The DuBois-Hamer Institute for Academic Achievement (DHIAA), under the inspiration of W.E.B. DuBois and Fannie Lou Hamer, promotes academic excellence and strives to increase the recruitment and retention of students from economically disadvantaged communities to the CSUN campus. W.E.B. Du Bois was the first black man to receive a doctorate from Harvard University in 1895 and Fannie Lou Hamer was a former Mississippi sharecropper who became a powerful political activist in the 1960s. Founding director, Dr. Barbara Rhodes established the institute in the spring of 1997. Her vision of a university-community based partnership to provide academic and emotional support to CSUN students continues to be a strategic goal of DHIAA and the college of social & behavioral sciences.
