Spel-Bounding: All-Female Spelman College Ranks No. 2 in Sending Black Graduates On to Ph.D.s in Science and Math: Coming in second usually isn’t a big deal. But, when it is a tiny, historically Black women’s college placing No. 2 to a fellow HBCU with a student body just more than three times its size in a national science- and math-related survey, it seems that it is something to celebrate.
Atlanta’s Spelman College, an all-female liberal arts college with a student body of about 2,200, sent 150 Black students on to Ph.D. degrees in the traditionally male disciplines of science and engineering from 1997 to 2006, according to a survey released by the National Science Foundation. That’s more than any other undergraduate program in the country besides the considerably larger, coed Howard University. Howard, which has about 7,000 undergraduates, sent 224 on to advanced degrees.
