Every February, Black History Month asks us to zoom out and really look at what change looks like.
Sometimes it looks like a march.
Sometimes it looks like a court decision.
And sometimes, it looks like a blueprint coming to life, with students walking their own campuses asking, “How can we make this work better for our community?”
Because a blueprint on paper is a vision.
Students turning that vision into action is a legacy.
This year, we’re shining a light on something that doesn’t always make headlines but quietly shapes daily life on campus: the students who are learning how their buildings and campuses work, and using that knowledge to improve them.
Because the health of a community often lives in everyday details.
Whether the air quality inside a classroom is healthy.
Whether a residence hall is comfortable.
Whether utility bills are draining funds that could otherwise support student priorities.
Whether someone on campus knows how to keep improving systems over time.
And the truth is, access to those everyday benefits has never been evenly distributed.
Seeds Planted Long Ago
The story behind Building Improvement Toolkits (BIT) for Resilient HBCUs did not start in 2025. It stretches back decades, and it starts in Atlanta.
On May 3, 1978, a group of volunteers gathered in Woodruff Park for “Sun Day.” Among them was Dennis Creech, who helped form the Georgia Solar Coalition, an early seed that would grow into Southface Institute and its long commitment to practical building solutions that people can actually use.
Just a few miles away, in 1994, Dr. Robert Bullard, now founding director of The Bullard Center for Environmental & Climate Justice at Texas Southern University, established the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University. His work helped make visible in research what many communities had lived for generations: environmental harm is not random; it is shaped by policy, planning, and power.
Two leaders. Two lanes of work. One shared truth: buildings, energy, and health are never separate from justice.
In 1999, EJRC, with support from the Turner Foundation, produced Sprawl Atlanta: Social Equity Dimensions of Uneven Growth and Development. The report convened EJRC leadership and Southface contributors, including Dennis Creech and Natalie Brown, the first Southface Fellow, to explore how uneven development, transportation, environmental quality, and energy consumption were intertwined with equity across metro Atlanta.
The following year, in Sprawl City: Race, Politics, and Planning in Atlanta, Creech and Brown authored the chapter “Energy use and the environment”, which provided yet another clear signal that energy, buildings, and health have always been environmental justice issues.
And then there is a parallel “seed” in this legacy that deserves to be named explicitly in this story: Dr. Michael C. Lomax.
As UNCF President and CEO, Dr. Lomax has framed HBCUs as community anchors whose excellence persists even under conditions of historic disinvestment. In the foreword to UNCF’s The HBCU Climate Action Blueprint: Sustainable Campuses, Empowered Communities, he calls HBCUs “pillars of the Black community” and emphasizes that climate, sustainability, and environmental justice are arenas where HBCUs can assert rightful leadership if they are backed by the investment and platforms they deserve.
That is not a separate story from buildings. It is the same story, told through a different lens.
A Tool Designed for Places Often Excluded
Fast forward to the early 2010s. Green building certification programs were growing, but they were also becoming harder for many older buildings to access. If you did not meet a ENERGY STAR® Portfolio Manager® score thresholds, you were often excluded before you could even start.
Around 2012 to 2013, Jenny Carney began planting a different kind of seed. As a longtime sustainability practitioner and champion working directly with older buildings, she saw a gap between ambition and accessibility. Too many buildings, especially older and under-resourced ones, were excluded before improvement could begin.
Her idea was simple but powerful: create a barrier-free pathway for existing buildings of any age, to improve over time by benchmarking against their own energy, water, and waste baseline and recognizing progress year over year.
That seed became the Building Improvement Toolkit (AKA BIT Building) program, built around 16 Best Practices and a philosophy that progress compounds over time. Better buildings and people, bit by bit.
Why HBCUs, and Why Now?
HBCUs have long served as engines of leadership, scholarship, and opportunity, sustaining Black communities through eras of systemic exclusion (Gasman & Commodore, 2014; UNCF, 2019).
But the physical reality of HBCU campuses matters. The U.S. Government Accountability Office has documented significant facilities needs at HBCUs; in its survey of responding institutions, they reported that 46% of their building space, on average, needs repair or replacement (US Office of Government Accountability Historically Black Colleges and Universities: Action needed to improve participation in Education’s HBCU Capital Financing Program).
Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Education maintains the Historically Black College and University Capital Financing Program, an acknowledgment at the federal level that maintaining and modernizing these campuses has long been a national challenge.
So when we talk about building performance, we are not talking about something separate from environmental justice.
We are talking about health.
We are talking about cost burden.
We are talking about comfort, dignity, and long-term resilience.
And we are talking about decision-makers who shape those outcomes.
This is exactly why UNCF’s Climate Action Blueprint matters in this story. It does not treat sustainability as a side project. It positions an “HBCU climate hub network” as a strategy for empowerment and community agency, advancing climate progress through leadership development, education and training, and community activation.
BIT for Resilient HBCUs: Students Carrying the Legacy Forward
In 2025, Southface and Sustain Our Future Foundation launched a three-year pilot: Building Improvement Toolkits (BIT) for Resilient HBCUs. The initiative includes campus grants, technical support, building management technology access, and workforce development.
But let’s be clear. The toolkit is not the story. The students are.
Across five HBCU campuses – Clark Atlanta University, Morgan State University, Spelman College, Texas Southern University, and Xavier University of Louisiana – 25 student Fellows are stepping into roles as sustainability champions. They are not observers. They are co-builders.
The program brings UNCF’s call for activation to life by positioning each campus as a climate hub, extending efficiency benefits beyond its boundaries through community partnerships. It focuses on practical, zero- and low-cost operational improvements that can reduce energy use by 10 to 20 percent without major capital investment, freeing resources for academic programs, student services, and other priorities. Built on 16 best practices, the approach is designed to generate incremental, compounding savings over time.
That is legacy in motion.
The same Atlanta ecosystem that once brought together environmental justice scholars and building science practitioners has now produced something even more powerful: a pipeline where students are trained and supported to transform the campuses that sustain their communities.
Bit by Bit, Generation by Generation
Black history is not only a record of what happened. It is a record of how people kept building, especially when systems were not designed for them.
BIT for Resilient HBCUs is one of those “keep building” stories.
It reflects Dr. Bullard’s insistence that environmental outcomes are shaped by power and policy, and that frontline communities must be part of the decision-making.
It reflects Dennis Creech’s commitment to translating building science into action.
It reflects Jenny Carney’s belief that sustainability must be accessible and that progress matters even when you start behind the line.
It reflects Dr. Lomax’s insistence, through UNCF’s Climate Action Blueprint, that HBCUs are positioned to lead, but leadership must be activated through investment, platforms, and community-rooted hub models.
And it reflects partners like Sustain Our Future Foundation, whose catalytic leadership made this multi-campus pilot possible, and Environmental Defense Fund, whose leadership in indoor air quality is strengthening the health focus of this work.
That is why this update matters: BIT for Resilient HBCUs is not just adjacent to the Blueprint. It is one of the ways the Blueprint becomes real, through operations, training, and student leadership that brings resilience and justice into daily campus life.
But most importantly, it reflects the students.
Because a legacy only matters if the next generation can pick it up, reshape it, and carry it forward.
When a student walks into a campus building and sees not just aging infrastructure but opportunity, that is planting seeds.
When that student reduces energy waste and frees up resources that can be reinvested in student priorities, that is justice in action.
When that student tells the story so others can follow, that is leadership.
That is what planting seeds of change looks like.
Not abstract.
Not distant.
Not theoretical.
Living. Growing.
Bit by bit.
Generation by generation.
Follow the next chapter of this legacy and learn how BIT for Resilient HBCUs is activating climate leadership across campuses at: https://www.bitbuilding.org/s/bit-for-hbcus