I knew I wanted to attend an HBCU. But I never imagined it would lead me to Pine Bluff, Ark..
When you grow up in San Diego, you get used to the beaches, the busy streets, and Mexican food on every corner. Pine Bluff doesn’t have any of that, but it had something that mattered more: opportunity.
I was introduced to the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff through a tour of historically Black colleges and universities during my senior year of high school.
The following summer, I spent a month at UAPB as part of a STEM academy. I learned more about the school’s academic programs in science, technology, engineering and math, and was impressed by how much emphasis they put on networking and internships. I was sold. Now, all that was left was to graduate and move across the country.
I enrolled at UAPB as a freshman in the fall of 2024, hungry for opportunity. I threw myself into academics, declaring a major in industrial technology management and applied engineering.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
I also began building out my professional network, joining student organizations like UAPB’s chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers and regularly attending on-campus workshops led by external organizations and companies.
Most of these workshops were the same: You show up, give the presenters a captive student audience, and then go about your day. One of my mentors invited me to attend a launch event hosted by the HBCU Founders Initiative. I thought it would be like every other presentation, but this was different.
The people running the show weren’t just talking at us; they were talking to us. They were interested in our majors and what we wanted to do.
HBCUFI connects HBCU students, alumni, and faculty across historically Black colleges and universities with programs and resources that support entrepreneurship and tech-based solutions to close the wealth gap.
The organization is funded in part by the Walton Family Foundation, which encouraged HBCUFI to add two historically Black universities from its home state of Arkansas to HBCUFI’s list of partner schools — UAPB and Philander Smith University in nearby Little Rock.
When I walked into the room, one thing that stood out to me immediately was the fact that students from Philander Smith were in there, too.
Even though our campuses are less than an hour apart, it was my first time as a UAPB student to be in the same room with students from a different HBCU.
We talked about our goals, what we hoped to achieve through our majors, and where we saw ourselves after graduation. The energy in the room was high.
I knew I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
I was selected to attend HBCUFI’s Designing for Social Good Workshop, a two-day event where students learn how to research, understand problems, and come up with real-world business solutions using a people-centered approach called design thinking.
During the workshop, we were given a problem and had to determine a solution by getting feedback from students around campus.
Our problem was access to technology and artificial intelligence.
We decided to try to correct the digital divide between older staff members and the younger students on campus by developing an app that would make interacting with UAPB’s technology clearer.
The goal was to design, test and modify our app using empathy rather than statistics. I went around campus and had conversations with the people my app was intended to help, as well as those who already understood the technology. The objective was to identify the need and determine how our proposed solution could best address it.
This was a much different approach to the scientific method than I was typically used to, but it spoke to the reason I got into STEM in the first place — to help people.
The Designing for Social Good program lived up to its promise to tackle some of society’s biggest challenges.
It not only helped me enhance my critical thinking skills and my approaches to problem solving but also connected me with other HBCU students I would not have had the opportunity to meet otherwise.
Through the program, I had the opportunity to meet with representatives from Microsoft and the Walton Family Foundation, where I shared my experience as a student at UAPB. I used that platform to highlight the urgent need for HBCUFI’s programming on our campus, advocating not just for myself, but for the growing community of innovators at UAPB.
Finishing my first year at UAPB with a 4.0 GPA was the cherry on top.
My biggest lesson from the year was that higher education itself is an abundance.
No matter where your path after high school takes you, there is an abundance of new friends, new experiences, and new opportunities.
Being part of HBCUFI’s workshop was one of those opportunities.
It felt like the stars aligned perfectly so that this son of Southern California ended up in Arkansas at the right time, with the right people, doing work that matters.
Mateo Cook is a sophomore at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.