Mission & History

Mission

Through an ethic of love, the mission of the College of San Mateo Umoja Community is to provide students of African descent with a supportive, academically rigorous learning and social environment. Umoja (a Kiswahili word meaning unity) provides the collaborative space of an academic learning community as well as wrap-around student support. Our goal is to ensure that every African American student at CSM achieves their educational and personal goals.

History

The CSM Umoja Community was first conceptualized during the 2013-14 academic year and was created in response to a college report that CSM was graduating and transferring far fewer African American students than other ethnic student groups. The founding members of the CSM Umoja Community included:

• Ron Andrade, Director of the CSM Learning Center (now Director of Student Support at Cañada College)
• James Carranza, Dean of Language Arts (now Dean of Humanities at Cañada College)
• Sandra Comerford-Stefani, Vice President of Instruction (retired)
• Krystal Duncan, Dean of Counseling
• Frederick Gaines, Professor of Ethnic Studies
• Kevin Henson, Dean of Creative Arts and Social Sciences (now Dean of Behavioral Sciences at Orange Coast College)
• Jennifer Taylor Mendoza, Dean of Academic Support and Learning Technologies (now CSM President)
• Henry Villareal, Dean of Enrollment and Chair of the Diversity in Action Group (retired)
• Jeramy Wallace, Professor of English

The Umoja working group started meeting in Spring 2013 to build the program’s structure, identify an inaugural Umoja team, and to advocate for institutional resources. The CSM Umoja Community was approved by CSM’s Institutional Planning Council in Fall 2013, and Dr. Frederick Gaines (Ethnic Studies), Prof. Jeramy Wallace (English), and Prof. Jesenia Diaz (Counseling) were identified as the program's co-coordinators and instructors.

In Spring 2014, the Umoja team went through a series of professional development activities through the statewide Umoja Community (now called the Umoja Community Education Foundation) and started recruiting for the program’s very first cohort. The very first CSM Umoja students – Deajah Nunn, Miilicent Bangura, and Breanna King – signed up for the program on May 6th, 2014. These three students would join 29 other students in the first Umoja cohort in Fall 2014. The first Umoja graduates – Taylor Tang, Davante Jewett, and Lamar Cisneros – would walk the stage in May 2015.

The Umoja model originally used “hard-linked” Ethnic Studies and English courses, which meant that cohort members had to take both courses simultaneously (counseling was not hard-linked). This allowed the students to learn together for the entire year in courses that were organized around the same themes and issues. However, the Umoja team solemn realized that this excluded many students who had met their English or Ethnic Studies requirements, so today, the Umoja Community still offers Ethnic Studies and English, but students are no longer required to take both.

Over the years, the CSM Umoja Program has grown. On average, 12-15 Umoja students graduate and/or transfer every spring and in any given semester, the program serves 60-75 Umoja students (which is about ⅓ of the college’s African American student population). To help serve the large number of Umoja students on campus, CSM Umoja started the peer mentoring program, where sophomore Umoja students can mentor and guide their freshman peers (and get paid!). In 2021, the college also hired a personal counselor – Prof. Kathryn Lige – who specializes in the mental health of African American students.

The statewide Umoja Community, also known as the Umoja Community Education Foundation, was established in 2007 by a collective of twenty-three community college learning communities, all of which were designed to support African American students on their campuses. This first gathering, which would become the first statewide Umoja Conference, was motivated by a desire by these program’s educators to promote African American student success and to share best practices across the state. Since 2007, the Umoja Community Education Foundation has expanded to sixty-one California community colleges, one Washington community, and two university affiliates (CSUEB and UCR), and the organization offers trainings, conducts research, and advocates for the state’s African American community college students.