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As New Year resolutions are in effect for most people, Spelman College has planned to develop a plan to improve its endowment to over $1 billion in the next five years. 

Senior consultant at Coxe Curry and Associates and Spelman’s board chair, Lovette Russell, will spearhead the lofty goal.

“Right now, we are the number one HBCU in the country – and really high as a liberal arts college also – but we want to be better,” Russell said.  “I would love to be just the number one liberal arts college, not necessarily number one for all of the HBCUs,” 

With most predominantly white institutions (PWI) already hitting the billion-dollar mark, Spelman is now averaging $500 million, making them halfway to their goal. 

“If you look at colleges and universities as a whole – predominantly white ones – their endowments easily start at $1 billion, which you can easily start need line scholarships,” Russell said. 

With Harvard reporting over $50 billion, Yale at $41 billion and UGA at $1.4 billion at the end of the 2022 fiscal year, Historically Black Colleges and Universities are over 70 percent smaller than PWIs. The 107 schools combined make up less than 11 percent of the Ivy League’s endowment. 

)Russell is often approached by applicants who were accepted to Spelman but could not enroll due to needing to be able to pay out of pocket. She says that she wants to give more scholarships to deserving students but the limited funds the school has access to prevents that from happening. 

To achieve this goal, Russell is working with Spelman’s president, Dr. Helene Gayle, and the board of trustees to create a strategic plan. They were joined at the hip after entering her new position. 

“I think she is the yin to my yang and we complement each other extremely well,” Russell said. “She brings this depth of knowledge and I know she will take Spelman to the next step where we need to be and we are in sync with wanting to get the endowment to $1 billion.”

Russell has no intention for Spelman to lose its rankings on her watch. 

“We’ve been at number one for over a decade and I don’t want to slip to number two,” Russell said. “I would love to think that during my chairmanship, we see some significant movement in what Spelman College is — who we are and what we become.” 

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Morris Brown College (MBC) ended the fall semester with a $3 million grant from the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation (AMBFF) to help launch its hospitality program and begin its partnership to build a hotel on campus. 

The grant will help develop the school’s Hospitality Certification Program, which includes a partnership with Hilton Hotels to help with the construction of the facility.

The on-campus hotel will be equipped with classrooms and education training spaces to help the students gain the skills needed for work, connect them to job opportunities and help address the labor shortage in the hospitality industry.

The grant is the largest awarded to the Historically Black college in the last 20 years.

The grant is part of the Blank Family Foundation’s Youth Development portfolio which helps create alternative pathways to economic mobility for young people who may face challenges with transportation, childcare or inconvenient work schedules.

The program is one of AMBFF’s five new giving areas that will help find new ways to improve economic mobility for young people through learning opportunities. 

“One of the ways we can support young people in achieving economic mobility is by contributing to employer-focused efforts that strengthen the career pipeline between young people and engaged employers,” said Daniel Shoy, managing director of the Youth Development and Atlanta’s Westside for AMBFF.

With the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projecting that the hospitality industry will provide almost two million jobs by 2031, the grant will help MBC’s students get immediate job opportunities in this thriving business.

“We anticipate Morris Brown becoming a prominent source of diverse talent for careers in hospitality and organizational leadership,” said Dr. Kevin James, president of MBC.

James said that the support from AMBFF will make MBC one of the premier institutions in the nation for Black and Brown individuals to acquire expertise in hospitality, particularly in managing restaurants and hotels. 

Morris Brown will begin developing its Hospitality Certificate program with an online platform beginning next year, with the first cohort expected to enroll in the fall 2024 semester. 

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Last week, an almost capacity crowd gathered at Clark Atlanta University to watch a screening of Ambassador Andrew Young’s documentary, “The Color of Money,” as part of Operation HOPE’s HOPE Global Forums’ Salon Series. 

Young was in attendance along with John Hope Bryant, founder, chairman and CEO of Operation HOPE. After the screening, they spoke about the work being done by the non-profit, which is continuing King’s mission of racial and financial equity for all Americans. 

The documentary film focuses on Dr. Martin Luther King launching the Poor People’s Campaign during the Civil Rights Movement to gain economic justice and alleviate poverty for all people, regardless of race.

Young introduced the work done by Atlanta-based nonprofit Operation HOPE, continuing King’s mission by opening their financial literacy program called HOPE Inside. It helps clients learn how to increase their credit scores, assists them with mortgage applications, and provides small business training. 

During the panel discussion, Young and Bryant’s long-time friendship was displayed as they bantered about creating the documentary, Young’s relationship with King and the impact HOPE Inside and its goal of closing in on the wealth gap among lower-class individuals. 

Since 1994, HOPE Inside has opened over 200 locations in some of the largest bank branches like Truist, Bank of America and  Wells Fargo. Over 4 million clients have benefited from HOPE Inside’s resources, such as money management coaching, financial disaster preparation and recovery, and teaching young people the importance of financial literacy. 

“Making the Case for Optimism” was the theme for this year’s Operation HOPE’s HOPE Global Forums, a gathering of thought leaders focused on financial inclusion for people facing financial burdens. 

Click here to learn more about HOPE Inside or other Operation HOPE programs. 

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Life has been a whirlwind for Agnes Scott student Madison Jennings since she heard she is bound for the United Kingdom to be a part of the Rhodes Scholars program. 

Jennings and 31 other students from across the country will be in the postgraduate program at Oxford next year, where she plans to pursue a master’s in Public Policy and a Master of Science in Public Policy Research.

“I love keeping my head in a book but I also love being out in the community with people taking everything that I’ve learned and applying it to – using that wisdom – that information then brings it out to the people I know,” Jennings said. 

Jennings, a Savannah native, is part of the first generation of her family to go to college. 

She and UGA student Mariah Cady were selected from over 2,500 applicants to participate in this three-year fellowship with other notable recipients like former President Bill Clinton, news correspondent George Stephaopolus, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg and U.S. Senator Corey Booker (D- NJ). 

“I want to have a positive change in the world but also in my local community, always remembering Georgia and carrying that out to the world,” Jennings said. 

She was already making a worldly impact when she studied abroad in Jordan and worked on a project with the Carter Center in Liberia.

“Agnes Scott has a unique focus on global learning so being able to study abroad changed the direction of my academic endeavors like studying abroad in Jordan and picking up a focus on women’s rights in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region has been very transformative,” Jennings said.

Jennings also said that she wants to put an international spotlight on the Gullah culture she grew up around while living on the Georgia coast.

“The Gullah people were once enslaved Africans on the coasts of Georgia, Florida, South and North Carolina and have been able to preserve their unique heritage because a lot of the enslavers would be further inland so they were able to cultivate their own identity,” Jennings said. 

Jennings hopes that her success will encourage more Black Americans to apply to the program. Although the recognition has been awarded to international students since 1903, it wasn’t until 1979 that an African American female became a Rhodes Scholar. 

As a Black woman, Jennings thinks being a member of this prominent list of fellows is groundbreaking, and she is now a part of that legacy. She also feels that Black women have something to bring to the program, no matter their interests.

“I’m always reminded of this quote from Toni Cade Bambara, ‘revolution begins in the self and then it works out into the community,’ so I believe in change. I believe in progress and that’s something that I want people to know about me,” Jennings said.

In addition to Black women, she also wants to expose Black girls to this opportunity and not be afraid to reach for their dreams. 

“Have the audacity to go for it. You have to have the audacity to know that what you bring to the world is worth it and that it will create a positive impact. Keep shooting all the shots you can even when there are none, just keep going,” Jennings said. 

Jennings graduates from Agnes Scott next semester and will begin her studies with the Rhodes Scholars program at Oxford University next fall.

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The Savannah College of Art and Design’s (SCAD) Atlanta campus opened its new casting office in September to help students get unique, industry-ready opportunities in professional and student film, TV and digital shows.

Alpha Tyler is an acting professor and Casting Director for the new office at SCAD Atlanta. She describes casting as a human resource with producers and directors as their clients. The clients come to them to look for someone to fill a role in their next film or show. The office staff will recruit new talent and hold auditions and interviews and select the best possible candidates for the filmmaker.

“We also try to think outside the box because they may have one idea – which is wonderful – and we go with it, but our job is to give them a nice variety so that they are exposed to talent they may not have considered before,” Tyler said. “Whether that means changing gender or looking for a different ethnicity that they may not have considered.”

With casting being a not-so-glamorous facet of the filmmaking process, SCAD Atlanta now offers a Minor in Casting, which provides hands-on training that will prepare them to step into the world of professional casting. This new field of study is an opportunity for students who don’t intend on pursuing casting as a career but want to understand the ins and outs of what it takes to be booked on a project.

“[SCAD] is the only school that provides this minor,” said Andra Reeve-Rabb, Dean of the School of Film and Acting at SCAD. “We are training our students professionally to cast all those shows you all love binge-watching.”

When casting a role that does not have a physical description of what the character is supposed to look like, Tyler tries to cast people of color to reflect a better image of the world.

“Whether it’s someone who was within the LGBTQ+ community or someone who is otherable, we want to open it up to anyone right for the role and that’s what comes first if the particular actor is right for the role,” Tyler said.

Tyler is training interns throughout the casting process with tasks like creating headshots, resumes and holding auditions to help them become familiar with the actors in order to find the right parts for them.

“This is a great opportunity for them to be able to see how the process works and it demystifies the process and lowers their anxiety because they understand what it’s like to look at actors from the other side of the table and not feel isolated and worry about making mistakes while auditioning but to understand where those decisions come from,” Tyler said.

Located in the school’s new FORTY-FIVE complex, the office is making significant progress towards the end of its first quarter.

The complex is an addition to the Midtown campus’s major rollout of new resources, helping students prepare to work on the cutting-edge technology already used on sets immediately after graduation.

“The fact that we have an 11-acre backlot in Savannah, our second LED volume, the next logical step was to continue expanding our programs and studies in Atlanta,” Reeve-Rabb said.

“We have a massive acting program in Savannah, and yet the heart of everything as we know happens in Atlanta, Reeve-Rabb said. “So we thought, “What better time to open up a second acting program in Atlanta?””

“We’re the only university in Georgia that has every single aspect of filmmaking,” Reeve-Rabb said. “There’s not one thing we don’t teach from casting, acting, sound design, visual effects; everything is covered. Whatever it is, we have it.”

Reeve-Rabb also thinks the office is a great opportunity for all their students as they continue to think about what is new and next in creative spaces.

“We [at SCAD] are leading the way and continue to lead the way in what’s next and answer the call of what is happening in all aspects of the industry and making sure we are doing right by our students by putting out these incredibly talented and prepared professional, young artists,” Reeve-Rabb said.

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