African-American Woman Inaugurated as President of Kalamazoo College

This past Saturday, Eileen Wilson-Oyelaran was inaugurated as the seventeenth president of Kalamazoo College in Michigan. She is the first woman and the first African American to hold the position.

Wilson-Oyelaran is a native of Los Angeles. She is a graduate of Pomona College and holds a master’s and doctorate in education from the Claremont Graduate University. After teaching in Nigeria for 14 years, in 1988 she returned to the United States where she taught at North Carolina Wesleyan College, Winston-Salem State University, and Salem College.

Kalamazoo College, founded in 1833, is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. Currently, blacks are 2.4 percent of the 1,200-member student body.

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