contamination, disease, and climate- related health disparities. The State of Maryland initially committed $3 million annually to support the center. NCAT brings its land-grant mission into research areas ranging from agriculture and food security to AI, cybersecurity, health care, advanced manufacturing, transportation, and environmental science. Its Center for Trustworthy AI brings together researchers working in machine learning, robotics, health care, agriculture, and natural- language processing. One particularly creative NCAT project connects AI, cybersecurity, and agriculture. The “Bee Doctor” project is developing technology to identify diseases and other threats to honeybee colonies. The project is connected to the university’s Farm Security Operations Center and its Center of Excellence in Cybersecurity Research, Education, and Outreach. That work exists alongside NCAT’s longstanding Cooperative Extension mission. The university’s extension programs work with small and limited- resource farmers, families, young people, and communities across North Carolina. Its annual Small Farms Week, first held in 1986, recognizes the contributions of small-scale farmers and connects them with university research and technical assistance. Florida A&M University (FAMU) offers another example. Its research infrastructure includes an Institute of Public Health, a Center for Cyber Security, a Center for Viticulture and Small Fruit Research, a Center for Water Resources, and research programs in pharmaceutical science, agriculture, environmental science, engineering, and food security. FAMU’s Institute of Public Health is located within its College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. Its teaching and research emphasize health disparities and conditions affecting poor and underserved populations. The university’s agricultural programs similarly frame research around global food security, hunger, sustainability, and the needs of farmers and rural communities. AI, climate change, public health, cybersecurity, food security, and environmental sustainability are among
the most urgent challenges facing the country. Of great importance, HBCUs bring scientific expertise to these questions, but they also bring a history of recognizing populations and communities that mainstream research institutions have frequently ignored. The HBCU movement toward R1 status does not come without risks. Research universities can become so focused on grants, laboratories, rankings, and doctoral production that undergraduate teaching becomes secondary. Faculty can be rewarded for securing external funding and publishing articles, yet receive less recognition for mentoring students or working with communities. These pressures could be especially consequential for HBCUs, as their strengths have historically rested in the ways faculty and staff teach, mentor, encourage, and advocate for students. Scholars examining the R1 movement have warned that access-oriented institutions could risk losing sight of their teaching and student-success missions as they redirect resources toward research infrastructure and doctoral production. The financial structure of research in the United States also remains deeply unequal. Erin Lynch analyzed 2023 federal data and found that non-R1 institutions received only 25% of federal research expenditures, even though they awarded 53% of the nation’s bachelor’s and associate degrees in science and engineering. She also found that non-HBCUs reported approximately $59 billion in federal research expenditures that year, compared with approximately $539 million across HBCUs. A 2024 report from the National Science and Technology Council similarly found that R2 HBCUs face persistent barriers to federal research funding, including inadequate research infrastructure, limited administrative capacity, difficulty meeting cost-sharing and matching requirements, heavy faculty workloads, and the cumulative consequences of historical underinvestment. HBCUs have never lacked intellectual talent. However, they have suffered from inequitable investment in laboratories, doctoral programs, research administration, facilities,
equipment, and faculty time. In reality, HBCUs have conducted highly important research for generations. What is changing – and needs to continue to change – is their capacity to finance, expand, document, and receive recognition for it. The new Black research university should not have to choose between research and teaching, national influence and local responsibility, or scientific discovery and racial justice. Its contribution could be showing that these commitments belong together. Research excellence at an HBCU can include undergraduates working
alongside faculty in laboratories. It can include doctoral students
studying problems connected to their communities. It can include residents helping shape research questions rather than serving only as research subjects. It can include discoveries that lead to publications and patents, as well as healthier neighborhoods, stronger schools, more resilient farms, more equitable technologies, and greater Black ownership of intellectual property. R1 status can help HBCUs compete for funding, recruit faculty, attract doctoral students, build facilities, form stronger partnerships, and influence the national research agenda. The goal is to demonstrate what a research university can become when excellence is measured not only by how much knowledge it produces, but also by whom that knowledge serves.
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