Largely centered around white privilege, upper-class tradition and affluence, boarding schools are centers of socialization that have historically catered to members of a white, elite, and exclusive community. However, there remains a complicated nexus of race, class, and gender that needs to be explored amongst all-girls boarding school culture. Previous studies have explored Black girls’ racial identities against various backdrops of middle and upper-class White America; however, there is limited research specifically within the context of all-girls boarding schools. This qualitative research project provides a multiple case study to illustrate the narratives of Black women who have attended these elite institutions. Using a thematic analysis approach, I center my inquiry around three questions: (1) how do Black girls at boarding schools negotiate their racial identity within and against predominately white spaces and frameworks? (2) how does socioeconomic status shape the ways in which Black girls experience these schools? and (3) what strategies do Black girls employ to manage their identity? Ultimately, my research inquiries beg the question regarding the cost that Black girls have to pay for social mobility.
 

 While birth control is lauded as a symbol of reproductive freedom, historically, it has been used to regulate Black women’s bodies and usurp their reproductive rights. In this project, I seek to uncover: (1) how historic abuse of Black women’s reproductive capacities informs their distrust of healthcare systems and (2) how this distrust influences their birth control preferences. To do this, I intend to conduct a secondary historical analysis to examine how key historical cases (such as J. Marion Sims’ fistula experiments on enslaved women) laid the foundation for later assaults on Black women’s reproductive capacities. I then intend to use survey data to examine how these historical abuses led to their distrust and how this distrust influences their disparate birth control usage and preferences. This project is important because no research has systematically examined the relationship between historical assault on Black women and their resultant distrust and its manifestation through birth control preferences. Further, most research that explores Black people’s distrust of healthcare systems privilege the Black male experience and neglects Black women’s experiences. By particularizing the discussion of Black people’s distrust to Black women, this project interjects new dialogue into the discussion of Black people’s interactions with the medical establishment in a way that provides both a more holistic and nuanced view of the contemporary landscape.

From 2003 to 2013, the Spelman Jaguars were a member of the Great South Athletic Conference (GSAC) of NCAA's Division III. The school sponsored seven varsity sports: basketball, cross country, golf, soccer, softball, tennis, and volleyball. On November 1, 2012, Spelman College announced that it would be dropping all intercollegiate sports at the end of the 2012-13 academic year to promote healthy lifestyles amongst students. The vision is that with this change, students will implement these healthy practices in their home life outside of college. Six years later, I seek to examine the effects of the Wellness Revolution on Spelman College as I research Spelman students and alumnae aspects on wellness and sport. I will conduct interviews and focus groups with alumnae and students using snowball sampling and a survey sent to the Spelman College student body. These methods will lead to both past and current (before and after) feelings as it pertains to Spelman students and alumnae’s aspect of wellness, sport, and the Wellness Revolution. This research seeks to explore and answer the following questions: What are Spelman student and alumnae’s perspectives on athletics, competitive sport, and wellness at Spelman College? How do Spelman alumnae see the eradication of competitive athletics as a good decision? Why was the Wellness Revolution a suitable replacement?

The purpose of this study is to explain the effects elementary schools in the Chicago Public School system have on students’ collegiate performance. This experiment focused on identifying whether different types of elementary schools - traditional public schools, magnet schools, charter schools, or selective/gifted schools - cause students to perform better during their college careers through different forms of preparation. For this study, collegiate performance was measured in terms of GPA. The components measured among elementary schools were the range of extracurrivular activities offered to students and school climate, in terms of teacher-student relationships and the perception of student-orientedness. Further, this study used students’ perceptions as a way to measure their own attitudes regarding their experiences in the Chicago Public School system. This information was collected and recorded via interviews and confidential online questionnaires among Spelman College, Morehouse College, and Clark Atlanta University students who attended elementary school in the Chicago Public School system. The results of this research study could be used to show schools that school climate does, in fact, play a role in student's success. Hopefully, this would allow school administrators to make decisions on how to improve the environment within the school, in hopes of improving their student's educational journeys.