(Left to right) SU System President Ralph Slaughter, SUBR Interim Chancellor Margaret Ambrose, SU Board of Supervisors Chairman Johnny Anderson, and SU Board of Supervisors member Jesse B. Bilberry are pictured with SU System President Emerita Dolores Margaret Richard Spikes (second from left), a the ceremony naming the Honors College building and program in her honor.

Southern University, Baton Rouge Honors College renamed to honor Spikes

The Southern University System named the Honors College and the Honors Program at Southern University, Baton Rouge in honor of System President Emerita Dolores Margaret Richard Spikes.

The Southern University, Baton Rouge Honors College and the program was renamed on the Thursday of Homecoming week to honor Dolores Spikes, president emeriti of the Southern System.

More than 200 well-wishers on hand to see the unveiling of the Dolores Margaret Richard Spikes Honors College.

It is fitting that Spikes’ name is now forever associated with the best of the best that Southern has to offer academically. School officials explain that the Honors College provides an enhanced educational experience for students who have a history of strong academic achievement and motivation, and who have demonstrated exceptional creativity or talent. Students are challenged and nurtured through the use of innovative pedagogy, flexible and competitive curricula, and mentoring relationships with distinguished faculty and scholars.

The College also provides cultural and intellectual opportunities that are designed to motivate students to perform at the highest level of excellence that they are capable of and through which they may become knowledgeable and effective leaders.

Like the College that now bears her name, Spikes' career has defined academic excellence and distinction. Highlights include:

• Born 1936 in Baton Rouge
• Received a bachelor of science degree in liberal arts with a major in mathematics from Southern University
• Master of Science degree in mathematics from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana
• In 1971 she was the first African-American graduate and the first graduate of Southern University to receive a doctorate of mathematics from Louisiana State University
• First woman in Louisiana to be named Chief Executive Officer of a public university
• Received the Thurgood Marshall Education Achievement Award and the 1890 Colleges and Universities Distinguished Alumnus Award
• She has been a National Science Foundation Fellow and a Ford Foundation Fellow
• Served on Boards of Directors of the Baton Rouge Chamber of Commerce and the Louisiana Red Cross
• She was a founding member of the Louisiana Partnership for Technology and Innovation
• In January 1990, Ebony Magazine named her one of the "20 most influential Black women in America"
• In 1994, President Bill Clinton named Spikes to his board of advisors on historically black colleges and universities. Two years later, Spikes was named vice chair of the Kellogg Commission on the Future of State and Land-Grant Universities
• From 1996 to 2001 she was president of the University of Maryland-Eastern Shore