About Louis Stokes Alliances

Louis Stokes Regional Centers of Excellence in Broadening Participation (LSRCE) 

LSCRE’s serve as regional outreach and knowledge-diffusion centers of excellence for alliance and non-alliance organizations. LSRCE's are projects that have wide latitude for design with a focus on technical assistance in the broadening participation arena, for example, and are focused on increasing the knowledge base on broadening participation topics through research, evaluation and synthesis activities. Centers do not provide direct degree production interventions or student support activities. 

Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP)

An LSAMP is an alliance-based program whose theory is based on the Tinto model for student retention. The overall goal of the program is to assist universities and colleges in diversifying the nation's science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) workforce by increasing the number of STEM baccalaureate and graduate degrees awarded to populations historically underrepresented in these disciplines: African Americans, Hispanic Americans, American Indians, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, and Native Pacific Islanders.

About Louis Stokes

Mr. Stokes served in Congress as a Democrat and the first African American Congressman representing Ohio until his retirement in January 1998 – serving 30 years. During that time he served on the House Intelligence Committee, the House Ethics Committee, the Congressional Black Caucus and the House Appropriations Committee.

During the 1990s, he pushed several federal agencies to hire and serve more minorities and he fought against Republican efforts to cut funding of welfare programs, including public housing – something he had benefited from as a youth. He worked especially hard to secure funding for health-care facilities for veterans in Cleveland.

After retiring (without ever having lost a re-election bid) he continued to practice law in Silver Spring Maryland until his death in 2015 at the age of 90. Several buildings around the country have been named in his honor, including Howard University’s medical library and the Cleveland Public Library’s main building expansion. The VA hospital in Cleveland was renamed the Louis Stokes Cleveland Department of Veteran Affairs Medical Center and Building 50 on the campus of the National Institutes of Health is named the Louis Stokes Laboratories.

Source: History.house.gov