ATLANTA
Yemaya Stallworth came to Clark Atlanta University to be an engineer,
pursuing 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 week in hopes of
getting a judge to reverse the decision.
“There’s a dire need for us to produce Black engineers,” said 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.
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 President Walter
Broadnax said would draw more donors and raise the school’s profile.
The school said 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.
