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Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) were established to provide African Americans with higher education access. This article used phenomenological analysis to illuminate HBCU provosts’ perspectives on leadership styles and successes to broaden STEM participation within higher education’s historical hegemony. A diverse group of provosts representing public and private HBCUs was interviewed. The conservation of resources (COR) theory was used as an analytic framework. Findings showed that provosts exhibited nurturing behaviors in STEM leadership, characterizing their leadership styles as collaborative, supportive, and inclusive. Provosts used personal resources to facilitate STEM success, focusing on students’ potential through purposeful perspective-taking. The strategy of purposeful perspective-taking has implications for future research and leadership training. 

The term leadership has been dissected, analyzed and even quantified over numerous years. Leadership in STEM has also been extensively researched. Its results are used to educate and guide decision and to enact policies. However, despite the abundance of literature available on leadership and STEM in general, research falls short when it comes to examining leadership characteristics and its relationship to broadening participation at institutions of higher education, specifically Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Of special interest is the growing awareness that HBCUs have been producing high percentages of STEM graduates for many years. CASL, the Center for Advancement of STEM Leadership, aims to discover the leadership styles, characteristics and practices that may be influencing the large production of STEM graduates from HBCUs and contribute to the general body of knowledge on leadership. Semi-structured interviews served as the source of data from HBCU leaders’ perspectives. The results of this analysis will assist with increasing the general population’s awareness and knowledge of the impact of HBCUs’ leadership on broadening participation in STEM. The results also inform leaders of educational institutions across the nation regarding the benefits of exploring, or implementing, uncovered leadership styles and practices to broaden participation in STEM.