By Ronald Roach

University of Pennsylvania’s Dr. Shaun Harper expects his extensive research will create a new paradigm of how Black males adapt and succeed in college.

It was in his high school years that Raymond Roy seriously thought about going to college. Raised largely by his grandmother in a tough, low-income neighborhood in north Philadelphia, Roy found encouragement from family members and a few college-bound friends.  

“I had good grades, but I didn’t think college was something I could do until I saw some of my friends going for it,” he says.

Roy’s college pursuit took him to Lock Haven University in Pennsylvania where he made the Dean’s List his freshman year. Identified in the spring of his freshman year by campus administrators as a motivated high achiever, Roy took part in the National Black Male College Achievement Study, the largest-ever empirical study of Black male undergraduates.

Roy is one of 219 young Black men from around the nation who have participated in what the study’s author, Dr. Shaun R. Harper, an assistant professor of higher education management at the University of Pennsylvania, hopes will create a new paradigm of how Black males adapt and succeed in college.  

Partly launched when he was a Ph.D. student at Indiana University several years ago, Harper later completed the bulk of the survey work from early 2005 to summer 2006. Traveling each week while teaching courses at Pennsylvania State University, Harper conducted two- to three-hour individual interviews with most of the 219 students on their respective campuses. The subjects were enrolled in 42 colleges and universities in 20 states. The respective schools fall into six categories, including historically Black public institutions, historically Black private institutions and highly selective, private research universities. 

“I was pleased to be part of Dr. Harper’s study because it meant that my story can be helpful to someone else,” says Roy, now a junior at Lock Haven.