WOMEN IN HIGHER EDUCATION LEADERSHIP BRING UNIQUE SKILLS TO BEAR ON THEIR APPROACH TO LEADING SKILLS HONED BY NAVIGATING THE COMPETING DEMANDS OF THEIR GENDER AND THEIR OCCUPATION.
Department of Education Discharge of over $1.6 billion in HBCU Capital Finance Debt. President Roslyn Clark Artis has received over 300 awards for her LeadHERship. In 2019, she was the recipient of the American Council on Education (ACE) Fidelity Investments Award for Institutional Transformation. The award recognizes institutions that have responded to higher education challenges in innovative and creative ways and achieved dramatic results in a short period of time. In her poem “A Litany for Survival,” Audre Lorde addresses the reality of oppressive life-denying systems that Black women face. She reminds us
that, we (Black women) were never meant to survive, but nevertheless we have at HBCUs that continue to undermine our essence and impact. Though men still hold the majority of executive leadership positions in higher education, women represent more than half of administrators overall, according to a study from CUPA-HR. Women in higher education leadership bring unique skills to bear on their approach to leading — skills honed by navigating the competing demands of their gender and their occupation. Like Anna Julia Cooper, Mary McLeod Bethune carried forward the call to advance opportunities for Black women through education and activism.
Although a generation younger than Cooper, Bethune built on Cooper’s vision of using education and leadership as a mechanism of advancement. They will perpetually be the shoulders that inspire Black women to continue to participate in the HBCU leadership franchise. It is their shoulders that initiated an opening in the door of LeadeHERship for Black women at HBCUs; and it is the shoulders of these new Sistah presidents that will continue to be formidable and enterprising forces of leadership in the academy.
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