June 21 : Lauren Proby, C'2025, named 2022 White House HBCU Scholar

Lauren Proby, C'2025, has been named a 2022 White House HBCU Scholar by The White House Initiative on Educational Equity, Excellence and Economic Development through Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

An English major on the pre-law track from just outside Chicago, Illinois, Proby has a proven record of community service and advocacy that helped earn her the HBCU Scholar distinction. Also recognized as a 2021 Bank of America Student Leader, she currently works as the Disability Justice Lead for Youth Activism Project. In March 2021, Proby was appointed by the Governor of Illinois to represent students with disabilities on the Illinois State Advisory Council on the Education of Children with Disabilities.

At Spelman, Proby is a member of the Ethel Waddell Githii Honors Program and the Alpha Lambda Delta Honor Society. She also serves as secretary of the American Sign Language Club and, in March, had the opportunity to travel to Washington, D.C. via the Spelman on the Hill program to engage with Spelman alumnae and Congressional officials on Capitol Hill and to present an advocacy topic to members of Congress.

Through the 2022-2023 academic school year, Proby and the other HBCU Scholars will have an opportunity to work on issues specifically related to the HBCU community and participate in national and regional events with professionals from a wide range of disciplines.

As a White House HBCU Scholar, she looks forward to obtaining the resources and support to help contribute a disability-centered perspective to Spelman College.

Tenth president of Spelman College, Mary Schmidt Campbell, Ph.D., recently joined George T. French, Jr., Ph.D., president of Clark Atlanta University; and David A. Thomas, Ph.D., president of Morehouse College for an honest conversation with host Valerie Montgomery Rice, MD, FACOG, president and CEO of Morehouse School of Medicine, about the various challenges the Atlanta University Center institutions faced, navigated, and survived amid the global coronavirus pandemic.

The episode, titled Leadership Beyond The Pandemic: Challenges And Opportunities, allowed the leader of each institution to share his or her take on where the schools stand following this unforeseen happening.

“We all had a unified set of protocols and practices, and we put them into place; we had great compliance from our community, and we kept our infection rates low, and we declared success,” said Dr. Campbell. “…Something very profound had happened to our students and to our workforce, and it certainly took Spelman some time to understand the depth of the change – and that was we had had a community of people who had been in isolation.”

Dr. Campbell also spoke to how “dynamic and impactful” the Spring 2022 semester was for the community following the social isolation of the pandemic’s early days.

The semester also marked the safe, welcomed return of in-person events that brought together the Spelman community, stakeholders, and supporters to celebrate the College’s enduring fortitude – a noted pride point for Dr. Campbell in her final days on campus.

To listen to the full podcast episode, click here.

Purdue University Global has hired Tiffany Townsend, Ph.D., C'93, as vice president of organizational culture and chief diversity officer. She previously held dual positions of chief diversity officer and associate professor of psychological sciences since 2019 at Augusta University.

In this newly-created position, Dr. Townsend will guide and implement diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives at both the institutional and department levels, while supporting and building systems of inclusion through policies, procedures, practices, customs and leadership. In addition, she will foster collaborative relationships within the Purdue University system to align strategies and initiatives.

As a clinician and scholar, Dr. Townsend has worked for more than two decades to ensure that all individuals, regardless of ethnicity, sex or socio-economic status, have access to the knowledge and resources necessary to facilitate healthy functioning and overall wellbeing.

Spelman College Professor of Economics Suneye Rae Holmes was recently featured on Yahoo Finance.

Following the momentous announcement by the Biden Administration earlier this month that White House interns will now be paid for their work, Holmes shared her thoughts on the historic change.

“This is an important signal from the White House in light of current events in the broader American labor movement,” said Holmes. "For decades, White House and other federal internships have been some of the most prestigious and sought after internships, despite their being unpaid and quite rigorous."

Holmes, C’2004, has been a professor at Spelman since the fall of 2018. Prior to her time as Spelman College faculty, she earned a master’s in applied economics from the Johns Hopkins University, with a concentration in health economics. She has also worked on Wall Street and spent many years working as a government statistician before bringing her skills and knowledge to academia.