On Wednesday, Ayanna Howard and the 650 freshmen in the Class of 2030 will begin their first semester at Spelman College. When Howard was appointed the 12th president earlier this summer, she became the first scientist and engineer to lead the 145-year-old liberal arts college.
“This is a legacy and this is a calling,” Howard said about her decision to come to Spelman, where many students are the daughters and granddaughters of previous graduates.
Howard has a bachelor’s degree in engineering and a master’s and doctorate in electrical engineering. She told Capital B Atlanta she was intentional about choosing to lead the top rated historically Black college.
As president, she said she is keen to ensure the college continues to graduate young women with a well-rounded education who can compete in an evolving job market.
“When our students have graduated and met alumni, they are so confident in their expertise and their skills and their jobs, so they have that belongingness that we need to make sure we maintain,” Howard said during an interview at Sisters Chapel.
Prior to accepting the role at Spelman, she was the first woman to serve as dean of the College of Engineering at Ohio State University. Personally though, she said she considers herself to be a technologist that centers her innovation on humanity.
“I worry that we don’t have a human central perspective about [technology.] So how do we ensure that we’re training the next generation of students that are in the rooms making the decisions and asking the questions about technologies that especially disadvantage women and disadvantage Black people,” she said.
Victoria Quarterman graduated in 1998 from Spelman, where both her daughters now attend. She said she is confident her daughters will get a great education at her alma mater, in part because of the genuine care the faculty and administration have for students.
Last week, at her second Spelman drop off for her younger daughter, Quarterman expressed excitement over Howard’s appointment.
“We haven’t had an engineer or anyone on that side of innovation at Spelman ever. So I think she’s going to take us forward,” Quarterman said.
In the years since she graduated, the HR professional, who lives in Gwinnett County, said she has seen how the college has evolved and is hopeful the new president can continue that growth.
“I had a niece who graduated from here a year ago, and some of the opportunities and resources that she was able to utilize, we didn’t necessarily have. … So I’m excited about that for sure,” she said.
Howard touted the college’s robust internship program for students interested in government, corporate, and nonprofit work.
“Our relationships with these organizations are the conduit to make sure that pipeline continues and expands as jobs shift and change. We will continue those relationships and build new ones,” Howard said.
Andrea Morgan, a 1997 graduate, said she’s been talking to her daughter about her own time at Spelman since the day she was born.
“I told her about how nurturing of a learning environment, the connection that you have with your professors is second to none,” she said. “The sisterhood that you make on Spelman’s campus extends well beyond the gate. Everyone who’s important to me in my life, my best friends, my kids’ godparents, all came from the relationships that I had here at Spelman.”
Although she considers Spelman to be the best decision she ever made, Morgan said it was important for her daughter to make her own decision about which college to attend.
“I am very optimistic that she’s going to have a great experience,” she said. “It’s not going to be perfect. I think sometimes as parents we have that nostalgia in mind, we reflect on the good times but there were bad times, too. But all of those are part of your journey and I hope she embraces that journey fully.”
With degrees in chemistry from Spelman and chemical engineering from Georgia Tech, Morgan is a scientist herself and believes this is the right time for Spelman to have someone with Howard’s background leading the college.
“I think she is going to strike that right balance while still continuing to nurture the liberal arts side — because we are a liberal arts institution — but her skill set, I think, is going to help elevate both sides of campus and take us into the future,” Morgan said.
Howard said she believes her different experiences working in higher education, consulting with Fortune 500 companies, and working in the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory have prepared her to lead Spelman. For more than a decade at NASA, she worked on advanced Mars rover movement determining how to incorporate robotic autonomy so the next generation of Mars rovers can more easily traverse challenging terrain.
“What that required me to do, which I’m bringing here, is how do you think about getting to a future goal when there are no rules, there are no steps, there’s no blueprint. You have to figure it out as you go,” Howard said.
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