Dolores Margaret Richard Spikes
(August 24, 1936 – June 1, 2015)
Former Southern University president and education trailblazer giant in higher education in Louisiana and the nation
In 1988, Spikes was appointed president of Southern University and A&M College System, becoming the first woman in the United States to head a university system. She also was Louisiana’s first female chancellor of a public university
She was an American mathematician and was President of the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, from 1997 to 2001.
Spikes were the first African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics from Louisiana State University in 1971. Spikes was also the first female university chancellor and later the first female president of a university system in the United States.
Dolores Margaret Richard is the daughter of Lawrence Granville Richard and Margaret Patterson Richard. She credits her parents, Lawrence Richard and Margaret Patterson Richard, as the single greatest influence on her life. “My father had a fourth-grade education, but he loved to read. He loved education so much that even after his daughters finished college, he went back to get his GED,” she told The Oval Message. Her mother, who had a tenth-grade education, had a similar attitude. “We never talked about whether we were going to college. We always knew we were going, even though my parents didn’t know where the money was coming from,” Spikes was quoted as saying.
While studying at Southern University, she met fellow mathematics major Hermon Spikes in a class on world literature. Their relationship continued after she graduated with a B.S. in mathematics, summa cum laude, in 1957, and moved to Urbana, Illinois, to pursue an M.S. in mathematics. “While I was away in graduate school at the University of Illinois, Hermon sent me a ring in the mail. We married two weeks after I received the master’s degree,” Spikes was quoted as saying in The Oval Message. The couple have one daughter, Rhonda, who later followed in her parents’ footsteps by graduating from Southern University.
In 1958, Spikes returned to Louisiana, where she accepted a position teaching biology, chemistry, and general science at Mossville High School in Calcasien Parish. Three years later, Spikes joined the faculty of Southern University as an assistant professor of mathematics. Over the next few decades, she moved through the ranks to become an associate professor and finally full professor of mathematics.
During this time, Spikes began her doctoral studies at Louisiana State University–despite the pressures of work, study, marriage, and taking care of a young daughter. “It was a very busy time,” she told The Oval Message. “My husband pitched in, but I got very little sleep.” After writing a dissertation on “Semi-Valuations and Groups of Divisibility,” Spikes earned her Ph.D. in pure mathematics, with a speciality in commutative ring theory, in 1971. She was the first African American, as well as the first Southern University graduate, to receive a doctorate in mathematics from LSU.
During the eighties, Spikes began to move from academic to administrative positions. From 1982 to 1985, she served as assistant to the chancellor for Southern University at Baton Rouge; later, she became executive vice chancellor and vice chancellor for academic affairs. In the late eighties, she served as chancellor for Southern University-Baton Rouge and Southern University-New Orleans. Finally, in 1988, she was appointed president of the Southern University and A&M College System, one of the largest predominantly black public university systems in the United States. As president, Spikes became not only the first female to lead a public college or university in Louisiana, but also the first woman in the United States to head a university system.
For Spikes, the fact that she–a Southern University graduate– could rise to this prestigious position proved the importance of the college’s mission. “Southern (University) represents hope,” she was quoted as saying in Black Women in America. “It represents a way to open the doors of America to countless young people who would otherwise be shut out.”Meanwhile, Spikes’ leadership in education began to be noticed on a national scale. 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, a body charged with defining the direction that public universities should go in the future.
In a press statement issued by the Kellogg Commission, Spikes wrote about the problems facing historically black land-grant colleges– often called “the 1890s,” after the 1890 act that established them. “Together with other historically black colleges and universities, in some southern states they still contribute to the production of almost 50 percent of African American baccalaureates….,” she wrote. “If the universe of land-grant institutions faces a crisis, then how much more pronounced is that crisis for the 1890s!”
Dr. Spikes is married to Hermon Spikes, and they have one daughter and two grandchildren. Dolores Spikes died on Monday, June 1, 2015, after fighting a long illness at the age of 78 years old.
From 1996 to 2001 Dr. Dolores Spikes was President of the University of Maryland-Eastern Shore.
In January 1990, Ebony named her one of the twenty “most influential Black women in America”.
From January 1982 to August 1985, Dr. Spikes served as Assistant to the Chancellor on the Southern University at Baton Rouge campus before being named Executive Vice Chancellor and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at Southern University at Baton Rouge. In July 1987, she was chosen to serve as Chancellor of Southern University at New Orleans, and from October 1988 to June 30, 1991 served as Chancellor of Southern University at Baton Rouge.
Dr. Spikes is a summa cum laude graduate who won numerous university awards, honors and memberships while studying or working at Southern University. These included: Who’s Who Among Students in American Colleges and Universities, Alpha Kappa Mu Honor Society, Pi Mu Epsilon Honorary Fraternity in Mathematics, Kappa Delta Pi Honor Society, University of Illinois Fellowship (to study for M.S. degree), Ford Foundation Fellow (1968-71), National Science Foundation Fellow (1966-67), and selection as “Woman of the Year” by the Southern University at Baton Rouge’s Association of Women Students (1986) and as “Outstanding Alumnus of the Century” (Southern University, 1990).
In 1989, she received the Thurgood Marshall Educational Achievement Award and was featured in the January 1990 edition of Ebony Magazine. Ebony Man Magazine also recognized her as one of 20 “Most Influential Black Women in America.” In 1996, she received the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund Education Leadership Award. The numerous bodies on which Dr. Spikes currently participates or has served include the following: Vice Chair and Program Chair of the Commission on International Affairs of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, 1990-91; Chair of the Commission on International Affairs of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, 1991-
November 1992; Vice Chair and Chair-Elect of the Commission on Criteria and Reports, Levels II-VI, Commission on Colleges, Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) [regional accrediting agency], 1991-92; Executive Committee of the Commission on Colleges, 1992-93; Vice Chair and Chair, Council of 1890 (Land-Grant Institutions, Second Morrill Act) Presidents, 1990-92; Member, Commission on Women in Higher Education, American Council on Education, February 1, 1990-December 31, 1992; Board of Directors, National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education (NAFEO), elected 1988-92; Elected Class Representative of Harvard University Institute of Educational Management, 1987-92; Member of the Commission on Colleges, Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS), 1988-December 31, 1993; Chair, Council of 1890 Presidents/Chancellors and 1890 Institutions, 1993-94; Member of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities, National Conference, NAFEO, 1994; Board of Directors, NAFEO, 1993-94; Member and Vice Chair of the Kellogg Commission, National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges; Senior Associate to the University of the North-West Mmabatho (South Africa); Member, President Clinton’s Advisory Board on Historically Black Colleges and Universities; Member of the National Agricultural Research, Extension, Education and Economics Advisory Board (U.S. Department of Agriculture); Louisiana Representative on the Board of Directors of the Public Broadcasting Corporation, 1995-97. She was appointed by President Clinton to the Board of Visitors of the United States Naval Academy.
[Source: Official University of Maryland biography]