William Jelani Cobb, an associate professor of history and director of the Africana Studies Institute at the University of Connecticut, has been selected to receive the 2016 Justice Trailblazer Award from the Center on Media, Crime and Justice at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. Dr. Cobb is being honored for his extensive body of work including books, journalism, and other scholarship exploring inequality in America’s system of criminal justice.
Dr. Cobb is the author of The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama & the Paradox of Progress (Bloomsbury, 2010) and To The Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic (New York University Press, 2007). He is a native of New York City and a graduate of Howard University in Washington, D.C. Dr. Cobb holds a Ph.D. in American history from Rutgers University in New Jersey.
Christine Grant, professor of chemical engineering and associate dean for faculty advancement in the College of Engineering at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, has been selected to receive the 2015 Mentor Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Grant will be honored at the AAAS annual meeting in Washington on February 12.
Professor Grant is a graduate of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.
