The Newcomb Alumnae Association at Tulane University is proud to announce Dr. Meria J. Carstarphen (NC ’92) as the winner of the 2018 Outstanding Alumna Award. Meria is currently superintendent of Atlanta Public Schools, where she leads the district’s 52,000 students, 6,300 employees, 88 learning sites and oversees the system’s $1 billion annual budget. She is also a proud member of Tulane University’s President’s Council.
 
She has nearly 20 years of education and experience in major metropolitan public school districts, including Austin, Texas; Saint Paul, Minnesota; and the District of Columbia. In the past three years, Dr. Carstarphen increased Atlanta Public Schools’ graduation rate by 18 percentage points to 77 percent, which is the highest rate the district has received since the state aligned with the national standard in 2012. In Austin, where she was superintendent of the Austin Independent School District from 2009 to 2014, graduation rates reached an all-time high of 84 percent and dropout rates reduced by 25 percent.
 
In 2015, Dr. Carstarphen was featured in NEWCOMB Magazine, where she stated her philosophy simply: “It should be that when our kids enter that schoolhouse gate, they get a quality education. At the heart of that is why it’s the cornerstone of our democracy. When our education systems are weak, so is our country.”
 
Meria has a bachelor of arts in political science and Spanish from Newcomb College and master of education degrees from Auburn University and Harvard University. She earned a doctorate in administration, planning and social policy, with a concentration in urban superintendency from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and has also studied at the University of Seville, Spain, and University of Innsbruck, Austria.
 
Meria grew up in Selma, Alabama, where she notes her personal experience shaped her passion for education today. “It was so sobering to experience an educational environment that still had racially segregated systems, private white academies and public integrated schools. And it was equally as sobering to be in a town that was still struggling with what it meant to have experienced the struggle of civil rights, growing up in it, and knowing how education can be an equalizing force in closing gaps around poverty,” she said. and to be in a town that was still struggling with what it meant to have experienced the struggle of civil rights, growing up in it, and knowing how education can be an equalizing force in closing gaps around poverty,” she said.
 
She also credits her time at Newcomb for teaching her the value of women-centered education: “I am so blessed to have experienced that sense of sisterhood that never goes away. Even if you didn’t know each other at all, that shared experience connects you all for life.”