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When Zyearre Amoah was a student at Sacramento State in 2023, there were times when he felt like the only Black student.

“There were African-American students on our campus,” he recalls. But at a sprawling state university with more than 30,000 students, “it just felt like we had to look for each other.”

Amoah graduated in 2024, just as his university was launching its Black Honors College, a school within a school with a special focus on Black history, life and culture. He’s now a staff member at the BHC, as it’s called, helping recruit students.

“Unfortunately I didn’t have the luxury to be part of it as a student,” he says, but the university’s effort to elevate, and celebrate, the scholarship of Black students has changed how he perceives his alma mater.

“Black students on our campus are actually showing their faces,” he says, laughing. “That is really helpful for everyone here. We’re finding each other relatively easier. “

The initiative at Sacramento State, formally known as the California State University, Sacramento, began just months before the Trump administration began its widespread assault on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs on college campuses. In the last two years, dozens of colleges and universities have rolled back or eliminated such offerings to avoid accusations of racial discrimination that have led to loss of research funding and other sanctions.

“Historically, the campus struggled to create an environment of success” for Black students, says Luke Wood, Sac State’s president, who helped create the BHC. “So we created an intervention that was designed to meet their needs while also serving any student who was interested in being part of it.”

Wood sees this as a vital part of his, or any university’s, mission. “I think that more institutions could be easily doing the same.”