Finding herself the lone Black, female professor in her department, Dr. Joanne Kilgour Dowdy confronted her situation the best way she knew how. She would apply her research skills to finding, interviewing and writing about other Black women with Ph.D. degrees.
In 2001, she had just arrived at Kent State University in Ohio from Georgia State University to be a professor in the Department of Teaching, Leadership and Curriculum Studies.
“It was an important moment in my settling in here,” she recalls in an interview. “I was desperately in need of a community. I decided to go out and find a network and to learn from their experiences.”
She interviewed nine, tenured Black female professors, primarily at one university in northeastern Ohio about their lives and academic experiences, most importantly about their journey to the doctoral degree. Dowdy interviewed each four times over the course of a year (2004 to 2005).
