06/05/2026
Welcome Dr. Howard
Spelman College’s board of trustees has tapped Ayanna Howard, a dean of engineering at The Ohio State University, to serve as the school’s 12th president.
Howard attended Brown University as an undergraduate, then earned master’s and doctoral degrees in engineering from the University of Southern California. She also has an MBA from Claremont Graduate University.
An engineer by trade, Howard has worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and held several different positions at Georgia Tech. While there, she founded a trainee program in healthcare robotics and recruited college students outside of Georgia Tech to participate.
Howard became the first outside funder of the SpelBots, Spelman’s award-winning robotics team. She also launched Zyrobotics, a company that develops assistive technology for people with disabilities.
In an interview with the AJC, Ayanna Howard shares more on her background and plans for Spelman in her new role. Read more: https://bit.ly/4vvp83F
🖋️ : Martha Dalton / AJC
📸 : Natrice Miller for the AJC