Spelman Coeds Win AT&T Mobile Campus Challenge, Besting MIT & Harvard

Sisters Are Getting Their Tech On!

Jonecia Keels and Jazmine Miller of Spelman College have won the 2010 AT&T Big Mobile on Campus Challenge^SM with their next generation e-learning mobile application, HBCU Buddy.

HBCU Buddy is a mobile application created to educate and inform users, including both prospective and current college students, about Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) across the United States. It is a fully-fledged mobile service application that provides detailed information about HBCU's and integrates all facets of college life.

The application opens with a directory profiling each HBCU with information on academics, admissions, research, student life, alumni, among other details. After selecting a school, students can navigate through the school – literally – by accessing virtual tours of buildings, on-campus videos, and local GPS and directions.

HBCU Buddy can also provide students with customizable social networking features to connect with each other, their school and community. The application connects to social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, and integrates tools such as chat and calendar to help students stay informed. Students can use the application to follow the latest on school club and campus happenings, local events, hot spots around the community, and more.

Jonecia Keels and Jazmine Miller were recognized and awarded a $10,000 scholarship (divided between them) and a mobile device of their choice each at the Higher Ed Board of Advisors Meeting in Miami, Florida, on October 7, 2010.

The President has been keen to foster stronger STEM education for all American students (science, tech, engineering and math) because the jobs of the future will require strong skills in these disciplines.

Source: Jack & Jill Politics

Acclaimed Cosby Show Artist Varnette Honeywood, Dead at 59

By Moses X Ball

The world has just lost an incredible individual. Varnette P. Honeywood has died.

Well-known as an artist and illustrator, Varnette P. Honeywood is highly regarded for her use of color and light, patterns and textures. Her work—primarily paintings, collages, and prints—has received wide exposure in galleries and individual and group shows, as well as in books and on television.

A graduate of Spelman College and member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Honeywood is famous for her upbeat depictions of black family life.

Carrying on the tradition of genre painting, a black artistic movement that followed in the wake of the Harlem Renaissance, her work portrays blacks in a range of settings, going about various activities, always stressing the colorful and creative aspects of African-American culture.

Her work tells stories and communicates ideas and thoughts. Much of Honeywood's art concerns the history of black Americans, their sufferings and triumphs, and celebrates the strength and leadership of black women.

Her work is probably most known for appearing on Cliff and Claire Huxtable's wall on The Cosby Show. I met Varnette back in the early 90's at the [Los Angeles] Crenshaw Plaza's yearly African American Fine Art Exhibition.

This was back when the exhibition featured some of the most well respected artists we have, from Jacob Lawrence, to Samella Lewis, Elizabeth Cattlett and John Biggers.

Varnette stuck out for me because she was so open about her process and full of so much advice for a young annoying kid who loved to draw pictures. I would go back every year (until leaving for college) and always check in with her, showing her new work and always learning something new from her practical wisdom.

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Freaknic Remembered - From Harmless Morehouse & Spelman Picnic To Complete Debauchery

Freaknic. Mention the name of the famous-some would say infamous-Atlanta spring break festival to those who attended, and you get a myriad of responses. Some remember the early years of the 1980s, when students from HBCUs from throughout the Southeast could meet and fellowship during a four-day picnic. Others remember the ugliness that plagued the later years, when the city of Atlanta did all it could to discourage the festival.

Either way, Sharon Toomer, one of the Freaknic founders, has seen it all.

"It all started back in 1982 as a way for DC students in the AUC [Atlanta University Center] to have a picnic for spring break," said Sharon Toomer, who was a Spelman College student and member of the DC Metro Club at the time.

"A lot of us couldn't afford to go back home to DC, so we decided to have a picnic in Atlanta."

And thus began the first Freaknic, which was held at Atlanta's Piedmont Park, with about fifty students attending from the historically black AUC, comprised of Morehouse College, Spelman College, Morris Brown College and what is now known as Clark Atlanta University.

Freaknic 2010 Fails To Live Up To The Hype!

The name Freaknic was suggested by a DC Metro club member as a way to tie into the popular 1980s term "freak," which was being used in hit songs like Funkadelic's "(Not Just) Knee Deep (Freak of the Week)" and Chic's disco hit, "Le Freak." Soon, students from HBCU schools as far flung as Tuskegee University in Alabama to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania were making their way to Atlanta to celebrate spring break.

And Freaknic filled a niche in the market, as most spring break destinations like Panama Beach, Daytona Beach, and Cancun, Mexico, were geared toward white college students. There wasn't an exclusive place for African-American students to blow off a bit of steam before returning to the rigors of school.

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Black Colleges Struggle For Relevancy As Opportunities, Money Change The Game

Historically black colleges and universities, like many other schools, are struggling with both fewer resources and a growing demand from students for financial aid.

But the institutions known as HBCUs have another problem that some leaders contend is theirs alone: Many African-American students are finding their needs met elsewhere.

In 1977, 35 percent of all bachelor’s degrees awarded to black students were from historically black colleges. By 2002, the share was down to 22 percent, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, even though the number of African-American students earning bachelor’s degrees from historically black colleges actually grew.

In the days of segregation, African-American students had limited options. Now, with a wide range of choices, only 13 percent of African-American college students are enrolled in HBCUs.

Kristin Mason, a junior English major at Atlanta’s Spelman College, is one. Mason, who is from Colorado, chose Spelman, she said, because of the “sense of belonging” she felt surrounded by smart black women.

Morehouse College senior Shaun Harris, a business major from Illinois, said he was “looking for brotherhood” at the Atlanta men’s school whose alumni include the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

But Mark Gamble of Columbus said he “embraced the diversity” at Georgia State University, where about 60 percent of the students are white, 26 percent African-American, and the rest are other ethnicities or identify themselves as multiracial.

“I like being around whites, blacks, Asians and all the other minorities,” said Gamble, a sophomore film major.

Georgia State freshman Mercedes Callaway of Atlanta said she chose the state research university over Spelman, a private women’s HBCU, because of money. A friend at Spelman is “getting a good education,” said Callaway, who is on the HOPE scholarship. “But she’s in debt to pay for school.”

HBCUs are losing students to a range of institutions, said William “Sonny” Walker, who graduated from a historically black college in Arkansas and has served on the boards of three others, including, currently, Atlanta’s Morris Brown College.

“Many of the students who came from middle- and upper-income families, whose parents could afford to pay tuition, are going to Harvard, are going to Georgia, are going to Georgia Tech, are going to Vanderbilt,” Walker said.

Many historically black schools have lower endowments than other colleges, making less money available for scholarships, school officials say. But those institutions play an important role, said Leonard L. Haynes, executive director of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

At historically black institutions, he said, students of color can “get an education, get nurturing, get to mature and get to be good citizens after they graduate” in an environment that celebrates their cultures. “If they didn’t exist today, they would have to be created,” Haynes said.



The current economic climate —- which is hitting universities across the country, public and private —- is making it harder to pay the bills, exacerbating problems both for families of students and for the schools themselves, officials of local colleges say.

Clark Atlanta University, Morehouse and Spelman all revealed this month that they are cutting back on expenses.

Clark Atlanta President Carlton E. Brown said 70 faculty members and 30 other staffers were being laid off because of an “enrollment emergency” after years of declining numbers. At least 200 students recently dropped out or transferred to state colleges because they could no longer afford Clark Atlanta, Brown said.

Morehouse officials confirmed that they had not renewed the contracts of about 25 adjunct professors, about a third of the school’s part-time instructors.

And Spelman officials announced that they are eliminating 35 positions, 23 of them staffed, phasing out the college’s department of education and discontinuing some programs.

Spelman, whose donors include Bill Cosby and Oprah Winfrey, is in high demand among black women, said its president, Beverly Tatum.

“Students want to go to Spelman,” she said. “The issue is whether they can afford to go to Spelman.”

Morris Brown has struggled for years. It faces a Feb. 17 deadline to pay the remaining $214,000 of past-due water bills to the city of Atlanta. The college lost its accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools in 2002, largely because of financial instability.

The Morris Brown board and its president, Stanley Pritchett, say they are looking at specialty programs and projects that might save the school, which, he said, would probably not be able to continue as a traditional liberal arts college.

Despite their troubles, historically black colleges and universities have fierce defenders.

“We need to find a way to preserve these institutions,” said state Sen. Emanuel Jones (D-Decatur), chairman of the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus. “Our universities have struggled to survive just as we as a people have struggled to survive.”

Historically black colleges “speak to the legacy of our forefathers,” he said.

Jones, whose degrees are from the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University, packed his oldest child off to college this fall.

He’s a freshman at Johns Hopkins University.

ATLANTA’S HBCUs

Clark Atlanta University Research university Enrollment: 3,900 Founded: 1988, merging Clark College and Atlanta University

Morehouse College Traditional men’s college Enrollment: 2,800 Founded: 1887 as Augusta Institute

Morris Brown College Liberal arts college Enrollment: About 200 Founded: 1881

Spelman College Traditional women’s college Enrollment: 2,200 Founded: 1881

By Gayle White, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

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