One well-known example has been the college of business at historically Black Florida A&M University, where legendary former dean Dr. Sybil Mobley established a national reputation for the high quality of undergraduate business education. Mobley attracted the interest and support of the nation’s most prestigious companies during the 1980s and 1990s, resulting in hundreds of FAMU business students going on to careers in Fortune 500 companies and top-tier investment banking firms. 

This decade, minority-serving schools and public urban universities remain eager to partner with corporations. In recent years, Tennessee State University, a historically Black university in Nashville, has pioneered one of the country’s few supply chain management education programs among business schools.

A newly emerging field, supply chain management encompasses the strategy through which goods are developed, produced, distributed and purchased in wholesale and retail markets.

By allowing companies to develop their products with materials and manufacturing processes spread across multiple countries, supply chain management is one of the fastest growing business sectors in the world.

Lisa Smith, the director of public service at TSU’s business school, says the supply chain program was developed in cooperation with companies, such as Dell Computers, Corning Glass and Lexmark International. In two years of operation, the program currently has more than 30 undergraduate business students and several graduate students pursuing the supply chain management major.

Program supporters say the program has helped make TSU a reliable source of minority talent for corporations.

“We have students who’ve been in internships and now entering their senior year and they already have job offers,� Smith says.