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Agnes Scott College Welcomes New President Amid Changing Campus, Identity
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Agnes Scott College in Decatur is on a mission to reinvent liberal arts education.
What’s also evolving on this historic women’s campus? Concepts of gender.
That’s a lot of change for a private school of about 1,000 students. The woman tasked with leading these transitions will be inaugurated this week.GPB's Rickey Bevington recently sat down with President Lee Zak along with some Agnes Scott students.
Lee Zak served as U.S. Trade and Development Agency Director under former President Barack Obama.
GPB’s Rickey Bevington recently sat down with Zak along with some students.
She began by asking Zak the future of liberal arts in a world focused on science, technology, engineering and math or STEM.
"Well, we like to think about it as STEM has now evolved into STEAM which includes the arts. So that's exactly what we have here," she said.
"We have Classics. We have English, but we also have bioscience majors. We have neuroscience majors. We have astronomers, so a liberal arts college has it all."
At Agnes Scott, liberal arts education is changing.
Next month’s graduation will include the first class of Agnes Scott students to complete four years of a new supplemental program infused with the school’s standard curriculum. It’s called SUMMIT.
"Our faculty and staff reinvented liberal arts, so it is an opportunity for our students to focus on leadership development and also global learning," Zak said.
In their first year, students take an 8-day guided trip abroad with classmates and professors after several months of study. Destinations have included Northern Ireland, Ghana and Belize.
"It's not tourist travel. It's focused on a topic and focused on something that they have studied before and that they have an opportunity to reflect on afterwards," she said.
The SUMMIT curriculum helped earn Agnes Scott the number one ranking of innovative liberal arts colleges from U.S. News and World Report last year.
According to the National Association of Foreign Student Advisers, fewer than 2% of U.S. college students study abroad. At Agnes Scott College, it’s 100%.
And it’s part of each student’s $41,000 tuition.
Agnes Scott was founded in 1889 as a women’s college. Today, its admission policy is more broad.
It states: “The college admits students who were assigned female at birth as well as those who were assigned male or female at birth but now identify as female, transgender, agender, gender fluid or non-binary.”
Student health insurance plans help cover gender reassignment treatment.
For many parents going through the college decision process with their teenager, discussions about gender identity are uncharted territory.
"I would say to the parents to allow the students to be their guide. This is looking toward where the future is, the world that we live in, and that we are creating an environment that represents that world," Zak said.
Conversations about diversity at Agnes Scott expand beyond gender.
People of color make up more than half the student body including freshman Nneka Jones.
"I see it in the classroom," Jones said. "I see it in my professors. I see it and the variety of organizations and clubs that we have. Basically, there’s a place on campus for every single person here."
Zak says as the world becomes more competitive, teaching future generations to find their place is increasingly important.
"I think our students just have so much more responsibility than when we went to school," Zak said.
"They also see a world around them that has also seen change as well, and they have concerns about that world. I think we are a lot more carefree."
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