The Origins of UM-Flint’s Student Support Services Centers

Project Structure

The Center for Global Engagement (CGE) at their Third Annual Open House, 2025 | Courtesy of the Center for Global Engagement, University of Michigan-Flint

This project is working to investigate the origins and trajectories of five different student services centers on the UM-Flint campus–the Center for Global Engagement (CGE), the Center for Gender and Sexuality (CGS), the Intercultural Center (ICC), the Office of Educational Opportunity Initiatives (EOI), and the Student Veterans Resource Center (SVRC). Staff members from each of the five centers are serving as project fellows and research co-investigators. The SSSC fellows have assisted in the development of the research questions for the project and are leading the data collection and analyses phases. Each fellow is supported by a research assistant, all of whom are current or former UM-Flint students.

All of the centers are dedicated to a segment of the University of Michigan-Flint community, each with its unique needs and challenges.

• The Center for Global Engagement (CGE), which grew from UM-Flint’s International Center, serves as a resource center for international students. CGE advocates for the larger student body’s continued connection to our global community by providing resources and opportunities for students to study abroad and engage in other international education efforts.
• The Center for Gender and Sexuality (CGS), originally the Ellen Bommarito LGBTQ Center (founded in 1994) and the Women’s Educational Center (founded in 2001), officially opened in 2019. CGS offers confidential advocacy for survivors of sexual assault and gender-based violence, LGBTQIS2S+ affirming programming, and a safe space for students to make connections and learn about gender and sexuality in society.
• Following the death of Michael Brown in 2014 and other justice related events nationwide, the Social Justice Comrades (SJC), a coalition of students from numerous student organizations, organized a campaign to advocate for the university to provide  stronger, intersectional support to marginalized students, including a space for critical dialogue and culturally competent educational programs and events. As a result of one of the formal demands to the university by the SJC, the Intercultural Center (ICC) was founded. The ICC provides a welcoming space  for students across all identities to connect, learn, and build community while centering the needs and experiences of students of color through multicultural education. The ICC hosts and co-sponsors numerous campus wide events to help promote dialogue and belonging.
• The Office of Educational Opportunity Initiatives (EOI) was founded in 1994 through the efforts of Chancellor Charlie Nelms and led by Executive Director Dr. Tendaji Ganges for almost 20 years, and it is the oldest student support center examined in this project. The EOI is dedicated to building connections between UM-Flint and the greater Flint community, providing opportunities to students to receive a postsecondary education.
• The Student Veterans Resource Center (SVRC) was founded in 2009 to provide academic and social support to veterans on the UM-Flint campus, helping veteran students navigate bureaucratic systems and make the most of their university enrollment. The SVRC has elevated UM-Flint to a gold-level institution for student veterans, according to the 2024 Michigan Veterans Affairs Agency.

New Histories

To understand the unique and often shared histories of student support centers at UM-Flint, each of the centers has conducted interviews with former and current faculty, staff, and students. Given their unique positions within the centers, SSSC fellows have also synthesized interview data with their lived experiences and knowledge as well as with records from university archives and other sources. This rich data is being analyzed to draw honest conclusions about the strengths and shortcomings of student support on the UM-Flint campus.

As these histories have been left largely unexplored, a great deal has been learned about the various push and pull factors that have shaped the structure of student support on the UM-Flint campus. Each of these new histories will be presented in a way that is unique to the wishes of each SSSC. For instance, the Intercultural Center has presented some of its work at both the 2025 Inclusive History Project Summit and the 2025 National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education (NCORE). Central to the SSSC Project is the move toward repair, which has guided the design of the research and exemplifies the mission of the Inclusive History Project itself.

For the Future of the Centers

Composed of novel researchers, the project ensures not only that each team is sensitive to the challenges faced by their respective centers in the present, but also that people working in the centers are gaining valuable historical research skills. While some centers, like the Intercultural Center and Center for Gender and Sexuality, already had strong senses of their histories and are using them to investigate specific historical questions, other centers are gaining insight into the challenges and triumphs of their movements for the first time. This knowledge is transferable within generations of those associated with the centers.

The Center for Gender and Sexuality (CGS) at Pride Outside, part of Campus Pride Week, June 2023 | Courtesy of the Center for Gender and Sexuality, University of Michigan-Flint