Programatic Purpose: To provide and sustain African American-centered educational and socio-cultural  programs and services so that African American and other APSU students,  faculty, administrators, and staff, as well as members of the surrounding communities, will receive substantive theoretical and practical knowledge about the historic and contemporary contributions, achievements, cultural proclivities, and holistic aspirations of African Americans and other peoples of African descent. The Center also actively serves as the chief co-curricula and cultural programming unit of the African American Studies Program in order to conjunctively promote students' scholarly endeavors and other academic activities that progressively demystifies African American and African diasporic experiences.  

Objective 1.0	To establish and sustain an academic year long, widely advertised speakers' series as a means of bringing to the APSU campus distinguished African American and African world-centered scholars, artisans, and cultural practitioners by utilizing personalities from local, regional, national, and international communities.
Objective 1.1	To serve as the co-curricula, cultural programming arm of the African American Studies Program.
Objective 2.0	To consistently upgrade and preserve African American student-centered social developmental and out-of-classroom academic oriented programs and in order to help insure the students' continuous attainment of an affirmative sense of self in a racially complex world as well as enhancing their development of a strong social consciousness, and an in-depth understanding of the relationship between their academic excellence and their social responsibility.
Objective 3.0	To organize, coordinate, and sponsor/co-sponsor semi-annual APSU African American faculty/administrator colloquiums as a means of promoting and recognizing the African-centered scholarly endeavors of current and potential faculty and administrators, and to further foster the free exchange of ideas on the campus.
Objective 4.0	To update and expand the Center's audio/visual, print, and other media materials in order to make available to members of the University and surrounding communities a distinctive reservoir of African-centered cultural resources.
Objective 5.0	To  seek-out and encourage the active participation of other racial/ethnic student, faculty, administrator, and staff groups in all Center-oriented public events in order to concretely promote the Center as an "open" educational and cultural unit on the APSU campus, and to develop important linkages and deliberations on common human concerns and issues.
Objective 6.0	To provide advisory/consultative and participatory services to appropriate University departments as a means of helping assure the availability of greater opportunities for African American students to regularly and affirmatively take part in the multifaceted life of the campus.
Objective 7.0	To encourage all University departments and groups to annually develop and implement pertinent activities and/or public programs focussing on the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and on the historic achievements and struggles of African Americans as a means of fostering and better assuring fuller campus participation in these important celebrations.
Objective 8.0	To organize an African American alumni "friends of the center" project in order to specifically access an important external resource for the Center's overall programs and services.
Objective 9.0	To establish formal relationships with THEC and TBR institutions, as well as with relevant other regionally-based private and public colleges and universities, that have defined African American/Black/ Africana cultural centers as a means of effectively networking on common issues and concerns, sharing resources, and suitably collaborating on major public events.
Objective 10.0	To conduct and support routine evaluations of all Center-based and Center-coordinated programs, and consistently pursue appropriate external funding sources in order to build on program achievements, rectify programmatic problems, and maximize the Center's funding base.