Rosie Phillips Bingham, vice president for student affairs at the University of Memphis in Tennessee, has had an award named in her honor at her alma mater, Elmhurst College in Illinois. The Rosie Phillips Leadership Award will be presented to a student in the college’s President’s Leadership Academy, a group of 35 students at Elmhurst who are the first generation in their family to attend college or are a member of a underrepresented minority group.
Bingham has been on the staff at the University of Memphis since 1985. Prior to taking on her current role as vice president for student affairs in 2003, she served as assistant vice president for student development.
The Africana studies program at Indiana University/Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) received the Mary McLeod Bethune and Carter G. Woodson Award for Outstanding Service in the Promotion of Social Responsibility in Africana Studies from the National Council of Black Studies. The award was presented to Bessie House-Soremekum, director of Africana studies at IUPUI.
Cristal C. Truscott, chair of the department of music and theater in the Marvin D. and June Samuel Brailsford College of Arts and Sciences at Prairie View A&M University in Texas, received the 2014 Doris Duke Artist Impact Award from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Dr. Truscott was honored for the creation of a new form of a capella musicals called “Neo-Spirituals.”
Dr. Truscott is an assistant professor and serves as director of the theater program. She previously taught in the drama and religious studies departments at Spelman College in Atlanta. Dr. Truscott holds bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees, all from New York University.
Elias S. Siraj, professor of medicine at the Temple University School of Medicine in Philadelphia, received the Outstanding Service Award for Promotion of Endocrine Health of an Underserved Population from the American Association of Endocrinologists.
A native of Ethiopia, Dr. Siraj also serves as director of the Endocrinology Fellowship Program and director of the Diabetes Program at Temple. He received his medical degree at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia.
