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History OF THE ATLANTA UNIVERSITY CENTER

EVEN those closest to the Atlanta University Center sometimes have difficulty in defining it satisfactorily. The Center is a voluntary consortium of six, independent institutions of higher learning that has developed pacesetting models of academic and administrative cooperation to achieve cost saving and/or the improvement of services. Together they form the world's largest enterprise of private, black higher education, with a combined enrollment of more than 8,000 students.

The roots of this unique collaborative effort stretch back eight decades. In 1897, Spelman faculty, students, and alumni participated in the second "Annual Conference for the Study of Negro Problems" sponsored by Atlanta University. Its president, Horace M. Bumstead, had stated the need for a "systematic and thorough investigation of the conditions of living among the Negro population." In that year, W.E.B. DuBois came to Atlanta University from Pennsylvania—after studies at Fisk, Berlin and Harvard—and directed these annual sessions for 13 more years. George A. Towns and James Weldon Johnson were among several A.U. graduates who compiled a monograph that became the first of the University's continuing publications on these conferences. The substance and productivity of the annual conferences prompted Wallace Buttrick of the General Education Board to report that Atlanta University was the only institution in the world engaged in "a systematic study of the Negro...and putting the result in a form available for scholars of the world." Thus the tone was set for education in the Atlanta University Center to be engaged in service to the cause of improving the human condition. That theme and that concern have remained constant during the ensuing years.

In the 1928-29 academic year, three faculty members held joint appointments at Spelman and Morehouse, and all upper-level courses were open to students of both colleges, Spelman-Morehouse concerts began their long tradition that year, and Baccalaureate Sunday was celebrated at a combined service in June 1928. That same month the Atlanta University Board named a committee to confer with Spelman and Morehouse trustees on further cooperative measures that could result in savings of expenditures for all three institutions. Their formal discussion of affiliation began in February 1929. After the State of Georgia issued a charter to the Atlanta University Center in 1964, Dr. Prince E. Wilson was appointed as Executive Secretary.

The Center was reorganized in 1972. This culminated in the creation of a new legal entity, the Atlanta University Center, Inc., with its own 25 member Board of Trustees, composed of 12 representatives from the member institutions and 13 non-institutional representatives. Administrative responsibility was delegated by the Board to a Chancellor, who, with a small support staff, was to coordinate programs delegated to the Center by two or more institutions and to provide leadership in cooperative planning.

Lisle C. Carter, Jr., a former Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare and Vice President of Cornell University, became the Chancellor in 1973. Under his leadership, the Center assumed greater responsibility for Center-wide administrative coordination, established the Atlanta Fellows and Interns Program and launched a successful multi-million dollar campaign for a new joint library.

Charles W. Merideth is the second Chancellor of the Atlanta University Center, a position to which he was elected in June 1978 by the Board of Trustees of the AUC, Inc. He had served as Acting Chancellor of the Center from September 1977. As Chancellor, Dr. Merideth has imparted "a spirit of enthusiasm which has generated team dedication toward results." A primary example of that effort has been the cooperative endeavor undertaken to develop, organize, coordinate and actualize plans for the completion of the Robert W. Woodruff Library of the Atlanta University Center—the largest capital project ever undertaken by the AUC member institutions and the first collaborative one of this scope in recent history. Additionally, under the creative leadership of Dr. Merideth, the Center is implementing a viable computerized Management Information System (MIS), constructing a Science Research Institute Building (scheduled for completion in November 1982), and operating a Science Research Institute Computations Center.

The most dramatic symbol of the Center's health and openness to cooperation is the new Robert W. Woodruff Library of the Atlanta University Center, which we are here to dedicate today. It shall serve as the keystone of all future growth and development by the AUC member institutions.

The Atlanta University Center is alive and well. Because of its unique cooperative approach to higher education, it will continue to be one of the nation's major resources for teaching, research, public service and the preparation of new leaders for new days.

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