IBM announced Thursday it is investing $100 million toward education initiatives to prepare students at the nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities for careers in technology.
The effort involves specific partnerships that include three Georgia HBCUs: Morehouse College and Albany State and Clark Atlanta universities.
The Georgia schools will be part of 13 HBCUs involved in the IBM-HBCU Quantum Center, which is designed to prepare and develop students for the quantum cloud computing future through research opportunities, curriculum development and special projects. IBM said the schools were chosen based on their research and education focus on areas that included physics, engineering, mathematics and computer science.
About 12,000 students were enrolled in the three schools last year.
Clark Atlanta will also be part of the Skills Academy Academic Initiative in Global University Programs, a multi-year program with learning tracks in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, blockchain, design thinking and quantum computing.
“We believe that in order to expand opportunity for diverse populations, we need a diverse talent pipeline of the next generation of tech leaders from HBCUs. Diversity and inclusion is what fuels innovation and students from HBCUs will be positioned to play a significant part of what will drive innovations for the future like quantum computing, cloud and artificial intelligence,” Carla Grant Pickens, Chief Global Diversity & Inclusion Officer at IBM, said in a statement.
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