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USACollegeChat Podcast


May 14, 2015

Colleges in the Southeast Region—Part II For show notes including links to all the colleges we mention, visit http://nycollegechat.org/30 In our last episode, we continued our virtual tour of colleges by focusing in on the six states in the Southern Southeast region: Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina. We looked at public universities—both the flagship state public universities and other public universities in those states. In this episode, we will continue our look into the Southern Southeast states by switching our focus to private colleges and universities. Again, we want to make it clear that no college has asked us or paid us anything to name it. These are entirely our own choices. Some of the colleges we will spotlight in this episode will require that your child have very good high school grades and college admission test scores to get in. Others will be a bit easier, especially if a college is looking for out-of-state students to enhance its student body’s geographic diversity. Two general notes: First, when we talk about the colleges and universities in this episode, we are going to be talking about the main campus—that is, the one that most people associate with that institution—in those cases where an institution has more than one campus. Second, because enrollment figures are not necessarily comparable as reported by various colleges, you should use the figures we provide here just as an approximation of the actual campus enrollment, but one that is good enough to help you understand whether the student body is the right size for your child—roughly, small, medium, or really huge. 1. Private Colleges and Universities The Southern Southeast states have a wide array of private higher education institutions—from small Bible colleges to small liberal arts colleges to larger universities. Let’s start with two private universities that most people have long considered two of the best in the South and that also enjoy a great national reputation: Emory University and Tulane University. Your child would need very good high school grades and college admission test scores to be admitted to either one. Emory is located in Atlanta, Georgia, an impressive Southern city, which is the home of quite a few higher education institutions, both public and private. Emory is made up of nine undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools and colleges and offers undergraduates a chance to study the liberal arts and sciences, business, or nursing. It serves about 8,000 undergraduates and about 7,000 graduate and professional students. Emory has a unique program at its Oxford College, the site of the original Emory campus before it was moved to Atlanta. Oxford College now offers the first two years of a liberal arts college program on its smaller, residential campus east of Atlanta. Oxford “concentrates on the intellectual, social, and developmental needs of first- and second-year students. Oxford faculty are hired and promoted on the quality of their teaching and community service. Classes are intimate, with much discussion and interaction.” (Text taken from the website) After finishing the two years at Oxford, students can join any of the undergraduate schools on Emory’s Atlanta campus. What an interesting transition this is to life on a big urban university campus. Founded by Georgia Methodists, Emory also has an excellent graduate school of theology. Turning to New Orleans, one of the true gems of the South, let’s look at Tulane. Tulane has five undergraduate schools—the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, the School of Science and Engineering, the School of Architecture, the A.B. Freeman School of Business, and the School of Liberal Arts—plus graduate and professional schools for law, medicine, and social work. Tulane enrolls about 8,000 undergraduates and about 5,000 graduate and professional students, drawn nationally and internationally. It also has something that I know Marie is going to love—the Newcomb College Institute, named for the original H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College, which opened as the women’s college of Tulane in 1886. With its programming on women’s issues available to the whole university community, the Institute has the following mission: “To cultivate lifelong leadership among undergraduate women; to empower women by integrating teaching, research, and community engagement; to preserve, document, produce, and disseminate knowledge about women; and to honor the memory of H. Sophie Newcomb and carry forward the work of Newcomb College by providing a woman-centered experience in a co-ed institution” (text taken from the website). And did I say it was in New Orleans? No better place to be. Let’s talk about one more private university—the University of Miami, with about 11,000 undergraduates and 5,000 graduate and professional students, drawn nationally and internationally. Located in suburban Coral Gables, the University of Miami has a name that sounds as though it might be public, but it is, in fact, private. It has grown in reputation over the past decade and a half during the presidency of Donna Shalala (who is resigning this year). Shalala was the former president of Hunter College here in New York City, the Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin–Madison (which we talked about in this Great Lakes episode), the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services under President Clinton, and, most importantly, my professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, in 1975. The Coral Gables Campus of the University of Miami houses two colleges and seven schools, including the Frost School of Music, one of two original schools when the University was founded in 1926. The University’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science is located in Biscayne Bay, and there is a separate Medical Campus, which includes three hospitals. Undergraduates can earn degrees in 115 bachelor’s programs. A Look at Five Interesting Choices. As we said in Episode 28, Colleges That Change Lives is a nonprofit organization that was founded after the publication of the book Colleges That Change Lives, by Loren Pope, a retired New York Times education editor. There are now 44 colleges and universities profiled in the book and on the organization’s website. Those that are included are not necessarily famous institutions, but they all care deeply about individual students and strive to make the college into a community to support students. Many of the institutions have engaging and experiential aspects to their programs—such as internships, international and intercultural programs, and service-learning projects. Most of the institutions are smaller colleges and universities that have proved to be successful at developing students both personally and academically so that they can succeed in life after their undergraduate college years. Five of the 44 institutions on the list are located in the Southern Southeast states. You should read about them in the book or on the website, because you will learn much more about them than I can tell you here. Here are the five: In Alabama: Birmingham–Southern College In Mississippi: Millsaps College In Florida: New College of Florida and Eckerd College In Georgia: Agnes Scott College New College of Florida, located in Sarasota, is an interesting choice because it was founded as a private college in 1960 and then joined the public State University System as part of the University of South Florida in 1975. In 2001, it was designated as the Honors College for the state of Florida. It enrolls just 800 students from 40 states and 15 foreign countries. Agnes Scott College, located in Decatur (right outside Atlanta), is an interesting choice because it is one of the just over 40 remaining women’s colleges in the U.S. It enrolls about 900 women, drawn from 36 states and 36 foreign countries. A liberal arts college, it offers 34 majors. Because these institutions are relatively small and thus are not particularly well known outside of their geographic region, it is my feeling that out-of-state students with a good high school record might have a decent chance of being accepted. 2. Colleges with a Special Academic Focus In episode 4 of NYCollegeChat, we talked about colleges that have a special focus, whether it is an academic focus or a focus on certain student populations or something else. In our last episode, we spotlighted Georgia Tech, with its focus on technologically based fields. Now let’s look at an institution with an arts focus, and that is Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), located in Georgia’s prettiest town—and, I would argue, the prettiest town almost anywhere. Founded relatively recently in 1978, SCAD offers more than 40 undergraduate and graduate majors. The top five majors in 2014 were animation, graphic design, illustration, fashion, and film and television (though it also offers more traditional fine arts majors, like painting, sculpture, photography, and even writing). In the general education course requirements, students take courses in the humanities and fine arts, natural sciences and mathematics, social and behavioral sciences, written and oral communication, and computer literacy. SCAD enrolls a total of about 11,000 students, drawn nationally and internationally (almost 25 percent of the student body is international). Its rolling admissions process seems quite individualized, and portfolios will be an important part of the application process for some programs. A more unusual special focus among higher education institutions is military service. In a much earlier episode of NYCollegeChat, we talked about the U.S. military service academies: the United States Naval Academy in Maryland (often referred to as Annapolis), the United States Military Academy in New York (commonly referred to as West Point), the Air Force Academy in Colorado, the United States Coast Guard Academy in Connecticut, and the United States Merchant Marine Academy in New York. But now let’s look at the Military College of South Carolina, The Citadel, which is a public college located in Charleston. Founded in 1842, The Citadel has about 2,300 undergraduates (about half from South Carolina), who make up the South Carolina Corps of Cadets, and about 1,000 students in The Citadel Graduate College, a civilian evening program, which also offers undergraduate studies. As described on its website, “The men and women in the Corps live and study under a classical military system that makes leadership and character development an essential part of the educational experience.” The Citadel offers 20 undergraduate majors—with mandatory leadership and ethics studies—in the schools of business, education, engineering, science and mathematics, and humanities and social sciences. About one-third of graduating cadets are commissioned into military service, mostly into the Army. A Look at Historically Black Colleges and Universities. In Episode 4 in Series 1 of NYCollegeChat, we talked about historically black colleges and universities (commonly referred to as HBCUs), which were established with the mission of educating African-American students solely or primarily—that is, a mission of serving students who had been excluded from many other higher education institutions because of their race. You might recall that there are just over 100 HBCUs—public and private, rural and urban, large and small (even very small), two-year and four-year and graduate schools. Many were founded in the South shortly after the Civil War, and these HBCUs share a proud history of becoming the first collegiate homes for family members of freed slaves. As we explained in our earlier episode, HBCUs today enroll students who are not black. Some people say that it has become harder for HBCUs to recruit African-American students, who are now welcome at both selective and nonselective colleges across the U.S. Nonetheless, there is still a strong sense of community among the alumni/alumnae of HBCUs and a strong sense of tradition and shared culture on HBCU campuses. As it turns out, a large number of HBCUs are located in the six Southern Southeast states—about 35 four-year HBCUs, plus the only HBCU public system, the Southern University and A & M College System in Louisiana, with campuses in Baton Rouge, Shreveport, and New Orleans. Southern University’s main campus in Baton Rouge enrolls about 6,000 undergraduates and 1,000 graduate and professional students, with another approximately 3,000 undergraduates at each of the New Orleans and Shreveport campuses. In Baton Rouge, undergraduate students can study in 34 majors across six colleges, including the College of Sciences and Agriculture and the College of Engineering and Computer Science, as befits an A & M (agricultural and mechanical) university. Also in Louisiana is Xavier University of Louisiana, the only Catholic HBCU, which offers about 3,000 undergraduate, graduate, and professional students a choice of 46 majors. Xavier was founded as a high school by Sister Katharine Drexel and her Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, a religious community dedicated to the education of African Americans and Native Americans. The college program was added in 1925. One of the most famous HBCUs is Tuskegee University, founded in Alabama in 1881 by Booker T. Washington, who was the institution’s first teacher and its head until his death in 1915. Booker T. Washington brought George Washington Carver to Tuskegee to head its agricultural studies, and it was at Tuskegee that Carver did his work on peanuts and sweet potatoes and mobile classrooms to educate farmers and more. Both Washington and Carver are buried on Tuskegee grounds. Now serving about 3,000 students in seven schools and colleges, Tuskegee is the only HBCU to award a doctoral degree in veterinary medicine (from its College of Veterinary Medicine, Nursing & Allied Health), and it is the only college campus to be designated a National Historic Site by the U.S. Congress. We find two well-known and highly respected HBCUs in Atlanta: the all-female Spelman College and the all-male Morehouse College, both founded by Baptist leaders. Spelman is a liberal arts college that offers 27 majors to just over 2,000 undergraduate women, drawn from most states (with New York as one of the top five states sending students to Spelman). It has an enviable student to faculty ratio of 10:1, meaning that students should typically be in small classes and get close attention from faculty members. Morehouse enrolls about 2,500 undergraduate men and offers 26 majors across three liberal arts and sciences academic divisions. Students are required to complete a core curriculum, which includes four courses in the humanities—one in religion, one in philosophy, one in art history, and one in music history. Morehouse has a roster of famous alumni, ranging from Martin Luther King, Jr., to Samuel L. Jackson and Spike Lee. Both Spelman and Morehouse have especially strong senses of tradition and pride in their college communities and among their alumni/alumnae. If you are interested in an HBCU for your child, the Southern Southeast region is a particularly fertile spot to find one. There are 30 more in this region that you can read about on your own. Just search for the White House Initiative on HBCUs for a complete list. Listen to the podcast to find out about… Atlanta! New Orleans! Savannah! For show notes including links to all the colleges we mention, visit http://nycollegechat.org/30 Connect with us through… Leaving a comment or question on the show notes for this episode at http://nycollegechat.org/30 Subscribing to NYCollegeChat on iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn! Following us on Twitter @NYCollegeChat Reviewing parent materials we have available at Policy Studies in Education at http://policystudies.org/parents Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Following us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/nycollegechat Ask your questions or share your feedback by… Calling us at (516) 900-NYCC Emailing us at paul@policystudies.org to ask a question if you want us to answer it privately