Spelman College, the historically Black liberal arts school for women, on Friday named a roboticist and artificial intelligence expert as its next president.
The selection of Ayanna M. Howard, the dean of Ohio State University’s engineering college, represents a departure for a 145-year-old liberal arts school whose modern presidents have included doctors, an anthropologist and a psychologist.
But as the higher education industry grapples with the rise of A.I. and how the technology may reshape the global work force, Dr. Howard argued that liberal arts students at places like Spelman should lean into the development of A.I.
Those students ought to “probe and poke and ask the questions and say: Just because we can, should we?” Dr. Howard, 54, said in an interview.
She suggested that Spelman, which has about 2,700 students and is consistently regarded among the nation’s best historically Black schools, was positioned to respond to the A.I. boom given its rigor and small size. That, she said, allowed the college to be especially adaptable with its curriculum and teaching approaches.
But she said any shifts would be rooted in the college’s legacy, and would require collaboration with professors and students.
“Faculty are specialists in their discipline, right, so it is not my role to tell you how to incorporate A.I.,” she said, adding that her place was to nudge debates and help marshal resources.
Dr. Howard earned her bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from Brown University. She said she was attracted to the school, in part, because it allowed her to pursue robotics while still taking courses about poetry and dance. She completed her doctorate in electrical engineering at the University of Southern California.
Her move to Spelman, though, represents something of a homecoming. After working at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for a dozen years, she began teaching at Georgia Tech in 2005. She later became the chair of Tech’s School of Interactive Computing, and she assumed the deanship at Ohio State in 2021.
More recently, she joined Brown’s board and was appointed to the federal government’s National Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee.
At Spelman, she will lead one of the most prominent and wealthy H.B.C.U.s. The college’s endowment was valued at $609 million last summer, according to the most recently released data, far higher than almost all of Spelman’s peer schools. Last November, Spelman announced a $38 million contribution from the philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, who had already given $20 million in 2020.
But the college has endured some tumult since 2024, when its president began a publicly unexplained leave of absence. After she resigned, the college installed an interim leader who has led Spelman since.
Dr. Howard, whose family tree is filled with academics and civil rights activists, acknowledged the skepticism of higher education that has swelled in recent years.
“The fact is, we can’t keep doing what we’ve been doing for the last 100, 150 years,” she said. Asked what in higher education struck her as stale, she pointed to how students learn differently than they did when she was in college.
“They learn sometimes more from YouTube and TikTok than a lecture,” said Dr. Howard, whose mother was an adjunct professor at Spelman. “How do we incorporate that as part of understanding that this is how they learn?”
Spelman’s announcement was the second major appointment on an Atlanta campus in eight days. Emory University said last week that its chief operating officer, Christopher L. Augostini, would take over its presidency in September.
Dr. Howard will start her post at Spelman in August.
Alan Blinder is a national correspondent for The Times, covering education.
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