal uncertainty as much as around depth charts. That’s a strange position for anyone running a football program to be in.

For the class of 2022 specifically, the stakes are almost entirely about timing. These are players who enrolled at the start of a chaotic stretch in college sports — one shaped by COVID-era eligibility extensions, transfer portal overhauls, and now this fresh wave of antitrust litigation. Every one of those shifts has landed on this same cohort. Every one has arrived with almost no lead time. HBCU Buzz has also covered how those earlier eligibility extensions reshaped HBCU rosters in its NCAA eligibility coverage.

What happens next

Jackson State kicks off against Tennessee State in Nashville on Aug. 29, and there’s no guarantee the four plaintiffs will have an answer by then. Chancery Court in Hinds County isn’t bound by the same appellate timeline that produced the 10th Circuit’s stay, so a state-level ruling could theoretically move faster than the federal case did. Whether it moves fast enough to matter for this particular opener is a different question entirely.

What’s clear is that these four players, and dozens like them at programs across the country, are fighting for a season that keeps almost happening. Three weeks of practice, a quit job, a coach rooting for them from the sideline — none of that guarantees a roster spot once the whistle blows. The Jackson State NCAA lawsuit is one more attempt to turn “almost” into an actual season before it’s too late to matter.

Bill Walker Is Out at Arkansas Baptist College — and No One’s Saying Why

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Bill Walker had the job for less than a year. Now the Bill Walker Arkansas Baptist College split is official. The board fired him Monday, and the HBCU is already onto its fourth president in two years.

The board terminated Walker after a four-and-a-half-hour meeting, according to Arkansas Times. Board member Gene McKissic confirmed the vote. He wouldn’t detail the reasoning behind it. “The recommendation was made to terminate him, which was affirmed by the board,” McKissic told the outlet. “Mr. Walker was given a series of concerns and the opportunity to address those so he knows why he was terminated… But I’m not going to get into the whys.”

Bill Walker’s short tenure at Arkansas Baptist College

Walker wasn’t new to the school. He joined the college’s board of trustees back in 2017 and spent eight years there before stepping into the president’s office in October 2025. That made the Bill Walker Arkansas Baptist College story feel like a natural succession at the time, not an outsider hire. He replaced Leslie Rodriguez-McClellon, who had resigned that April amid financial exigency and declining enrollment.

Walker pushed back publicly on how his exit unfolded. In a statement, he said he showed up, answered every question the board asked, and still walked away without a clear explanation. The college’s legal counsel, Jerry Malone, couldn’t identify a specific basis for the termination when Walker pressed for one. Malone told him instead, “I need to wrap my head around this and I will get back to you in 24-48 hours.” Walker pointed to enrollment growth, new institutional systems, and progress toward completed audits as marks of a tenure he considered productive. That work happened, he said, even while the college operated under self-imposed financial exigency and prepared for a Higher Learning Commission Show-Cause review.

A downtown hotel deal at the center of the tension

One flashpoint stands out. The board recently moved to lease the former La Quinta Inn and Suites in downtown Little Rock as new dormitory space. Summer enrollment had climbed toward 600 students, and the college needed room. Walker said he opposed that transaction. He had questions about how the college could remain fully in control of managing the building. Board chairman Roland Gosey had framed the hotel deal publicly as a “Living-Learning Community” that would double the college’s housing capacity. He described renovations as already underway. Whether that disagreement factored into Walker’s termination remains unclear. The board hasn’t tied its decision to any single incident.

George Herts steps in as acting president

Gosey named George Herts acting president effective immediately, telling Arkansas Times simply that Herts “replaces Bill Walker.” It’s familiar territory for Herts. He served as interim president once before, in 2025, after Rodriguez-McClellon’s resignation. He’d previously held the role of interim vice president of academic and student affairs at the college. Earlier in his career, Herts was dean of student affairs at Shorter College. He also held several positions at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. HBCU Buzz has followed the broader pattern of leadership turnover across the sector in its ongoing HBCU presidents coverage.

A pattern of turnover at a small HBCU

Arkansas Baptist College is a private institution with roughly 350 to 375 students, according to state data. That makes it one of the smaller HBCUs still fighting to stabilize enrollment and finances. Instability now runs straight through the president’s office, too. Rodriguez-McClellon lasted less than six months. Walker lasted about ten. Herts has stepped into the role for a second time in under two years. This go-round, it’s on an acting basis rather than a formal interim appointment.

Frequent presidential turnover tends to compound the very problems it’s supposed to solve. Financial exigency and enrollment declines require sustained strategy, not a rotating cast of leaders learning the job from scratch every few months. HBCU Buzz has covered similar leadership churn at other small, financially strained HBCUs through its HBCU governance coverage. Arkansas Baptist’s situation fits that pattern closely.

What comes next for Arkansas Baptist College

The board hasn’t said whether it plans a formal national search. It also hasn’t said whether Herts might eventually be named president outright. What’s clear is that the college now heads into a new academic year under its fourth leader since 2024, and the Bill Walker Arkansas Baptist College chapter closes without a public accounting of what actually went wrong. The same financial exigency and Show-Cause pressures that pushed out Rodriguez-McClellon are still there, waiting for whoever holds the office next. Students returning to campus this month are gearing up for classes, largely unaware that leadership changed hands at all. That gap says a lot about how fast this all moved, and how little the college has explained publicly about why.

NC A&T’s New Health Disparities Research Center Just Landed $16.9M From the NIH

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The NCA&T health disparities research center just became the university’s biggest single NIH win ever. Seven-point-two million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s right now, and most of them want to know their diagnosis before it fully arrives. That statistic sits behind the new $16.9 million NIH award that just landed at North Carolina A&T — the largest single NIH grant the university’s Hairston College of Health and Human Sciences has ever received.

The five-year award comes through the NIH’s Research Centers in Minority Institutions program, run by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. It will fund the brand-new NC A&T health disparities research center, built specifically to tackle disparities that hit Black and other underserved communities hardest. The center will start with brain health.

What the NC A&T health disparities research center actually funds

The new Research Center in Minority Institutions, or RCMI, will live inside the John R. and Kathy R. Hairston College of Health and Human Sciences. Its initial focus lands on brain health research. Two RO1-scale research projects will get direct support — the kind of federally competitive funding researchers spend careers chasing. “This $16.9 million RCMI is the largest single NIH award to the Hairston College of Health and Human Sciences and will be a game changer for team-science driven multidisciplinary health disparities research,” said Elimelda Moige Ongeri, the college’s dean.

Structurally, the RCMI runs on four cores. An Administrative Core oversees the whole operation and runs seminars and symposia. An Investigator Development Core funds seed research and mentors junior faculty, graduate students, and postdocs. A Community Engagement Core carries findings out into underserved communities. That’s meant to change practice, not just publish papers. A Research Capacity Core rounds things out, building the equipment, training, and data infrastructure that makes the other three cores possible.

Brain health, and why A&T was positioned for this

A&T didn’t land this award out of nowhere. The university already runs the Center for Integrative Health Disparities and Equity Research, known as CIHDER, along with the Center for Outreach in Alzheimer’s, Aging and Community Health, or COAACH. A&T is also a partner in the NC Brain Health Registry. COAACH-affiliated researchers contribute to the Black American United Memory and Aging Project as well. The new RCMI slots directly into that existing infrastructure instead of starting from scratch.

Marc Cook, Ph.D., an associate kinesiology professor and the RCMI’s lead principal investigator, framed the win as validation of years of groundwork. “Our team’s resilience, perseverance and dedication to the communities that we serve is what makes earning this award special for us all,” Cook said. He added that the funding gives the university real capacity to move the needle on these specific disparities. It’s also a direct investment in the people involved — faculty, students, staff, and the communities carrying the burden of these health gaps.

The RCMI will fund a new interdisciplinary research cluster, too, pulling faculty from kinesiology, psychology, sociology, social work, and nanoengineering. That last department is the interesting addition. Researchers there plan to apply emerging nanotechnology directly to brain health research. It’s a pairing that shows how seriously A&T is treating this as a cross-disciplinary effort, not one department’s project. HBCU Buzz has tracked similar investments across its ongoing HBCU research funding coverage.

Part of a bigger funding wave at A&T

This grant didn’t arrive in isolation. A&T recently announced that its researchers secured $113.3 million in research contracts and grants for the fiscal year running from July 2025 through June 2026. That total came from more than 500 submitted proposals alone. Over the past five years, the university has pulled in $556 million in total research awards. The NC A&T health disparities research center becomes the newest piece of that broader growth, and by dollar amount, one of the most visible. Readers can follow more of that momentum through HBCU Buzz’s coverage of HBCU STEM funding.

University leadership framed the award as proof the institution belongs in a bigger research conversation. “Securing an RCMI award is a remarkable accomplishment and a testament to the excellence and competitiveness of N.C. A&T’s research enterprise,” said Andrew P. Daire, provost and executive vice chancellor for Academic Affairs. A&T already holds the Carnegie Classification’s Community Engagement credential. The school is also working toward Research 1 status, the classification reserved for universities with very high research spending and doctorate production.

Why brain health, and why now

The choice to start with brain health isn’t random. Lisa Clough, Ph.D., vice chancellor for Research, pointed to the scale of the problem directly. Roughly 7.2 million Americans currently live with an Alzheimer’s diagnosis. National surveys consistently show that most Americans would rather know their status than not. Black Americans face higher rates of Alzheimer’s and related dementias than white Americans. They also remain underrepresented in the clinical research meant to understand and treat those conditions.

That gap is exactly what this center is built to close. Rather than treating Black communities as an afterthought in national brain health research, the NC A&T health disparities research center puts them at the center of the study design from day one. It recruits participants, trains researchers, and builds infrastructure meant to outlast this single five-year grant cycle.

The Human Jukebox Gap Campaign Was Supposed to Be Someone Else’s Spotlight

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The Human Jukebox Gap campaign almost didn’t happen this way. An A-list artist backed out. A trip to Atlanta got scrapped. And somehow, that chain of events is exactly how Southern University’s marching band ended up starring in its own national Gap ad instead of playing backup in someone else’s.

The Baton Rouge band appears in Gap’s new “Denim on My Own” campaign, performing its own arrangement of Robyn’s “Dancing on My Own” while dressed in custom denim built around Southern University and Human Jukebox branding. Gap released the spot across YouTube and Instagram, and the reaction from HBCU fans and Southern alumni was immediate. It’s a big enough moment that band director Kedrick D. Taylor is still a little amazed by how it came together.

How the Human Jukebox Gap campaign came to be

Taylor told WAFB that Gap first reached out by email. The ask was simple: would the band be interested in a commercial? Easy yes. The original plan had the Human Jukebox traveling to Atlanta to perform alongside a major artist whose music the band had recently covered. Taylor called it “a match made in heaven” at the time.

Then the artist’s involvement fell through, for reasons that were never made public. Gap didn’t scrap the shoot, though. Instead, the brand pivoted the whole concept around Southern.

“They realized that we were a brand ourselves,” Taylor said, describing the moment Gap decided the Human Jukebox would carry the ad on its own. Rather than flying the band out, Gap brought the shoot to Southern’s campus and filmed it inside the band’s own stadium. “So, you know, plan A didn’t work. We go to plan B,” Taylor said. “But the Human Jukebox was always going to shine.”

Custom denim, built for the band

Gap didn’t just point cameras at the band in whatever gear was already in the closet. The company designed custom outfits specifically for the students — dark denim jackets and jeans with “SU” lettering on one side and the Human Jukebox shield on the other. “They branded a special Gap jean outfit for all the students,” Taylor said. The finished look still reads unmistakably as Southern, just filtered through Gap’s fabric.

That kind of attention to detail matters for a band whose identity is already this specific. The Human Jukebox has spent decades turning contemporary hits into full-brass spectacles, the kind that regularly upstage whatever’s happening on the field that day. It’s the same reason the band has appeared everywhere from Super Bowl pregame festivities to presidential inaugural parades over the years — Southern’s sound travels well beyond Baton Rouge. Handing that band custom gear instead of stock denim was Gap acknowledging something HBCU fans already knew. This isn’t a generic marching band cameo. It’s a brand collaboration between two entities that both understand their own cultural weight. The wardrobe choice reflects that — nothing about the shoot treats the band as scenery.

Part of a bigger pattern for Gap and HBCUs

This isn’t Gap’s first run at Black college culture, either. The retailer has partnered with Harlem’s Fashion Row since 2019. That relationship has produced mentorship programs, industry events, and more than $500,000 in scholarships spread across ten HBCUs. That funding has gone toward students in fashion programs specifically, not general campus initiatives. Gap has also worked with Harlem fashion legend Dapper Dan on past campaigns and collections, building a track record with Black creative culture that predates this specific ad by years. Readers can find more on how brands are building out those HBCU ties through HBCU Buzz’s ongoing HBCU culture coverage.

The timing lines up well, too. The Human Jukebox Gap campaign is landing right as Southern students return to campus and HBCU football season ramps up. That’s the exact window when marching bands become the biggest draw on campuses nationwide, home games included. HBCU Buzz has covered that seasonal spotlight before in its marching band coverage, and the Human Jukebox tends to land near the top of that list every fall.

Why this moment fits the Human Jukebox

None of this should surprise anyone who follows HBCU culture closely. These bands have spent generations shaping sounds and styles that reach well past college football. Their routines get clipped, shared, and copied long after the final whistle blows. They show up on timelines that have nothing to do with sports at all. A national ad campaign is just the latest place that influence is showing up, and it likely won’t be the last. If anything, the Human Jukebox Gap campaign looks like a preview of how more brands will approach HBCU bands going forward. Not as background texture for someone else’s celebrity moment, but as the main attraction in their own right.

What started as an invitation to back up somebody else’s spotlight turned into something better suited for the Human Jukebox anyway — its own show, its own denim, its own stadium, entirely on its own terms.

Kwanza Jones’s Bennett College Ties Run Deeper Than Her $20M Princeton Gift

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Princeton stayed silent. That’s the headline from Kwanza Jones this week — how she says the university ignored her outreach until she and her husband put $20 million on the table. But the Kwanza Jones Bennett College story is a different animal entirely. Long before she became baseball’s newest owner, Jones had already built a financial and family legacy at a tiny women’s HBCU in Greensboro, North Carolina — one with roughly 200 students and a lot of history.

Jones opened up about the Princeton experience on T.I.’s ExpediTIously podcast. She said she reached out more than once about funding a residential college. Nothing. “No one got back to me,” Jones said. “I asked again. Waited a few months. Asked again. Still, no one got back to me.” Eventually she and her husband, José E. Feliciano, wrote the check anyway — $20 million, in 2020, funding Princeton’s undergraduate expansion. Two dormitories now carry their names. When T.I. joked it took $20 million just to get a reply, Jones didn’t argue.

That story reignited a familiar question in HBCU circles: why give that kind of money to a wealthy Ivy League school instead of a Black college? The answer sits closer to home than most people realized.

Kwanza Jones has deep Bennett College roots

This didn’t start with a headline-grabbing check. It started with family. Jones’ mother, Dorothy Wilkerson Jones, graduated from Bennett in 1965. An aunt and other relatives went there too. That’s the part of her story that predates the money entirely.

Her support for Bennett has never been a one-off. She previously chaired the Bennett College Board of Trustees and now holds status as an honorary alumna — a title the school doesn’t hand out lightly. In 2019, she and Feliciano gave $1 million during the #StandWithBennett campaign, the emergency fundraising push that helped the college keep its accreditation after regulators threatened to pull it over financial instability. Bennett was genuinely at risk of closing. That gift landed during the fight to keep the doors open.

The giving didn’t stop there. In 2025, the couple made a $1.5 million commitment honoring outgoing Bennett President Suzanne Elise Walsh, timed to the 60th anniversary of Dorothy Jones’ graduation. “Bennett College has been shaping futures for generations,” Jones said at the time. “It’s not just any one of us—it’s a collective legacy; it’s all of us.” That gift covered scholarships, residence hall renovations, and plans for a new science center. By Bennett’s own accounting, the couple’s total giving to the school now tops $3 million — putting them among the school’s most consistent modern donors. HBCU Buzz has tracked that relationship for years in its ongoing Bennett College coverage.

Why the Princeton donation drew scrutiny

Jones is stepping into a much bigger spotlight now. She and Feliciano recently became the new owners of the San Diego Padres, a deal reportedly valued at $3.9 billion — the richest sale in MLB history. That makes Jones the first Black woman to hold majority ownership of a Major League Baseball franchise. Feliciano serves as the club’s MLB-designated control person. Their group holds roughly 45 percent of the team through personal investment. Given numbers that size, it’s easy to see why some assumed the Princeton gift meant her giving skipped over HBCUs altogether. It’s a reasonable assumption. It’s just not the right one.

Bennett has had Jones’ sustained attention for more than a decade — board leadership, scholarship money, campus upgrades, and a rescue gift during one of the school’s most dangerous financial stretches. Painting her as a donor who overlooks Black colleges just doesn’t hold up against that record.

None of this erases what the Princeton story reveals, though. Elite institutions really can overlook their most accomplished Black graduates, and Jones said as much herself — it took an eight-figure gift to get a simple response from her own alma mater. That frustration is real. It just doesn’t cancel out what she’s quietly built at Bennett.

A legacy that runs through family

Strip away the dollar figures, though, and the Kwanza Jones Bennett College relationship looks like something else entirely: three generations of women who chose the same small campus in Greensboro. It’s not a story that fits neatly into a press release. A 1965 graduation. An honorary alumna title. Years on the board. That’s a bond that predates the wealth and the fame by decades. HBCU Buzz’s HBCU philanthropy coverage has followed similar stories across the Black college community, where family ties often outlast any single campaign.

Jones is about to help run a baseball franchise worth billions. Even so, her Bennett ties tell you more about how she’s actually spent her money than the Princeton headline does. She gave generously to Princeton — no question. But she also gave generously, and repeatedly, to the HBCU that shaped generations of her own family, long before anyone was writing headlines about it. Bennett still leans on donors like her as it works to rebuild enrollment after years of financial strain, in a stretch when a lot of small private HBCUs have had to fight just to stay open. In that sense, the Kwanza Jones Bennett College chapter may say more about who she actually is than the one about Princeton ever will.

Digital Campus Leisure: How Smartphone Portals Are Shaping Downtime

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Campus life moves fast. Between lectures, assignments, and social commitments, the gaps in between (a free hour before class, lunch breaks, the commute across campus) have become small but meaningful windows that students actively seek to fill. 

Smartphones have stepped into those windows. This device is no longer just a communication device; for most, it has become the primary gateway to leisure.

Gaming Portals as the Most Frequent Stop

When students pull out their phones during downtime, gaming is consistently the first destination. It is the most frequent stop across virtually every campus demographic, and the reasons are straightforward. 

Mobile games are immediately accessible, require no setup, and can be played in sessions as short as two minutes or as long as two hours. That flexibility makes them a perfect match for the unpredictable, fragmented nature of campus free time. Players don’t need to sit at a desk, connect to a specific network, or carry extra hardware. The phone alone is enough.

The variety available also plays a major role. Students are not locked into a single genre or style. Some prefer action titles that deliver immediate stimulation, while others gravitate toward strategy games that let them think slowly and deliberately. The sheer range of options means that mobile gaming can serve almost any mood or energy level, which is rare for a single category of entertainment. 

Battle royale games represent one of the clearest examples of why mobile gaming dominates campus downtime. Titles in this genre drop players into large competitive maps where the goal is straightforward: outlast everyone else. The format works brilliantly on mobile because each match has a defined beginning and end, so a student can complete a full session in a reasonable time and walk away feeling like they actually finished something.

Games like PUBG Mobile and Free Fire have built enormous communities among younger players, and their mobile versions are genuinely well-optimized. The competitive element adds another layer of engagement, since players are always improving, ranking up, or working toward the next unlock. 

Another popular aspect of mobile gaming that has grown significantly is sweepstakes casinos. According to BallIsLife’s guide, more than 290 sweepstakes casinos are available right now, and users have appreciated their interesting promotional offers and casino-style games. The dual-currency model these platforms use, offering both free play coins and sweeps coins that can be redeemed for prizes, gives players a sense of real stakes without the financial risk that would make traditional gambling unsuitable for most students managing tight budgets.

Puzzle and trivia games round out the gaming landscape in a meaningful way. Apps like Wordle-style daily challenges, logic puzzle games, and knowledge-based trivia titles have found a dedicated audience among students who want something mentally engaging but less time-intensive than a competitive multiplayer session. These games attract players who also value the cognitive aspect, the feeling that they are sharpening a skill or exercising their brain rather than just passing time. 

Social Media and Short-Form Video

A significant portion of how students spend their free time on phones falls into passive consumption: scrolling, watching, and absorbing content without direct interaction. Short-form video platforms have become the dominant force in this space. 

The algorithm-driven feed model means that students never have to make a deliberate choice about what to watch next; content arrives automatically, calibrated to their interests, and each video is short enough that stopping feels easy but rarely happens. That design is intentional, and it works. Fifteen-minute breaks frequently extend well beyond their intended length when a student is deep in a short-video scroll.

What makes this category distinct from gaming is the lack of agency involved. Gaming requires decisions, responses, and engagement. Watching short videos demands very little. For students who are mentally exhausted after long lectures or exam preparation sessions, that passivity is the appeal. The brain gets a break while the eyes keep moving. 

Social media platforms serve a similar function, but they add a social dimension: checking on friends, following ongoing conversations, and staying updated on campus events. The combination of passive entertainment and social connection makes these apps a reliable destination whenever students have even a few minutes to spare.

Music Streaming and Podcasts During Transit Time

Campus life involves a lot of movement. Walking between buildings and riding campus shuttles are stretches of time that students have largely handed over to audio content. Music streaming is the most common choice, with curated playlists and algorithmic recommendations making it effortless to find something suited to the moment.

Students building a study mindset will queue up focus-oriented instrumental tracks; others use the walk between classes to decompress with whatever they are currently listening to. Music’s personal nature makes it one of the most consistently used smartphone features across all student demographics.

Podcasts have grown steadily as a campus downtime choice, particularly among students who prefer content that feels productive even when they are technically resting. 

A student walking to the library while listening to a podcast about finance, history, or technology can frame that activity as learning rather than leisure, which appeals to the part of campus culture that tends to feel guilty about pure downtime. Podcast episodes are also longer-form by nature, which suits commutes or gym sessions where a student has twenty to forty minutes to fill. 

What Campus Downtime Tells Us About Digital Habits

The pattern that emerges from looking at campus smartphone use is not random. Students consistently gravitate toward content and platforms that offer clear value in a short window of time, whether that value is entertainment, competition, social connection, or mental rest. 

Gaming dominates because it delivers immediate engagement and a defined experience within whatever time is available. Social video and music fill the gaps where active engagement feels like too much effort. 

The smartphone has become the infrastructure of campus leisure, and every category thriving on it does so because it respects the fundamental reality of student life: time is fragmented, energy levels vary, and the best digital experiences meet students exactly where they are.

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Meet Edreka Coleman, Albany State’s First Female Head Drum Major

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Edreka Coleman, known to bandmates as “Capriccio,” has made history as Albany State University’s first female head drum major, leading the Marching Rams Show Band into a new era.

A Milestone Announcement

The university’s band program, Albany State Drum Majors, shared the news on Instagram, tying the announcement to Coleman’s birthday. The account wrote that the day was about “celebrating HISTORY,” confirming Coleman as the first woman to hold the head drum major position in the school’s history. The post quickly drew attention across the HBCU community, racking up more than 16,000 likes and hundreds of comments celebrating the achievement.

What The Role Means

As head drum major, Edreka Coleman Albany State University’s top student leader for the Marching Rams Show Band, directs the group during rehearsals and performances and serves as one of the most visible representatives of the university’s marching band program. The position carries significant responsibility within HBCU band culture, where drum majors are often treated as campus celebrities and serve as the face of the program during nationally televised halftime shows and battle-of-the-bands events.

Part Of A Broader Movement

Coleman’s milestone follows a wave of similar breakthroughs across HBCU marching band programs in recent years. Florida A&M’s Oluwamodupe Oloyede became the first female head drum major of the Marching 100 in 2025, while Grambling State and Alcorn State have both named their own first female head drum majors in years past. Albany State’s Marching Rams Show Band, under Director of Bands William Brooks, has grown significantly in recent seasons and has performed at high-profile events including the HBCU Culture Battle of the Bands.

Community Reaction

Comments on the announcement reflected the significance of the moment, with fans and fellow HBCU accounts celebrating the news. Coleman now joins a small but growing group of women who have broken barriers in traditionally male-dominated drum major roles across the HBCU marching band world.

Albany State University has not yet issued an official statement beyond the band program’s social media post, and HBCU Buzz will continue to follow Coleman’s story throughout the season.

SAU’s Fall Semester Is Officially Canceled — Here’s Why

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Saint Augustine’s University fall 2026 classes will not happen, marking a stunning reversal for the 158-year-old Raleigh HBCU as it works through bankruptcy court. University leaders had spent months preparing eight online, nondegree programs set to launch in September, covering fields like programming, artificial intelligence, and public health. Those plans are now shelved entirely, leaving prospective students and longtime supporters searching for answers.

What Was Supposed To Happen

Saint Augustine’s had already built out course syllabi, lined up instructors, and marketed the new offerings to students who would have paid between $1,100 and $4,500 per program. Because the school lost its accreditation earlier this year, these courses were never going to lead to traditional degrees. Instead, administrators hoped the nondegree route would generate revenue and keep some form of education alive on campus while the bankruptcy case played out. That hope collapsed after a federal bankruptcy judge stepped in.

Why The Bankruptcy Judge Pulled The Plug

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David Warren questioned whether the financially strapped university could actually deliver on the promises it was making to prospective students. He also raised concerns about the school spending its remaining, limited resources on new classes while still working through Chapter 11 proceedings. During the hearing, Warren went further and described the university as “essentially closed,” a characterization that landed hard within the HBCU community. As a result, Saint Augustine’s University fall 2026 classes were pulled before a single student enrolled.

The Long Road That Led Here

This moment did not arrive out of nowhere. Saint Augustine’s filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy back in April 2026 and simultaneously walked away from its yearslong legal fight to keep its accreditation with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges. That decision meant the university’s accreditation formally expired on May 15, and any students still mid-degree had to transfer elsewhere through teach-out agreements. Since then, the school has operated in a kind of limbo — technically still standing, but unable to offer accredited coursework or, as it now turns out, any coursework at all this fall. According to reporting from Inside Higher Ed, the university remains suspended between operating and shutting down entirely while the bankruptcy case continues to unfold.

What This Means For The Campus And Community

Practically speaking, the cancellation removes one of the university’s few remaining revenue streams at a time when it desperately needs cash flow. Saint Augustine’s still owes millions of dollars to creditors, including federal agencies, and its board has previously discussed selling portions of its 105-acre campus to help settle debts. Meanwhile, the focus in bankruptcy court has shifted away from whether classes will resume this fall and toward a much bigger question: can the historic institution restructure its finances, protect its remaining assets, and eventually reopen in some educational capacity. Coverage from HBCU Gameday notes that Saint Augustine’s is expected to return to bankruptcy court on August 26, where those larger questions will likely take center stage.

Where Things Go From Here

For now, no students are enrolled, no classes are scheduled, and no timeline exists for when that might change. Still, the university has not formally closed its doors, and interim leadership continues to explore paths toward stabilizing the institution. Alumni and supporters within the HBCU community have rallied around similar comeback stories before, and many are hoping Saint Augustine’s can eventually follow a similar path back toward accreditation and enrollment. Until then, the reality is stark: Saint Augustine’s University fall 2026 classes simply will not take place, and the school’s future depends almost entirely on what happens next in bankruptcy court.

The 105-acre Raleigh campus, once home to nearly 1,000 students and a legendary track and field dynasty under Coach George Williams, now sits without a single class on the books. For a school with 158 years of history behind it, that silence carries weight far beyond one semester. HBCU Buzz will continue tracking developments in the Saint Augustine’s University bankruptcy case as it moves through federal court this fall.

Jamie Dimon HBCU: JPMorgan Chase CEO Gifts $12M to 12 Colleges

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The Jamie Dimon HBCU donation just became one of the most visible philanthropic moves of JPMorgan Chase’s chairman and CEO. Through the James and Judith K. Dimon Foundation, Dimon and his wife Judy gave $12 million to 12 historically Black colleges and universities. The gift establishes what UNCF calls the Dimon Fund to Advance Economic Opportunity.

UNCF announced the Jamie Dimon HBCU donation on August 20. The organization framed it as a structural investment rather than a one-time gift. Each of the 12 selected schools will receive $1 million in permanent endowment capital. That money counts toward a larger $5 million institutional match tied to UNCF’s $1.5 billion capital campaign. That campaign is built around strengthening the long-term financial footing of member institutions nationwide.

Why the Jamie Dimon HBCU donation is structured differently

Most corporate gifts to HBCUs fund a specific program, a scholarship cohort, or a building project. This one works differently. Because the Dimon Foundation’s money goes straight into permanent endowment capital, the schools gain flexibility that year-to-year donations rarely provide. Endowment growth strengthens institutional balance sheets. In addition, it supports long-range financial planning and frees up capital for research, academics, and campus infrastructure.

That distinction is part of why the Jamie Dimon HBCU donation is drawing attention beyond the usual philanthropy circles. Rather than chasing a single headline moment, the structure is designed to compound over decades. Schools with healthier endowments can weather enrollment swings more easily. Meanwhile, they can also plan multi-year hiring and invest in facilities without waiting on the next fundraising cycle.

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Which schools are receiving funding

UNCF selected the 12 recipient institutions based on leadership, governance, and a track record of preparing educators, nurses, and other healthcare professionals. Specifically, these are fields where HBCUs consistently produce strong outcomes for first-generation students. The full list includes Benedict College in Columbia, South Carolina, and Dillard University in New Orleans. Additionally, it includes Edward Waters University in Jacksonville, Florida, Huston-Tillotson University in Austin, Texas, and Jarvis Christian University in Hawkins, Texas.

Also receiving funds are Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Miles College in Fairfield, Alabama. Oakwood University in Huntsville, Alabama, Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Stillman College in Tuscaloosa, Alabama round out the middle of the list. Tuskegee University in Tuskegee, Alabama, and Voorhees University in Denmark, South Carolina, complete the group of 12. Alabama landed more recipient schools than any other state, with four institutions splitting $4 million combined.

The Dimons’ broader philanthropic footprint

This isn’t Jamie Dimon’s first connection to UNCF. He previously served on the organization’s board. Meanwhile, Judy Dimon currently leads the family foundation as its president. Her grantmaking has centered on career-connected learning for New York City public school students. Specifically, that work includes FutureReadyNYC, an initiative aiming to give 100,000 young people hands-on job experience by 2030.

In a joint statement, the Dimons described the gift as an extension of their belief in education as an economic ladder. “Our system of HBCUs continue to serve as the springboard to success for thousands of students in pursuit of the American Dream,” they said. In doing so, they pointed to their own family backgrounds as children of first-generation high school and college graduates.

The foundation’s public filings show it paid out more than $9 million in 2024. Overall, most of that went toward public education and career training initiatives. This HBCU commitment marks a notable expansion of that footprint into higher education specifically.

Timing and broader context

The Jamie Dimon HBCU donation lands during a period of real uncertainty for federal HBCU funding. The US Education Department announced a $495 million funding increase for HBCUs and tribally controlled colleges heading into fiscal year 2025. However, a lengthy government shutdown disrupted parts of the grant-making process before it eventually resolved.

That instability has pushed private donors further into the spotlight. MacKenzie Scott alone has given more than $700 million to HBCUs and related organizations in recent years. As a result, gifts like the Dimons’ are increasingly filling gaps that federal appropriations can’t reliably cover. For schools operating on tight margins, a guaranteed $1 million in permanent capital carries weight that goes well beyond the dollar figure alone.

UNCF has positioned the Dimon Fund as proof that combating inequity in higher education takes more than access. Instead, durable institutions need resources to match that access. This gift is meant to build exactly that kind of durability into 12 campuses serving thousands of students.

Those students are preparing for careers in education and healthcare, two fields UNCF says HBCUs consistently punch above their weight in. For now, the 12 recipient schools will begin folding the endowment capital into long-term planning. UNCF, meanwhile, continues pushing toward its $1.5 billion campaign goal.

Whether other corporate leaders follow the Dimons’ lead remains an open question. Still, a similarly structured, permanent gift from another Fortune 500 executive could say a lot about where HBCU philanthropy heads next. For now, the Jamie Dimon HBCU donation stands as one of the largest single endowment commitments an HBCU network has landed all year.

Kirk Franklin Alabama A&M Homecoming Concert Set

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Kirk Franklin will headline Alabama A&M’s 2026 Homecoming Night of Gospel, giving Bulldogs fans another marquee reason to circle October 11 on the calendar. The Grammy-winning artist announced his Alabama A&M Homecoming appearance as part of the university’s Homecoming Gospel Explosion. The news has already sparked excitement across HBCU social media. For a campus known for going all out during Homecoming week, adding a gospel legend of Franklin’s stature raises the bar even higher.

A Homecoming Booking Worth Celebrating

Alabama A&M’s Homecoming Gospel Explosion has become a signature event on the Huntsville campus. This year’s lineup leans into that tradition. Franklin, a 20-time Grammy winner, has spent more than three decades blending gospel with R&B and hip-hop. That sound has become a staple in Black churches and households nationwide. Consequently, his booking signals just how seriously Alabama A&M is treating this year’s celebration.

Homecoming carries extra weight at HBCUs, and Alabama A&M’s version is no exception. Furthermore, pairing a gospel concert with the usual parade, step shows, and tailgates gives alumni and students a fuller taste of campus culture. The Kirk Franklin Alabama A&M Homecoming concert fits neatly into that mix. Additionally, it offers a spiritual centerpiece alongside the week’s more traditional festivities. Overall, the booking fits a campus that treats Homecoming as a full-week production rather than a single game day.

Who Else Is On the Bill

Franklin won’t be carrying the night alone. Todd Dulaney, an award-winning gospel artist, joins the lineup after a career shift that took him from professional baseball to ministry and music. His songs “Victory Belongs to Jesus,” “Your Great Name,” and “The Anthem” have each landed at No. 1 on Billboard’s gospel charts. Notably, that track record places him among the genre’s most reliable hitmakers. Meanwhile, Kirk Franklin’s own Grammy-laden career has helped set the standard that artists like Dulaney continue to chase.

Dante’ Pride rounds out the bill and brings a local connection to the stage. As an Alabama native, pastor, and Christian hip-hop artist, Pride uses music and storytelling to reach audiences across generations. Additionally, his home-state ties give the concert a sense of community that outside headliners alone couldn’t provide. Similarly, his presence reflects Alabama A&M’s effort to balance national names with artists who understand the region firsthand. Together, the three-artist lineup gives the Kirk Franklin Alabama A&M Homecoming concert a mix of star power, chart success, and hometown pride.

Event Details Fans Should Know

The 2026 Homecoming Gospel Explosion: Night of Gospel takes place Sunday, October 11, at 6:00 p.m. at the AAMU Event Center. Fans planning their Homecoming week should build the concert into their schedule early. Indeed, gospel nights at HBCUs tend to draw large crowds, and this lineup gives fans extra incentive to arrive on time. Those tracking the full slate of games, concerts, and campus activities have options. They can check Alabama A&M Athletics for updated scheduling around the football matchup and other Homecoming week events.

The timing also lines up with a broader trend this year. Major gospel and entertainment names keep showing up at HBCU events, a pattern HBCU Buzz has tracked closely. Alabama A&M joins that list with a booking that matches the scale of its Homecoming reputation. Still, the emotional pull of Franklin’s music, paired with Dulaney’s chart success and Pride’s local roots, makes this particular concert stand apart from a typical Homecoming add-on. As a result, expect the Night of Gospel to draw attention well beyond the AAMU campus.

Why This Matters for Alabama A&M

Landing an artist like Franklin does more than fill a concert slot. Instead, it elevates the entire Homecoming brand. Students get a bucket-list performance, alumni get another reason to travel back to Huntsville, and the university gets a moment in the national HBCU spotlight. Similarly, gospel-centered programming reinforces the faith traditions that remain central to many HBCU communities, even as Homecoming leans increasingly into secular entertainment.

Alabama A&M has steadily built out its Homecoming programming in recent years, and this booking continues that momentum. Once again, the Kirk Franklin Alabama A&M Homecoming concert gives the university a headline-grabbing centerpiece. It should draw both loyal Bulldogs and gospel fans from outside the HBCU community. As October approaches, expect ticket interest and campus buzz to keep building around the Night of Gospel.

Ultimately, this Homecoming feels like a statement moment for Alabama A&M. Between Franklin’s legacy, Dulaney’s chart-topping run, and Pride’s Alabama roots, the Gospel Explosion lineup offers something for longtime gospel fans and casual Homecoming attendees alike. Meanwhile, Bulldogs have plenty to look forward to this fall. Finally, the Night of Gospel now sits near the top of that list, and it may end up being the most talked-about stop on the entire Homecoming schedule.