Profiles Brenda Knight, the first African American chairwoman of the Association of Community College Trustees, describing how her own personal history provides evidence of the importance of community colleges. (EV)

Presents an interview with Dr. Joyce F. Brown, the first female and first African American president of the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. Explores the intricacies of being a Black woman president, working in New York higher education systems, and training students for an industry not renowned for its diversity. (EV)

Describes how the American Association of University Women's first African American executive director, Jacqueline Woods, is committed to making the organization more inclusive, as evident in the outreach and diversity efforts she has focused on during the past 2 years. (EV)

The three final candidates to replace Spelman College (Georgia) president Johnetta B. Cole are testimony to the status the institution has attained through recent leadership. The candidates, all high-achieving women, include a former Secretary of Energy, acting U.S. Surgeon General, and a University of California, Los Angeles vice chancellor. (MSE)

Since 1986, the percentage of women college presidents has more than doubled--from 9.5 percent to 21.1 percent--and the percentage of minority presidents has increased from 8.1 percent to 12.8 percent, according to "The American College President: 2002 Edition," produced by the American Council on Education (ACE). Women held 21.1 percent of the…

Five black women presiding over college campuses with over 20,000 students are profiled: Del M. Anderson (City College of San Francisco, CA); Constance M. Carroll (San Diego Mesa College, CA); Ruth Burgos-Sasscer (Houston Community College System, TX); Jerry Sue Thornton (Cuyahoga Community College, OH); and Belle S. Wheelan (Northern Virginia…

Presents an interview with the former president of Northern Virginia Community College, Belle S. Wheelan, about her history-making role as Virginia's new secretary of education. (EV)

This document describes an informal chat of about 30 students, faculty, staff, and administrators, mostly African-American women, with a couple of White and Latina sisters thrown in. One woman asked why African-American women were so mean to each other. The author retreated into a conversation about two models of women's leadership--Queen Bee or…

Since their founding in segregation, the nation's historically Black colleges and universities have been studies in resourcefulness, contrasts, resoluteness, possibilities and miracles. But have the past 20 years marked the worst of times for these venerable, public and private institutions? Despite their problems--fractured budgets, ailing and…

An interview with Marie McDemmond, president of Norfolk State University (Virginia) and the first woman to head a Virginia public university, examines her response to the university's hidden fiscal crisis, her conception of shared leadership, her experience as a woman administrator, controversies over her spending choices, and administrative…

Over the past 20 years, higher education has seen significant growth in the numbers of both associate's and bachelor's degrees conferred on students in the United States, particularly women and minorities. For example, the number of associate's degrees conferred on African American women between 1980 and 2000 nearly doubled, tripling for American…