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It has been a challenge to retain computer science students, especially underrepresented students such as women and minorities. This paper describes our experiences in implementing activities to improve student retention and graduation rates in the Department of Computer Science at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (NCA&T). NCA&T is among the United States' Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) serving more than 10,000 students. Approximately, 90% of the students in the Computer Science Department are African Americans. We have implemented a variety of activities to improve student retention with the support of the Department of Education Minority Science and Engineering Improvement Program (MSEIP). These activities include: (1) high need student mentoring program; (2) undergraduate teaching assistant training (3) supplementary instruction summer workshop; and (4) freshmen independent study skill training. In this paper we describe each of these activities, the evaluation of these activities, the challenges we encountered and our proposed strategies to overcome these challenges. Our experiences and the effective techniques found may be beneficial for other colleges and universities in retaining computer science students, especially African American students.