21 Year Old Creates App That Helps Students Find Their Ideal HBCU
A college student has created an app that makes finding someone's ideal HBCU much easier.
Grambling State University Junior and 21-year-old Jonathan Swindell has created an app called HBCU HUB, which helps students decide on what HBCU they would like to attend.
Within the app's database are all 86 Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the United States. From there the app includes multiple features, including a "Report Card" for each school that lists academics, costs and the overall ranking of an HBCU on a scale from A to F.
Through the app you can also find information on scholarships; participate in an online chat community; get tips for resumes and job interviews; and much more.
"It's a lot easier to get information on a PWI," Swindell said in an interview with Southern Digest. "They're a lot bigger and have a lot more resources behind them, whereas at an HBCU, the information can be a bit scattered, so I saw a pain point within our community and HBCU HUB serves to fix that."
Since its release, the HBCU HUB app has more than 1,000 downloads, and is being used in more than 32 states and five countries. The app is currently available to download on both Apple and Android devices for free.
In other HBCU-related news, a documentary celebrating the importance of HBCUs will be released this year.
Titled Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story Of Historically Black Colleges AndUniversities, the two hour long film will feature interviews with historians, as well as HBCU professors, alumni and students to showcase the institution's development.
"HBCUs have been instrumental in this country," director Stanley Nelson said in an interview with the Huffington Post. "Our parents and grandparents and great grandparents, there was no other place they could go to school. This is the cornerstone of the African American community. And I think that most people don't know anything about it."
Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story Of Historically Black Colleges AndUniversities will be airing on PBS some time in fall of next year.