Georgia’s Only HBCU Engineering Program Fighting Closure
Clark Atlanta University says program would be too costly to bring up to accreditation standards
ATLANTA
Yemaya Stallworth came to Clark Atlanta University to be an engineer, choosing to pursue her destiny at a school where her teachers and classmates looked like her. Working at General Electric while taking classes full time toward an electrical engineering degree, the 20-year-old sophomore embodies the historically Black school’s motto: “I’ll find a way or make one.”
But time is running out on Clark Atlanta’s engineering department,
which is slated to shut down by May 2008 as part of a cost-cutting move by the school’s board of trustees. Eight engineering professors and a group of engineering students filed a lawsuit last month in hopes of getting a judge to reverse the decision.
“There’s a dire need for us to produce Black engineers,” says Kester Garraway, a mechanical engineering senior and president of the Student Education Reform Group. “The faculty can better relate to our struggles — some of us need that one-on-one time that we get at CAU.”
Clark Atlanta’s board voted in 2003 to eliminate the engineering department, along with the school of library and information studies, which closed in May. The international affairs department, the allied health professions program and the systems science doctorate program were also tagged for elimination.
The board cited the university’s $7.5 million deficit and a need to concentrate more on other areas of study like business, mass media, biology, education and social work — disciplines university president Dr. Walter D. Broadnax says would draw more donors and raise the school’s profile.
According to CAU officials, the engineering program doesn’t fit into its strategic plan because it is not specialized, not accredited and would be too costly to bring up to accreditation standards.
