February 1, 2006: NORTON FILES BILL TO OBTAIN MORE FUNDS FOR UDC

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 1, 2006

NORTON FILES BILL TO OBTAIN MORE FUNDS FOR UDC

Washington, DC— Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today introduced a bill to extend federal Historically Black College and University (HBCU) funding to graduate programs at the University of the District of Columbia (UDC), to allow UDC to increase its production of skilled graduates in vital disciplines and jobs, particularly in areas where African Americans are underrepresented. In 1999, Norton succeeded in getting Congress to give UDC much sought after HBCU funding status for undergraduate programs typical of what most HBCUs receive, but similar recognition of graduate programs is even more difficult to obtain and requires separate legislation. Norton got the HBCU funding recognition for UDC when she got Congress to pass her District of Columbia College Access Act, resulting in the D.C. Tuition Assistance Grant (TAG) program. That bill is in recognition of the fact that, unlike every state, D.C. has no state university system with choices of colleges to attend. TAG, therefore, enables D.C. residents to attend public colleges and HBCUs in the region and the country at low in-state tuition rates otherwise unavailable to non-residents.

UDC is one of the nation’s oldest HBCUs, but Congress resisted giving the university federal funding as an HBCU until Norton linked the measure to the TAG bill. Norton said, “Now the University of the District of Columbia Graduate Programs Act will help UDC’s graduate schools play an even greater role in educating the leaders and badly needed workers of the next generation by producing theoretically sound and practically skilled graduates, ready to undertake service careers in both the public and private sectors.”

In her statement of introduction, Norton noted that funding from the Historically Black Graduate Institutions program will allow UDC—the District’s only public university—to increase educational and employment opportunities, especially for African Americans, Hispanics and other residents of limited means, and to strengthen its graduate programs particularly in occupations where there are shortages in the region. The University has graduate degree programs in cancer biology prevention and control, early childhood education, mathematics, special education, and speech and language pathology, and other graduate programs in the College of Arts and Sciences, the David A. Clarke School of Law, and the School of Business and Public Administration. A graduate curriculum is being developed in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.