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HillmanTok College is uniting tens of millions of Black college students worldwide to discover fascinating topics, together with screenwriting, monetary literacy, hip-hop historical past, and extra, via TikTok.
The quickly rising on-line group was based by Dr. Leah Barlow of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State College on Jan. 20. What began as an effort to have interaction her college students forward of her Intro to African American Research course on campus took an sudden flip when her video outlining the curriculum went viral, racking up practically 4 million views inside days, in keeping with NBC Information.
“At first, I believed it was form of humorous,” Dr. Barlow informed Refinery29 in an interview printed on Feb. 7. “However as increasingly more individuals began to work together [with the video], I spotted, ‘Oh, they suppose I’m educating a course,’ and I used to be horrified.”
After her preliminary apprehension handed, Dr. Barlow rapidly acknowledged the chance to spark an academic revolution on TikTok, by making her lessons not solely accessible and informative for her on-campus college students but additionally for distance learners and non-traditional college students. The star instructor started sharing mini lectures on her web page, together with one the place she analyzed the visible imagery tucked inside Donald Glover’s “This Is America” music video. Within the deep lecture, she explored how the rapper’s work mirrored the historical past of Black leisure and the way it has been formed by America.
HillmanTok College is open for Spring Semester programs on-line.
Now with tens of millions of curious minds tapped into her academic content material, Dr. Barlow has partnered with a bunch of Black educators to supply programs via her Hillman TikTok College web page. The net group, which is called after the fictional HBCU featured in A Totally different World and The Cosby Present, has additionally launched a web site the place college students can enroll and examine programs that will likely be provided for the college’s Spring 2025 semester and entry a variety of matters, all totally free. These embrace programs on Leisure Legislation, breaking into tech, and wealth constructing methods. All classes will likely be delivered via the instructors’ particular person TikTok accounts. Some classes will match inside TikTok’s 10-minute video restrict, whereas different instructors will use TikTok Stay for longer lectures and to allow real-time class participation, NBC Information famous.
HillmanTok College educator Kimi Ellen, a CPA and managing associate at Benford Brown & Associates, the most important Black woman-owned accounting agency, teaches Wealth 101 on her TikTok web page. Ellen has been educating college students the right way to construct generational wealth by mastering tax planning, calculating their web value, and extra.
“I’ve at all times had this ardour to assist individuals construct wealth and demystify it for people who don’t perceive how taxes combine into their private monetary assertion,” the wealth guru informed Refinery29.
MSNBC contributor and music journalist Touré will educate a pre-hip-hop historical past course throughout HillmanTok’s Spring Semester, providing college students the chance to discover the “roots” of hip-hop and the historic and societal influences which have formed the style’s evolution, in keeping with his Instagram publish shared Feb. 9. The host of The Touré Present will delve into the inspirations behind hip-hop tradition, together with figures like Malcolm X, the Black Panthers, and Pam Grier.
Excited about signing up for Spring programs? Take a look at the HillmanTok College’s on-line enrollment kind right here.
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