HBCU First LOOK: Preparing Howard Students to Be the Next
By Chad Eric Smith, Director of Strategic Communications and Marketing, Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts
When the entertainment industry asks, Who is next? Howard University students are getting an opportunity to explore that question from inside the industry itself.
Through Howard University’s partnership with MAE/HBCU First LOOK, students from the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts and The Cathy Hughes School of Communications are gaining professional development, mentorship, industry exposure and practical experience that extend the learning taking place in their classrooms. The 2026 program, organized around the theme “How to Be the Next,” places Howard interns in professional environments across the entertainment ecosystem while giving them an opportunity to see how their skills, creativity and perspectives translate beyond campus.
The official 2026 HBCU First LOOK announcement describes the experience as bringing together HBCU filmmakers, creators and entertainment professionals across film, television and digital media.The initiative celebrates featured honorees representing institutions across the nation—including Michael Strahan (Texas Southern University), Eva Marcille (Clark Atlanta University), Morgyn Wood (Morgan State University), Jamila Mustafa (Delaware State University), Chad Easterling (Hampton University), Nakia Stephens (Savannah State University), Tone Bell (Savannah State University), Randy Huggins (Grambling State University), and Howard’s own Benin Mtume and Kennedi Reece.
Beyond honoring established icons, the festival serves as a real-time laboratory for current students to see how institutional training translates into executive and creative mobility.
“In Arts Administration, we often say that the skills travel—well beyond theatre and the proscenium stage,” says Pat Parks, Assistant Professor and Area Coordinator of Theatre Arts Administration. “HBCU First LOOK is such an exciting example of where those skills can take our students. We are thrilled to partner with MAE/HBCU First LOOK and give our students the opportunity to bring what they are learning at Howard into the film and entertainment space.”
HBCU First LOOK: How to Be the Next
Watch the HBCU First LOOK video
For Sheila Eldridge, founder of HBCU First LOOK and CEO of Miles Ahead Entertainment, the work begins with recognizing the talent already present at HBCUs and creating pathways for students to translate that talent into professional experience.
“There is extraordinary talent at our HBCUs, and our responsibility is to make sure students have opportunities to translate that talent into professional experience. We want students to see that there is a place for them across the entertainment industry, and that their education, creativity, and perspective are valuable assets.”
That philosophy is central to the 2026 theme, “How to Be the Next.” Rather than positioning students simply as future applicants waiting for an industry to decide where they fit, HBCU First LOOK asks them to think about what they themselves bring into the room.
Eldridge puts the idea even more directly:
“I tell them, ‘I'm not the audience—you are.’ So you've got to give me back your creativity.”
The statement captures a larger philosophy of creative education: students should understand their own perspectives, develop the confidence to articulate them and recognize that creativity can itself become a source of professional opportunity.
From Classroom Preparation to Creative Agency
That emphasis on creative agency resonates with the work happening across Howard’s creative programs, where students are encouraged to understand not only the industries they hope to enter, but also the value they can bring to them—and the possibilities they can create themselves.
For Prof. Parks, in the Theatre Arts Administration area in Howard University’s Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts, that preparation includes learning how the creative industries operate: producing, general management, company management, production management, marketing, finance, human resources, entrepreneurship and the many functions that allow creative work to move from an idea to an audience.
It also means cultivating the ability to recognize opportunity.
For example, in Parks’ Arts & Innovation course, students explore how creativity can become arts-based products, services and companies, culminating in an “Art Tank” in which they present their ideas to faculty judges. The course moves across creative disciplines while asking students to consider how emerging technologies are reshaping the way art is made, distributed and experienced.
That forward-looking approach has deep roots. As an undergraduate and graduate student, Parks studied artificial intelligence, cognition, emotion and intelligence across sentient and non-sentient beings, including the Turing Test and whether machines can think. That interest later intersected with Parks’ work in technology, including with IBM, and with nearly a decade of teaching Arts & Innovation, where students have explored the intersections of emerging technology and the arts well before many of those conversations entered the mainstream.
Today, the questions have evolved: Can machines act, sing, dance, write and create—or, even further, should they?
Students in Arts & Innovation have raised real concerns about what emerging technologies mean for artists and the creative industries. Parks’ approach is to help them become comfortable being uncomfortable: to understand the technology, engage its ethical questions, continue building their craft, and learn to innovate with emerging tools rather than be paralyzed by them.
That conversation is no longer theoretical. AI-generated performer Tilly Norwood is being developed to lead Misaligned, a feature film created through a hybrid process involving traditional film and television professionals alongside AI specialists. The project has prompted broader questions about what constitutes a performance, who receives creative credit, and where the human role sits within an increasingly technological creative process.
For students entering creative industries undergoing that kind of transformation, understanding change is increasingly part of professional preparation.
Creating Rather Than Waiting to Be Chosen
That same philosophy is visible in Howard’s Film & Television Production program within the Cathy Hughes School of Communications. Students learn the creative and technical processes of filmmaking, from development and scriptwriting through production, editing and distribution. Howard’s Film & Television Production program
But the goal extends beyond preparing students to fill existing industry roles.
Srikanth Nandigama, Associate Professor and Coordinator of the graduate MFA Film and undergraduate Film and Television programs, emphasizes the importance of developing filmmakers and storytellers who understand that their technical skills are tools for expressing their own creative vision.
Prof. Nandigama remarked: "Howard is not simply preparing professionals to wait for the industry to hire them. We are cultivating independent filmmakers and storytellers who have the courage to tell their own stories, develop distinctive artistic visions, and create opportunities around the ideas and communities that matter to them. We want our students to see themselves not only as participants in the industry, but as creators who can question conventions and challenge dominant narratives. Through creative independence, collaboration, and a commitment to authentic expression, Howard empowers filmmakers to create their own work and help shape a more expansive and dynamic future for the art form."
That approach asks students to examine the systems surrounding storytelling as closely as they examine the craft itself. Students consider stereotypes, bias, conditioning, representation and the ways cultural narratives are shaped and circulated.
The result is a shared philosophy across disciplines: technical and professional skills matter, but they are most powerful when students understand how to use those skills to develop and advance their own ideas.
The connection between theatre, film and television is increasingly important. Stories, intellectual property, artists and audiences move across platforms, and creative properties can evolve from stage to screen, from film to television and into new digital forms.
For students, understanding those connections creates a broader view of the entertainment ecosystem—and of where they might contribute to it.
Taking That Agency Into the Industry
HBCU First LOOK provides another dimension to that preparation: a professional environment in which students can test their skills, ask questions, build relationships and observe how creative and business decisions are made in real time.
For sophomore Musical Theatre major Jakei Cobb, the opportunity is connected directly to the power of storytelling.
“I am excited to help my people share their unique, intimate, and, above all, necessary stories.”
For Kaitlyn “KD” Dorsey, a senior Technical Theatre major with a minor in Theatre Arts Administration, the experience has reinforced the value of learning across educational, cultural and community spaces.
“With grace and gratitude, I am truly honored to be able to 
strengthen my learning and curating within educational spaces and exhibits while connecting with the community.”
Those experiences are precisely the kind of professional development HBCU First LOOK is designed to provide.
Millette Granville, CDP, Head of Human Resources at Miles Ahead Entertainment, describes that value in practical terms:
“Professional development happens when students have the opportunity to get into the room, ask questions, build relationships, and see how the work actually gets done. Experiences like HBCU FirstLook can help students expand their networks while giving them a clearer understanding of the many career pathways available to them.”
For Howard students, that access is particularly meaningful because the entertainment industry encompasses far more than the roles most visible to the public. Producing, development, communications, audience engagement, experiential programming, guest experience, content creation, visual media and cultural programming all contribute to how creative work reaches audiences.
HBCU First LOOK gives students an opportunity to see those functions not as abstract career categories, but as interconnected parts of a working professional ecosystem.
Becoming “The Next”
For the Howard interns, that professional exposure adds another dimension to an education already designed to cultivate creativity, critical thinking and entrepreneurial possibility.
They are not entering these spaces without a foundation. They are bringing disciplinary knowledge, creative perspectives and an increasing ability to identify where their talents can create value.
That is ultimately the promise of “How to Be the Next.”
It is not simply about identifying the next person to fill a role. It is about helping students understand what they have to contribute—and giving them the confidence, experience and professional context to make that contribution visible.
Because being next may not mean waiting for the industry to decide where you belong.
It may mean having the vision, creativity and foundation to help build what comes next.
Meet the Howard University HBCU First LOOK Cohort
The 2026 Howard University cohort brings together students from the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts and The Cathy Hughes School of Communications, representing disciplines across theatre, film, television and communications.
Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts
| Princeton Norris Junior — Theatre Arts Administration major | Kaitlyn “KD” Dorsey Senior — Technical Theatre major; Theatre Arts Administration minor |
| Caiya Hargis Senior — Acting major | Ming Garnier Senior — Acting major; Business Administration minor |
| Jakei Cobb Sophomore — Musical Theatre major | Me’kaili Johnson Senior — Acting major; 2025–26 Miss Chadwick A. Boseman |
The Cathy Hughes School of Communications
Juwan Saintcharles Graduate MFA Film Student | Leilani Bacchas Senior - Film and Television major |
Jayden Griffin Graduate MFA Film Student | Nyla Scott Senior - Film and Television major |
James Bah Graduate MFA Film Student | Elijah Christie Senior - Film and Television major |
A Cohort Built for What Comes Next
Together, these students represent the larger idea behind HBCU First LOOK’s “How to Be the Next”: the next generation of entertainment professionals will not be defined solely by the roles that already exist.
They will also be defined by the stories they choose to tell, the audiences they build, the creative ecosystems they strengthen and the opportunities they learn to create for themselves and others.