‘Every Woman, Every Year!’ Making History Together

To all of our alumnae donors, I want to say “THANK YOU!” We ended our fiscal year on June 30, 2010, with an alumnae participation rate of 39 percent, the highest participation rate in the history of Spelman College. Responding to a special Founders Day Challenge matching grant of $300,000, alumnae rallied one another to [...]

Water and the Environment: Microbes Are the First Line of Defense in the BP Oil Spill

As an estimated 12,000-19,000 barrels of oil gush into the Gulf Coast from the largest oil spill disaster in U.S. history, much attention on the environmental impact has been focused on fish, birds, and other larger aquatic species.  However, minimal attention to the microbial community that serves as the first line of defense in this [...]

Undaunted by the Fight: Six Years After Spelman Students Took On Nelly

I was sitting in a restaurant in Atlanta several years ago when a waiter approached me and instead of taking my order, asked me if I was the one who taught “Images of Women in the Media” at Spelman. I looked at the young man for a moment and responded, “The answer depends on what [...]

Realizing the Vision

On Feb. 26, 2010, President Barack Obama signed an Executive Order reauthorizing the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges. I, one of several members of the newly appointed White House Advisory Board on HBCUs, was standing on stage with President Obama to witness the signing.  This thrilling moment was made even more special because [...]

Remembering Ann Nixon Cooper, the Wisest of the Wise

To President Barack Obama, Mrs. Ann Nixon Cooper was the woman elder, 106 years of age, whom he lifted up for national — indeed international recognition — in his historic acceptance speech on Nov. 4, 2009. To students at Spelman College, however, Mrs. Cooper was the most celebrated of women elders who has mentored students [...]

A Generation at Risk

In her autobiography, “Justice Older than the Law,” Spelman alumna Dovey Johnson Roundtree, C’38, recalls a moment that changed her life forever.   Struggling to make her way through College during the years of the Great Depression, she hit a wall.  She needed $300 to stay in school, an amount way beyond her grasp.  Without family [...]