DATE: Monday, March 31, 1997                TAG: 9703310080

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B4   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 
DATELINE: WILLIAMSBURG                      LENGTH:   28 lines

W&M ADDING UNDERGRADUATE DEGREE PROGRAM IN BLACK STUDIES

Forty-one years after the first black student received a degree from the College of William and Mary, the school is establishing a new major - black studies.

The undergraduate degree program focuses on the black experience in America, Africa and the Caribbean. Students can begin signing up for the major this spring, and college officials hope it will help recruit black students and faculty.

``It is interesting and inspiring to me, as a native Virginian, to see this college becoming a home to black studies,'' said history professor Melvin Ely. ``So much of African-American history happened here, right in our back yard.''

Black studies is not a separate academic department with its own faculty, but is part of the college's interdisciplinary studies degree program. If black studies proves popular, the college could apply to the state to make it a separate degree program.

In 1956, Hulon L. Willis became the first black student to receive a William and Mary degree, earning a master's in education.

Today, the school's black population is at about 6 percent, according to Virginia Carey, dean of undergraduate admission.

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