San Francisco Mayor Announces Efforts to Bring HBCUs to Downtown

• San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced a new effort to bring historically Black college and university (HBCU) programming to the Bay Area this summer.
• The Black 2 San Francisco initiative aims to create satellite campus partnerships with several HBCUs.
• The University of San Francisco, San Francisco State University, and the University of California at San Francisco are involved in the partnership.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced a new initiative to bring historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) to the Bay Area, hosting programming this summer alongside local universities.

The University of San Francisco will provide student housing. San Francisco State University will offer classroom space, and the University of California at San Francisco will partner with HBCUs to offer mental health mentoring, training, and internships, according to the city.

The Black 2 San Francisco initiative, led by the city's Human Rights Commission (HRC), aims to create satellite campus partnerships with HBCUs, including expanding to physical locations in the Bay Area.

"After many years of planning and months of seeding and working to create meaningful partnerships, all the stakeholders are together to explore how we can connect San Francisco to the incredible talent that has historically been cultivated and supported by HBCUs," Dr. Sheryl Davis, executive director of the HRC, said in a Feb. 2 press release.

The initiative is part of Breed's strategy to revitalize downtown San Francisco and repurpose vacant spaces for academic purposes. She previously proposed that the University of California consider opening a downtown San Francisco campus.

"In San Francisco, we are working to build partnerships that strengthen our leadership as a center of education, innovation, and opportunity,” Breed said in the release. "By bringing HBCUs to our City, we can not only create a connection to empower our next generation of leaders, but we can also contribute to the revitalization of our City."

Multiple institutions, including Northwestern University, Northeastern University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Carnegie Mellon University, have established satellite campuses in San Francisco and Silicon Valley with a focus on business and technology education programs.

While there are no HBCUs in California, the state is home to the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, a historically Black graduate institution (HBGI).

Several of the state's higher education institutions and systems also partner with HBCUs across the country.

For example, the UC-HBCU Initiative, a partnership between the University of California (UC) and HBCUs, invests in relationships and efforts between UC and HBCU faculty.

Additionally, the California Community Colleges system offers its students who complete specific academic requirements guaranteed transfers to one of 39 participating HBCUs.