Google Donates $1M To Hampton University For Digital Upgrades

Google’s recent $1 million donation is transforming Hampton University’s campus, closing the digital divide, and advancing opportunities for HBCU students.

By Rosaland Tyler Associate Editor New Journal and Guide

There was a time when the digital divide stretched across HBCU campuses, the same way acres of undeveloped land lay fallow awaiting a philanthropist’s magic touch at the turn of the century.

Now, students with cellphones, tablets and laptops spill out of renovated campus buildings that were built by turn-of-the-century HBCU students with handmade bricks. The way philanthropists like Andrew Carnegie donated funds that led to the construction of new HBCU buildings at Tuskegee Institute in the early 1900s, today’s corporate leaders and the federal government are supplying funds that are slowly wiping out the digital divide on HBCU campuses.

For example, Google recently donated $2 million to Hampton and Morehouse. According to a recent UNCF press release, Hampton will use its recent $1 million Google gift to “enable the university to expand pathways and opportunities by facilitating needed infrastructure and classroom technology upgrades.”

According to its website, Hampton also received a recent $1.76M grant from the Simons Foundation to help develop a new Stellarator Experiment Group to advance research in Fusion Plasma Science.

Meanwhile, Morehouse will use its $1 million gift to construct a Google Annex that will contain new computers and furniture. Thanks to Google’s recent $1 million donation, Morehouse will also add a computer lab, study rooms, and a collaboration site for budding entrepreneurs.

Hampton University President Darrell K. Williams said in a recent UNCF statement, “We are in an unrelenting pursuit of making a reimagined academic experience a reality for our students, faculty, and staff, through digital transformation. We are delighted to receive this gift and applaud the Google and UNCF partnership for increasing access to unrestricted funds for HBCUs.”

While it is impossible to list all of the private and public donations that are erasing the digital divide, Stillman College in Tuscaloosa recently received a $500,000 grant from the Google Cybersecurity Clinics Fund. Stillman will use the grant to offer free cybersecurity services to organizations and small businesses, hire students for internships in the clinic, provide scholarships, and mentor other colleges as they launch cyber clinics. READ MORE