Women Lead the Way: Black Women Shape Academia

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By Lois Elfman

African American women are helping to shape academia — as professors, researchers, deans, and college and university presidents. Although they comprise fewer than 5% of individuals in the U.S. who hold doctorates, Black women are undaunted in building a presence. Those in leadership positions are working on increasing access and opportunities for future generations. 

“I am the first Black president of Harford Community College,” said Dr. Theresa B. Felder about her position at the Bel Air, Md., school. “I feel the weight of that responsibility to be successful and to make the impact on the community that I came here saying I intended to make. I realize there were strong Black women [who] faced obstacles and paved the way for me to be in this spot, and I want to do the same for others. It’s satisfying, but it’s also a weight I feel every day. Being the first in anything carries responsibility.”

Finding and Creating Opportunity

Mentorship was important to Felder’s career. “Mentors found me,” said Felder. “In high school, I had teachers and counselors [who] said, ‘You’re smart, you should go to college’ … Later in life, it was other professional women who encouraged me, who talked about my potential to see beyond what I was seeing and think beyond the job I was doing at the time. It was a president of a community college [who] said, ‘You could be a president and I will help you.’”

As a first-generation college graduate, a career in academia was not something Felder could fathom. Her undergraduate degree is in accounting and she worked in corporate accounting before starting a consulting business. She was living in Ohio and a community college there was one of her clients. Having gone to a four-year university, she didn’t know much about community colleges at the time. However, she quickly learned what was important: “As I got to know the mission and the fact that community colleges are open-access institutions, I really related,” said Felder. “I saw myself in every one of those students.”

She found she loved the work of community colleges, and returned to graduate school in her 40s, eventually earning a master’s degree in administration and a doctorate in higher education administration. While in graduate school, she began working at Clark State Community College in Springfield, Ohio, spending 17 years there and rising to the position of senior vice president, student success.

For many students, the major obstacle to college completion isn’t academics; it’s life challenges, such as finances, transportation, food insecurity, childcare, and family demands. Felder has worked to address student needs in a holistic way. With the presidential seed planted, she acknowledged her desire to lead an institution and have a positive impact on not only the students, but also the community. After participating in professional development programs, including the Aspen Rising Presidents Fellowship, Felder applied for the position at Harford and was hired.

New York City native Dr. Renée T. White, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at the New School, credits the mentorship of one of her professors at Brown University with directing her toward graduate school and a doctoral program in sociology at Yale University. 

Early in White’s doctoral studies, a professor questioned whether she was doing her own writing because the quality was excellent. She became hyper-vigilant about making sure her work was as perfect as possible.

“I was at Yale at a time when there were some incredibly interesting classmates in African American studies, history, political science, and American studies, and we created our own community of Black scholars,” White said. “One of my friends, Lewis Gordon, and I started a Black graduate student network. We had a dissertation support writing group where we wanted to share information with each other about navigating the formal process of the university but also informally how you get through.”

After building a career as a professor, researcher, and writer, White moved into administration and became dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Simmons College (now University).

“I’ve always been active in leadership roles in academic programs — leading a women’s studies program or a Black studies program,” White said. “I saw it as an opportunity to tap into the things I really cared about in higher ed and do things on a larger scale that would have an impact with students, and be able to advance things that I thought were really important for faculty.”

Dr. Dara N. Byrne’s direction didn’t truly come into focus until she went to Howard University, an HBCU institution in Washington, D.C., for her doctoral studies. She was born in Guyana, and her family moved to Trinidad and then Canada, where Byrne attended university for her bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Before Howard, she had never had a Black professor; being at a historically Black university intensified her passion for education.

After completing her Ph.D., Byrne came to NYC for a Rockefeller Foundation residency fellowship at the Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center. From there, she was hired for a faculty position at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, a City University of NewYork (CUNY) institution, where she remained for almost 20 years, taking on administrative duties as her career progressed.

In 2022, Byrne became dean of Macaulay Honors College at CUNY, one of the top ranked public honors colleges in the country. It is a highly selective college — fewer than 10% of applicants are accepted — where students receive financial and academic support so they can fully achieve their potential. Although Byrne, a professor of rhetoric and intercultural communication, misses being in the classroom, she thrives on developing leaders who have a desire to live and work in New York.

Black excellence in New York

In addition to the honors curriculum that students take at Macaulay, they also enroll at one of the eight four-year colleges in the CUNY system. Graduates receive degrees from both Macaulay and the college of their choice.

“It is exciting and challenging to retain high-achieving students in New York,” said Byrne, noting that these students could go to elite institutions such as Harvard or Stanford if they are willing to incur the expense (student loans) and might never come back to New York.

“That is one heck of a responsibility: to think about what it means to leverage the best of what CUNY has to offer to provide — not just an academic experience for these kinds of students but a community for them where they learn to collaborate with each other, challenge each other, build things together, and also think about how you use that kind of talent and momentum to serve the city,” said Byrne. “I think a lot about what it means to rely on taxpayers’ dollars to do this work, so I’m not just interested in educating really smart students; I’m interested in how to create New Yorkers [who] can lead and shape New York.”

Last year’s graduating class had an average grade point average of 3.8. Byrne is working on capacity-building for all aspects of Macaulay, which must be done in a zero revenue environment: The college does not charge tuition and doesn’t collect fees. There is no working capital, so Byrne must find public and private partners who align with the work. She connects with people and entities that want to be part of educating New Yorkers with a long-term commitment to New York.

“That has brought up a lot of my creativity and innovation,” Byrne said. “What I have been finding is that my strength as somebody who really understands CUNY, has worked in various contexts where you can only get things done in partnerships with a lot of people, is a real asset in a zero revenue environment where we go far because of gifts … we’re thoughtful about what we’re doing and how to make a little have a big impact for these students.”

Queens native Dr. Belinda S. Miles has served as president of SUNY Westchester Community College (WCC) since 2015. Herself a graduate of York College in Queens, a senior college in the CUNY system, she understands the impact an open access institution can have for people seeking entry into higher education. As an undergraduate, she was a Pell Grant recipient and was eligible for work-study. Her job was as a tutor in the writing lab, which helped her understand the power of education, as well as how an institution can commit resources to serving its students — a concept that drives her to this day.

Over the past decade, WCC has received numerous grants to further educational opportunities. A landmark event was in October 2018, when WCC received the largest federal grant in school history — $2.7 million over five years — through the U.S. Department of Education’s Developing Hispanic-Serving Institutions program. It went to WCC’s Caminos Exito (Pathways to Success) and funded increased academic support, counseling, and advising for all students.

“Fewer than 5% of our courses had an online presence pre-pandemic,” said Miles. “Having everything online for a while gave us a chance, as we were building back, to think about how we could build back smarter … We had a major opportunity to change our scheduling model in very significant ways. We were learning a lot, through our student success and completion agenda, about where students were stuck and what institutional opportunities there were to help facilitate their success.”

She keeps a constant eye on innovation: Other milestones of Miles’ presidency at WCC have included founding an honors college and a center for cybersecurity, expansion of undergraduate research, internships, and a project-based curriculum, as well as collaboration with regional industry partners. A key component of success is building strong networks to support the work of the college.

“Education is an intervention that makes a difference in individuals’ lives and their families,” Miles noted. “I continue to look down the road and around the corner to see what’s next. Feeling confident in adapting to change and sometimes facilitating change is part of what I do.”

Toward the Future

By the end of Byrne’s first year at Macaulay, she was able to launch a funded transfer system that enables the college to accept transfer students from CUNY’s seven community colleges. These transfers now join students admitted as freshmen.

Byrne knows her value as an academic leader, which serves as a guide for Black women aspiring to the academy or trying to navigate it. “Go where you’re loved,” she said. “Students get to see through me all of the places where I am welcomed.”

Miles was hooked on mentoring back in graduate school, when she made sure students who may have been struggling received needed support and encouragement. Throughout her career, she has made time for women and men who seek her advice.

“It’s natural for me to mentor,” Miles said. “I teach in a couple of leadership institutes, future presidents’ institutes, like AACC (American Association of Community Colleges). I teach leadership in the Kansas State University doctoral program (online). I really enjoy working with those who are aspiring to hone their craft. Nine of my former direct reports (deans and/or vice presidents) became community college presidents (six female, three male).

“At this point, I mentor new presidents or sitting presidents. If there’s a challenge, we try to think about how to move through it.”

White hasn’t been in the classroom in a while, so she hasn’t had the opportunity to spot talent as her professor spotted her, but she gladly serves as an informational resource for students.

“Where I’ve done the bulk of my mentoring has been with folks who are currently academics and those who are moving into administrative roles,” said White. When attending a conference or event, she will sit down with people and talk about things such as developing a tenure portfolio.

“Getting folks into graduate programs is important, making sure they graduate, and then also making sure that academics stay and can actually thrive and are being treated fairly,” White said. “I’ve learned a lot about how these processes look at different types of institutions, so I can pass that on.”

White started a group for women-identified academic leaders (of all ethnicities), such as program heads, deans, and provosts. In the aftermath of the stark impact of the pandemic, ongoing check-ins remain uplifting. Just the “how are you” question is meaningful.

“It opened up this incredibly powerful, heartfelt conversation; people were really vulnerable and honest about things they were going through,” White said. “I’ve continued to convene that group. I’ve also pulled out subsets of that group — a group of Black women leaders — at various moments when things have been really hard in the world.”

When she was provost at Wheaton College (2016–2021), White participated in a New England Humanities Consortium that launched a faculty of color mentoring program. It included training about how to mentor, which remains valuable.

“I continue to try and be a resource, to offer support, to offer calm about the difficulties of being a leader and being a Black woman leader,” White said. “[I ask] what can I do to make it a little less onerous or provide a space where there are things you can experience a little differently than what I experienced.”

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