Why Every Black Person Should Follow HillmanTok University

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HillmanTok College is uniting hundreds of thousands 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 neighborhood was based by Dr. Leah Barlow of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State College on Jan. 20. What began as an effort to interact 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, based on NBC Information.

“At first, I believed it was sort of humorous,” Dr. Barlow advised Refinery29 in an interview revealed on Feb. 7. “However as increasingly folks began to work together [with the video], I noticed, ‘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 courses not solely accessible and informative for her on-campus college students but in addition for distance learners and non-traditional college students. The star trainer 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 hundreds of thousands 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 neighborhood, which is called after the fictional HBCU featured in A Completely different World and The Cosby Present, has additionally launched an internet site the place college students can enroll and think about programs that can be supplied for the college’s Spring 2025 semester and entry a variety of matters, all free of charge. These embody programs on Leisure Regulation, breaking into tech, and wealth constructing methods. All classes can 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 companion at Benford Brown & Associates, the biggest Black woman-owned accounting agency, teaches Wealth 101 on her TikTok web page. Ellen has been educating college students how you can construct generational wealth by mastering tax planning, calculating their web value, and extra.

“I’ve at all times had this ardour to assist folks construct wealth and demystify it for people who don’t perceive how taxes combine into their private monetary assertion,” the wealth guru advised Refinery29.

MSNBC contributor and music journalist Touré will train 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, based on his Instagram put up 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.

All for signing up for Spring programs? Take a look at the HillmanTok College’s on-line enrollment type right here.