Photo by Brett Bowers

Howard University and Google announced today the launch of a residency that will be housed in Silicon Valley. The program, dubbed Howard West, is open to juniors and seniors who are enrolled in the D.C. school’s computer science program.

For three months, students will take courses at a dedicated workspace on Google’s Mountain View campus and get “a generous stipend” to cover living and other expenses, according to a Howard release. They’ll also receive 12 credits toward graduation.

Howard and Google already partner through Google in Residence, a program where engineers from the tech company teach at historically black colleges and universities across the country.

Through GIR, Google learned “a lot about the hurdles black students face in acquiring full-time work in the tech industry,” Bonita Stewart, Google’s VP of global partnerships and a Howard alum, said in a release from the tech company.

“The lack of exposure, access to mentors and role models are critical gaps that Howard West will solve,” she said, adding that “systematic barriers” lead to low engagement, enrollment, and retention of students in computer science programs.

She also said Howard West is “a way to create a future that reflects the values of diversity and inclusion” at Google, where currently one percent of tech staffers are black.

Howard president Dr. Wayne Frederick said he hopes the program will inspire the entire tech industry to rally “around the importance of diversity in business and the communities they serve,” while producing “hundreds of industry-ready black computer science graduates… with the power to transform the global technology space into a stronger, more accurate reflection of the world around us.”

Google engineers and Howard professors will teach courses at the Silicon Valley campus. The program kicks off this summer and Google plans to open it up to students at other HBCUs “in the near future,” Stewart said.