Winter 2006 (PDF - Spelman College

Contents
Features
1 Spelman Names Building in Honor of
‘Sister Prez’ Johnnetta B. Cole
1 Artist Amalia Amaki Shakes the
Winter Blues
3 Hip Hop Week at Spelman College
4 Two Times Three – Class of 2009 Boasts
Three Sets of Twin Biology Majors
Departments
2 A Dialogue with Dr. T.
5 Spelman Salutes
Special Section
7 2004–2005 Annual Report &
Donor Honor Roll
350 Spelman Lane S.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30314
www.spelman.edu
EDITOR
Jo Moore Stewart
COPY EDITOR
Janet M. Barstow
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Garon Hart
EDITORIAL COMMITTEE
Eloise Alexis, C’86
Andrea Barnwell, C’93
Tomika DePriest, C’89
Renita Mathis
Olivia A. Scriven
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Cathy Lee
TaRessa Stovall
PHOTOGRAPHERS
Wilford Harewood
J.D. Scott
Bud Smith
Julie Yarbrough, C’91
2 I NSIDE S PELMAN
Inside Spelman
is published four times
per academic year for a
readership that includes
alumnae, trustees,
parents, students, faculty,
staff and friends of the
College. The newsletter is
dedicated to informing
our readers about news,
upcoming events and
issues in the life of the
College.
A DIALOGUE WITH DR. T.
Spelman ALIVE: Building a Better Spelman for the Next Generation
Academic Excellence, Leadership Development, Improving Our Infrastructure, Visibility of Our
Achievements, and Exemplary Customer Service are the five key components of the Spelman College
strategic plan known by the acronym, Spelman ALIVE. We are working hard on all five areas, but this
spring our focus on the “I” in ALIVE will be most noticeable as the renovation and expansion of Rockefeller
Hall, the oldest building on campus, is now under way, and
construction of a new residence hall will begin this spring. The
Rockefeller project is the second phase of a two-part project,
involving the renovation of both Packard Hall and Rockefeller Hall,
initiated and approved by the Board of Trustees during Dr. Audrey
Manley’s tenure. This project has not only provided for improved
customer service through the centralization of student administrative
services in Packard Hall and the expansion of muchneeded
office space in Rockefeller Hall, but it has also insured the
historic preservation of two of the oldest buildings on campus.
Our newest building, approved by the Board of Trustees in
October 2005, will preserve and enhance the residential character Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum
of our campus. Though many alumnae fondly recall their days
in the dorms with their Spelman sisters, today more than 40 percent of our students commute to Spelman
from off-campus apartments simply because we do not have enough on-campus housing to accommodate
them. Though off-campus living offers a level of independence that some young women seek, a
long and increasingly expensive commute discourages active campus involvement, limits the valuable
interactions with faculty outside the classroom and reduces the opportunity for the close-knit relationships
among Spelman women that are the hallmarks of a Spelman education. Further, our goal of
recruiting and retaining excellent students is hampered when we cannot assure anxious parents that
we can provide housing for their daughter for at least the first two years of her college experience. For
this reason, increasing our on-campus housing capacity has been a high priority for me.
Scheduled to open in August 2007, our new residence hall will house approximately 300 students
in apartment-style suites, changing our current housing capacity from 57 percent to 70 percent of our
student population. Though we expect most of the residents of the two-, three- or four-bedroom suites
will be upper-class students, the additional space will create the room we need to house all of our firstyear
and sophomore students, who will be required to live on campus beginning in 2007. Because our
current cafeteria is too small to accommodate an additional 300 campus residents, a dining facility
will be included as part of the new housing complex. Also included will be an adjacent power plant to
meet the heating and cooling needs of the new building as well as any future construction on the west
side of the campus.
This ambitious construction project represents the first expansion of the Spelman College campus
beyond the current gates. In 2004, we were successful in purchasing some property adjacent to the
campus that includes a large parking lot (next to the Lee Street campus entrance), the Milligan office
building (which is currently housing the displaced Rockefeller Hall administrators) and a large parcel
of vacant land which lies behind the Stewart and Cole Living and Learning Centers and runs parallel to
Westview Drive across from the Morehouse School of Medicine. The landscaping plan for the project will
create a new pedestrian walkway from the central campus to this new section, and the elegant fence which
encircles Spelman will be removed and restored around the new boundary of our expanding campus.
Given our current financial status (“healthy but not wealthy”), it would be natural to ask how we
will pay for this project, expected to cost approximately $50 million. Our plan is to borrow the money
by issuing a bond in early 2006, to be repaid over many years with the revenue generated from the
room and board. We must also continue to focus on the twin goals of increasing our endowment
through leadership gifts and augmenting our annual funds to support the increase in our operating
expenses that a new building represents. Taking on additional debt of this magnitude must always be
done with caution; however, we are confident that our financial plan is sound. The need for more
housing is urgent if we are to maintain a high-quality residential experience for our students.
So the next time you visit our beautiful campus, you may find us living with the noise and mud of
major construction projects. Though never convenient, these are exciting signs of progress toward our
goal of making sure that Spelman College is nothing less than the best – strong and vital well into the
21st century. ●