Tougaloo College Recruits Area Students This Week Through

RICHTON PARK, ILL.—Dec. 6, 2022—Dr. Carmen J. Walters is a Black college educator from Mississippi on a mission to share her historic school’s story with Chicago-area high school students.

As president of Tougaloo College, a 153-year-old Jackson, Mississippi HBCU (Historically Black College or University), Dr. Walters will lead a delegation of the school’s college admissions team to visit six Chicago-area high schools Thursday, Friday, Dec. 8, 9 and hold a recruitment event open to all at Southland College Prep, 4601 Sauk Trail, Richton Park, Ill., Saturday, Dec. 10 beginning at 10 a.m.

Tougaloo College (www.tougaloo.edu) is a private, co-educational, historically Black four-year liberal arts, church related, but not church-controlled, higher education institution.

Tougaloo College provided sanctuary for Freedom Riders and others in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s whose perseverance and courage advanced the cause of human and civil rights and equal education for generations of Americans, Dr. Walters explained.

Among the area high schools Dr. Walters and her team will visit Dec. 8-9 are: Southland College Prep Charter High School, Rich Township District 227, Proviso Township High School District, Hillcrest High School, Thornton Township High School and Bloom Township High School.

Dr. Blondean Y. Davis, Southland’s CEO, a Tougaloo College trustee and secretary, said, “Tougaloo College is a splendid example of how the American Dream impacts young people today who enroll, graduate and move on to serve future generations.”

Event participants will learn about Tougaloo College’s 29 undergraduate majors in the areas of education, the humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences and graduate degrees in teaching and child development.

At the Southland College Prep Charter High School recruitment event, high school seniors are urged to bring transcripts or a current report card and may apply to gain preliminary acceptance on the spot and learn about Tougaloo College’s scholarship opportunities. To pre-register, interested students may call or leave a message with their name, school, year and email address at 708-748-0100 ext. 4124.

“Through Tougaloo College’s diverse undergraduate and graduate degree programs, we’re focused on preparing our students to be lifelong learners committed to leadership and service in a global society,” Dr. Walters said.

The school ranks among the top 60 liberal arts colleges in the U.S. and is among the top 25 institutions whose graduates earn Ph.D.’s in science and engineering. Tougaloo is in the top 15 historically Black colleges and universities to graduate females with physical sciences undergraduate degrees.

We also have developed new partnerships and networking relationships with such high-profile higher education institutions as Brown University, Boston College, Tufts Medical and Dental Schools, New York University, the University of California at Los Angeles, Mississippi State University and the University of Mississippi Medical Center, Dr. Walters added.

ABOUT TOUGALOO COLLEGE, JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI
The Princeton Review and U.S. News and World Report consistently rank Tougaloo College as one of the “Best Colleges in the Southeast” and U.S. News and World Report lists Tougaloo among the top 15 of “America’s Best Black Colleges.

Washington Monthly ranks the College among the top 25 liberal arts institutions in the nation.
Tougaloo College has produced over 40 percent of the African American physicians and dentists, practicing in the state of Mississippi, more than one-third of the state’s African American attorneys and educators including teachers, principals, school superintendents, college/university faculty and administrators.

Located on 500 acres of land on the northern edge of Jackson, Mississippi, the school’s name is drawn from the Choctaw language, meaning “where two streams cross,” as it is situated between two small streams that flow into the Pearl River, one of the deep South’s principal sources of fresh water.

In 1869, the American Missionary Association of New York purchased the site of the Boddie Plantation to establish a school for the training of young people, "irrespective of religious tenets and conducted on the most liberal principles for the benefit of our citizens in general."

Tougaloo College has gained national respect for its high academic standards and level of social responsibility. The College reached the ultimate demonstration of its social commitment during the turbulent 1960s when it was in the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi. The College served as the safe haven for those who fought for freedom, equality and justice and a sanctuary where strategies were devised and implemented to end segregation and improve race relations.
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