A fall civil rights tour of the county and increasing enrollment figures were announced by the Harford Community College Board of Trustees at its monthly meeting Monday.
For the Harford Civil Rights Project, HCC has created a free mobile app that allows users to learn about the 20th-century African American civil rights movement in Harford County.
“This is a wonderful project that engages our students here at HCC,”said James Karmel, program coordinator. “This a project that has engaged both our students and community in a very clear way.”
The website and mobile app include location-enabled sites where users can learn about key events, individuals and outcomes that illustrate the region’s role in the civil rights movement. Sites may include text descriptions, images, oral history recordings and other material that illuminate the civil rights history of the area.
Students have been working with faculty to compile, research, and develop assignments and projects while they attend events related to the theme, Karmel said. More than 500 students have participated.
“We are very proud of Dr. Karmel’s work on the Harford Civil Rights Project, and the active engagement of both our students and our community to understand where we’ve been and who we are currently,” said Theresa Felder, president of HCC.
The goal of the project was to get students engaged so they can actively learn Harford’s role in the civil rights movement. The college used its ties to the community to have discussions on civil rights. For example, students conducted interviews with people in the Havre de Grace Colored School Cultural Center’s community as a project, Karmel said.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided $97,000 in funding for the development of the Harford Civil Rights Project digital exhibition and mobile application, which ran until the end of last year, Karmel said. The project was able to continue by using funding from the Harford Foundation to pay students $500 stipends to do the work with faculty, Karmel said.
Currently, the Harford Civil Rights Project team and the Harford County branch of the NAACP are planning a civil rights tour around the county starting Oct. 1. The tour will make stops at sites that are significant in the civil rights movement, Karmel said.
After the presentation, they will visit a restaurant that also has ties to the county’s civil rights history, Karmel said. The tour came to fruition last year as an opportunity to create awareness of some of the key events that occurred in Harford County and how community members were directly involved, Felder said.
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Approximately 20 to 25 students will be participating in the fall tour as tour guides, Karmel said.
HCC staff also provided an update on enrollment figures for its credit and non-credit programs.
The college head count is up 1.4% and 2.5% on full-time equivalent enrollment for the fall semester. Full-time equivalent is a calculation of the total number of students enrolled in a semester, divided by the number of credits considered to be full-time.
Also, full-time equivalent enrollment has increased 11% and overall enrollment 18% compared to fiscal year 2021. Enrollment in Harford Community College’s summer program also increased compared to last year, Felder said.
“This is cause for celebration because I don’t know if we have said [enrollment is] up at this point in the year in a very long time,” said Felder. “We are excited. I think we are getting people back who were home during COVID.”
The fall semester at HCC will start Aug. 22.