Emory Libraries celebrates 100 Years of Women at Emory with event and exhibit on history-making students

The Emory Libraries will host two events on April 5 that celebrate a century

Emory University President Claire Sterk will take part in the panel “Educated=Empowered: 100 Years of Emory Women as Change-Makers on April 5. Credit: Emory Photo/Video.

of women at the University and the challenges in women’s leadership and education going forward.

“Educated=Empowered: 100 Years of Emory Women as Change-Makers” will feature a panel discussion on the ways higher education has empowered women, why women’s history and voices matter, and what the future holds. Emory President Claire Sterk will give opening remarks, and Rosemary M. Magee, director of the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, & Rare Book Library, will moderate the program. The panel will include alumna Chandra Stephens-Albright, executive director of C5 Georgia Youth Foundation; Martha Fineman, Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Law at Emory, and junior Jalyn Radziminski, an Emory student leader and 1915 Scholar.

“We’re excited to host this event celebrating a century of women at Emory, and we’re looking forward to hearing the many different perspectives our panelists will bring to the discussion,” says University Librarian Yolanda Cooper. The program begins promptly at 6:30 p.m. in the Jones Room on Level 3 of the Woodruff Library.

The event is part of a University-wide celebration, as Emory marks 100 years of women at the university and the 25th anniversary of its Center for Women. To register for this event, follow this link: http://engage.emory.edu/womenspanel. 

After the panel discussion, attendees are invited to a reception at 7:30 pm.

Eléonore Raoul became not only the first woman to enroll Emory’s new law school in Druid Hills (1917), but the first woman to graduate from Emory (1920). Image: Raoul family papers, Rose Library.

in the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library on Level 10, where they will have the chance to see the exhibit “100 Years of Women at Emory: Many Milestones of Progress,” which focuses on female student life and progress. Materials drawn from the Emory University Archives tell the stories of the first female student, first female graduate, first female African American students, and the efforts to build the Center for Women at Emory. University archivist John Bence curated the exhibit, which is on view in the corridor gallery of the Rose Library until April 21.

“While we celebrate firsts and their anniversaries as a meaningful time to reflect on progress, there’s often a more complicated story about firsts in any category,” Bence says. Those more complicated stories, along with other lesser-known milestones, are a revealing part of the exhibit’s narrative.

The exhibit is open during regular Rose Library hours, which are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays. The library is closed on the weekends.