Ten years after Dr. Johnnetta Betsch Cole left the all-women’s college in Greensboro, North Carolina, the institution decided to honor her by renaming a new dormitory on campus.
Bennett College formally renamed its honors dormitory after Cole during the institution’s Founder’s Day celebration on Sunday to commemorate the legacy of its 14th president. The honors dorm is now the Johnnetta Betsch Cole Honors Residence Hall.
“You have given me an incredible honor — to have my name on a building where students committed to excellence, defined as honors students, recommit themselves to soar to the heights of their possibility,” Cole said at the renaming ceremony.
The 140-bed, $7.2 million dorm was built in 2010 and is reserved for students in Bennett’s honors program. Board of trustee members announced the decision to rename the dorm in May.
Bennett’s 144th Founder’s Day festivities also included a silent auction and a convocation in the Annie Merner Pfeiffer Chapel where Cole served as the keynote speaker. During her speech, the former president encouraged students and others present to remain involved in advocacy during times of crisis, citing the White nationalist rally in Charlottesville as an example.
Cole, who is president emerita of both Bennett College and Spelman College — the only two all-women’s historically Black colleges in the country — reminded students that while Bennett may be facing a financial accreditation crisis, “I want to clearly and unequivocally declare that protecting and sustaining Bennett College is a necessary form of activism that each of us is called to do,” she said.
During her tenure at Bennett from 2002 to 2007, Cole led a $50 million capital campaign to help sustain the college amid a similar accreditation crisis. Cole also established an art gallery on campus, created new women’s and global studies programs and founded the Johnnetta B. Cole Global Diversity and Inclusion Institute.
