Juanita Johnson-Bailey, an associate professor of adult education and women’s studies, has received a national literature award for her latest book, Sistahs in College: Making a Way out of No Way.

    The book received the 2001 Frandson Award from the University Continuing Education Association. The award is given in memory of Phillip E. Frandson, dean of extension, University of California, Los Angeles and National University Education Association president, 1977-78.

    With nontraditional students making up 50 percent of the female college population today, it is clear the face of American higher education is changing. In fact, the number of women who enter college to work on degrees for the first time or those who are going back to complete degrees that they abandoned comprise the fastest-growing segment of the college population, according to Johnson-Bailey.

    “Yet this group and its concerns, which are different from those held by traditional students, are largely ignored by college administrators who schedule classes and events and establish hours of operation for the college business office,” she says.

    The book recognizes that reentry college women are not a monolithic group and that black reentry women have unique concerns as well as those universally shared with all nontraditional women students.

    “This powerful work... recognizes women’s issues in higher education and carefully documents diverse stories that provide a colorful tapestry of cutting-edge scholarship on race, class, gender and the returning adult learner,” says Elice E. Rogers in the Adult Education Quarterly.

    In the book, Johnson-Bailey chronicles the return to college of eight black women using their own words to relate their painful, joyous and often humorous experiences. In addition, she shares their recommendations and insights regarding the process of schooling. Providing an analysis of women’s issues in the higher education setting, the text also gives an erudite picture of race concerns that still loom in present-day academia. It is of particular interest to those in adult education, women’s studies, sociology and psychology.

    “Juanita Johnson-Bailey skillfully writes about the marginalization of a people in a way that does not marginalize potential readers by overwhelming them with field-based jargon. The book is scholarly yet accessible,” notes Dia Sekayi in The Journal of Negro Education. “This work is relevant for several academic audiences including women studies, African-American history and cultural studies, educational foundations and higher education administration.”

    Johnson-Bailey, whose areas of research are gender and race equity issues in the educational setting, is co-editor of Flat-Footed Truths: Telling Black Women’s Lives, a book that details how famous black women writers have searched to tell the reality of their lives and the lives of other black women.

    In 1995, she received the Graduate Research Award from the Adult Education Research Conference. And in 1994, she received the Sadie T. Mosell Alexander Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Black Women’s Studies from Sage: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women for here research on reentry black women.

Monday, April 29, 2002
Writer: Michael Childs, 706/542-5889, mchilds@coe.uga.edu
Contact: Juanita Johnson-Bailey, 706/542-6600, jjb@coe.uga.edu