Viola L. Acoff, professor and chair of the department of metallurgical and materials engineering at the University of Alabama, has been selected to receive the inaugural Ellen Swallow Richards Diversity Award from the Minerals, Metals & Materials Society. The award honors an individual who has overcome personal or professional obstacles to achieve success in the field. Dr. Acoff will be presented with the award at the National Academies of Sciences in Washington this July.
Professor Acoff holds bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degree in materials engineering, all from the University of Alabama Birmingham.
Dorinda Carter Andrews, associate professor of teacher education at Michigan State University, was chosen to receive the Scholars of Color in Education Early Career Award from the American Educational Research Association. She will be honored at the association’s annual meeting in Philadelphia on April 5.
Dr. Carter Andrews earned an educational doctorate at Harvard University. She is the co-editor and contributing author of Contesting the Myth of a ‘Post Racial Era’: The Continued Significance of Race in U. S. Education (Peter Lang Publishing, 2013).
Margaret A. Burnham, professor of law at Northeastern University in Boston, received the Living Legend Award from the Museum of African American History of Boston and Nantucket. The award “salutes extraordinary trailblazers whose remarkable accomplishments uphold the legacy of 18th– and 19th-century Black patriots and their colleagues who distinguished themselves on behalf of freedom and justice.”
Professor Burnham joined the faculty at the law school in 2002. Earlier in her career, she was the first American American women to serve as a judge in Massachusetts. Professor Burnham is a graduate of Tougaloo College in Mississippi and the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
