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Black Male Excellence Leadership Conference

As a member institution within The Saint Louis Regional Consortium of Higher Education Initiatives Supporting Black Male Success, the Saint Louis University Cross Cultural Center and African American Males Scholars Program is pleased to host the 3rd Annual Black Male of Excellence Leadership Virtual Conference on February 6, 2021, 11 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. 

We understand budgets have been significantly strained and impacted  by the challenges of COVID-19. Due to this, we have decided to make the conference free for attendees this year. Please register yourself and your students using the registration link below.  We will send the link to the conference via your registration during the week of the conference.

Register for The Black Male of Excellence Leadership Virtual Conference

Logo for the Black Male Excellence Leadership Conference featuring an arch bordering a stained glass mosaic of a young Black man, with the words scholarship, brotherhood and community.

The conference is open to all area Black male college students and high school juniors and seniors, as well as those who support and advise them. The deadline to register is January 31, 2021.

For more information, please contact Dr. Richard Marks, richard.marks@slu.edu or Jonathan Hunn, jhunn@lindenwood.edu. 



Conference Theme

This year's conference theme is "A Message to our Kings: Kings Don’t Lead Alone."  Members of the panel who will lead the charge of discussion about the success, challenges and strategies on how to navigate higher education as a Black male student include:

A bearded African American man wearing a blue shirt and tie.Mike Jones, Ph.D.
Washington University at Saint Louis

African American man smiling at the camera, wearing a white shirt and dark blazer Turan Mullins
Maryville University

African American man in a navy blue shirts, facing the camera with a serious expressionLarry Morris
Webster University

African American man smiling at the camera in a suit and tie against a colorful mosaic backgroundJames Williams
Boys Hope Girls Hope

2020 Black Male Excellence Leadership Conference

The 2020 conference theme was "HuSTLe and Motivate."  Past conference session topics presented included:

  • “Whose Man is This?”: Explorations of Masculinity through Black Christian Perspectives
  • Black Boys Shine: Discoursing Identity Formation via Spencer’s PVSEST
  • Empowering Black Male Academic Achievement, The Need and Purpose
  • Why do I want to go to college? Fill in the Blank
  • Working through Adverse Childhood Experiences
  • The Envy of the World: On Being a Black Man in America
  • Maximizing your Financial Aid
  • I am my Brothers Keeper
  • Network=Net worth, What’s Next?
  • Navigating the Graduate Journey
  • Challenges Affecting Mental Wellbeing for Black Male Students
  • HuSTLE and Motivate: Leading through the Hustle
  • The Village Healing and Writing Circle
  • Black Men Count: Vote and Be Counted
  • Lessons from the Other Side: Lived lessons from my internship experience
  • Make America Great Again: The Role that Racial Microaggressions have on the Mental Health of African American Males

Consortium and Conference Background

The Regional Consortium of Higher Education Initiatives Supporting Black Male Success formed in April 2017 as a bi-state network of the Saint Louis area college and universities. Institutions represented include Fontbonne University, Harris-Stowe State University, Lindenwood University, Maryville University, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Saint Louis Community College, Saint Louis University, University of Missouri- Saint Louis, Washington University in Saint Louis and Webster University. The Consortium is a community of practice that builds its members’ capacity to educate and graduate Black male students through radical and strategic collaboration, resource land data sharing and program alignment.

This initiative was created for the following two purposes:

  • To advance the educational, professional, and social achievement of college-age Black men in the Saint Louis region
  • To increase Saint Louis based colleges' and universities’ capacity to educate and graduate Black male students.

Since its inception in April of 2017, the Consortium has built the foundation for supporting Black males by advocating for establishing a Black male initiative and support systems on each member campus. Consortium leadership strives to map out a more extensive Black male engagement process via the annual Black male leadership conference, first hosted in February 2019 at Lindenwood University. This first conference hosted around 100 participants from the St. Louis regional area. The second annual conference was held in February 2020 at Washington University at Saint Louis, where attendance nearly doubled.  After reviewing the participant assessment data, leadership is now committed to building an annual conference for the entire region to continue to encourage and support the Black men enrolling at all of the member institutions.