Karelle Aiken, an associate professor of organic chemistry at Georgia Southern University, has been selected to receive the Rising Star Award from the Women’s Chemists Committee of the American Chemical Society. Dr. Aiken, who has been on the faculty at the university since 2007, will be honored in San Diego this coming March.
Dr. Aiken is a graduate of Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and holds a Ph.D. from the University of New Hampshire.
Gina Athena Ulysse, a professor of anthropology at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, received the Excellence in Scholarship award from the Haitian Studies Association. Professor Ulysse is the author of Downtown Ladies: Informal Commercial Importers, A Haitian Anthropologist and Self-Making in Jamaica (University of Chicgo Press, 2008) and Why Haiti Needs New Narratives: A Post-Quake Chronicle (Wesleyan University Press, 2015).
Dr. Ulysse is a graduate of Upsala College in New Jersey, which has now closed. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.
Adriel A. Hilton, assistant professor of higher education student affairs at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina, received the 2015 Melvene Draheim Hardee Award from the Southern Association of College Student Affairs.
Dr. Hilton is a graduate of Morehouse College in Atlanta. He earned a master’s degree at Florida A&M University and a doctorate in higher education from Morgan State University in Baltimore.
Jacqueline Woodson has been selected to receive the Langston Hughes Medal from the City College of New York. She will be honored at the Langston Hughes Festival on the CUNY campus on November 20.
Woodson is the author of more than 30 books for children and young adults. She won the 2014 National Book Award for young people’s literature for Brown Girl Dreaming (Nancy Paulsen Books, 2014).
Carrie Parker-Taylor, the first African American woman to enroll at Indiana University in Bloomington, is having an endowed scholarship fund at the university named in her honor.
Parker-Taylor enrolled at the university in 1898. She lived with a faculty member and cooked and cleaned for the family to pay her room and board. She dropped out of school after three semesters. Her her great-great-great-grand-daughter is currently enrolled at the Indiana University School of Medicine.
Karen Faison, a professor of nursing and chair of the Community Health Initiative at Virginia State University, has won the Nancy Vance Award, the highest honor bestowed by the Virginia Nurses Association Foundation.
The award, which will be presented in Richmond on November 21, is bestowed upon a member of the Virginia Nurses Association who has made “significant contributions to the community through their exceptional leadership, sustained dedication, and inspiring achievements.”
