During her 32 years at Spelman, Donna Akiba Sullivan, Ph.D., has held broad and varied leadership roles as both an instructor and administrator. She served six years as chair of the English Department and three as president of Faculty Council. She is one of just three endowed chairs at the College, and served a two-year term as dean of Undergraduate Studies.“Our faculty, in terms of ethnicity and gender and age are so much more diverse than our student body, so our faculty needs are very different. Being able to interact with colleagues and learn that we had one group of people who needed equipment and one group of people who were concerned about safety and one group of people who wanted space showed that our needs are really diverse."Dr. Harper said that diversity should also be reflected in how Spelman faculty and administrators evaluate the school’s programs relative to those of other institutions. For Spelman, such “benchmarking” can be tricky because as a small, historically Black, women’s college, it defies easy categorization. Still, Dr. Harper sees benchmarking as a vital step in assuring that the College remains competitive.
Sixteen years before her arrival at the College, the future Dr. Akiba Harper was a high school senior tasked with one of her earliest leadership roles – serving as the first African American valedictorian at her school in southern Virginia. It was a challenge when Spelman kind of went through a new stage and we were so woman centered and wanted faculty who teach about women. But I do Langston Hughes, so I had to keep pushing. I thought 'I'm not going to give up, you've got to have Langston Hughes.” -- Donna Akiba Sullivan Harper, Ph.D.
Her effort to keep Hughes high on the College’s reading list led Dr. Harper to a revelation: teach women about how Langston Hughes interacted with women.
“I found a way to grow the evidence of how he wrote about and interacted with women as part of a seminar focusing on Hughes as a writer as opposed to the works, per se,” said Dr. Harper. “So I am willing to change in whatever ways are necessary, but Langston is not going to leave my heart and my mind.”
Of course, retooling a college seminar isn’t always a passion project; usually, it’s just work. And Dr. Harper, who earned her master’s degree and Ph.D. at Emory University, has spent much of her long career engaged in the back-breaking, mind-bending labors associated with running a college department, managing the varietal demands of a busy faculty, and addressing the small but emotionally-taxing concerns of students in academic trouble.
In fact, her tendency to work longer and harder than anyone else in the room once prompted a colleague to suggest that Dr. Harper is a “victim of her own competence.”
She laughed off the comment, blithely, ignoring the fact that her three-year term as president of Spelman’s Faculty Council was supposed to be for two years or that she allowed herself to be arm-twisted into the presidency of the College Language Association despite her efforts to recruit an alternate.
Dr. Harper said that although leadership makes myriad personal and professional demands, she still “encourages people to step up and be leaders.”
“Many times I hear people hesitate because they say, ‘I’m too busy,’ or ‘I’ve got to do my research,’ or ‘I’ve got a family,’ and all of these are real, but I assure you that the things I’ve done in my life, I’ve done while caring for elderly parents, taking care of a child, and being a significant other to a partner. People should find a way to juggle a little bit because leadership teaches you lessons you cannot learn any other way.”
As we continue to elevate the Spelman difference, we lift up the accomplishments of our faculty in the many ways that they manifest excellence. In our Faculty Excellence at Spelman College publication, we highlighted innovations in research and creative endeavors. This issue uplifts various forms of faculty leadership in the College and beyond.