Founded in 1881 as the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary, Spelman was renamed Spelman College in 1924. Now a global leader in the education of women of African descent, Spelman is dedicated to academic excellence in the liberal arts and sciences and the intellectual, creative, ethical, and leadership development of its students. Through diverse learning modalities, Spelman empowers the whole person to engage the many cultures of the world and inspires a commitment to positive social change.

Through its transformation work, Spelman’s “Courses to Career” initiative has made tremendous progress. Since the launch of the program, a total of 812 first-year students submitted their resumes. A subset of those students received invaluable feedback from a trained humanities (world languages and literature) faculty member.

Spelman has also fostered the College QEP Strategic Plan that adopted a focus on careers through a partnership with Braven, a national nonprofit helping students on a path to economic mobility. The partnership, which launched in November 2021, offers all Spelman sophomores a two-part career-accelerating experience. Students complete weekly online modules on Braven’s online platform and then apply that content through weekly virtual learning labs in a cohort of 5-8 peers led by a leadership coach. More than 500 Spelman students were exposed to the Braven course.

Facilitated through the Institute for Capacity Building, the institution is now a UNCF cohort member in the HBCU Transformation Project, a first-of-its kind effort to improve student enrollment, graduate success, and institutional effectiveness rates at Historically Black Colleges and Universities.