Three African American Women Scholars Receive Prestigious Awards

Zakiya Holmes Leggett, an assistant professor of forestry and the environment at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, has been selected to receive the Commitment to Human Diversity in Ecology Award from the Ecological Society of America. Dr. Leggett will be honored at the society’s meeting in New Orleans in August.

Dr. Leggett is a graduate of Tuskegee University in Alabama. She holds a master’s degree in forestry from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and a Ph.D. in forestry from North Carolina State University.

Cynthia Nance, dean emerita of the School of Law and the Nathan G. Gordon Professor of Law at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, has been selected to receive the 2018 Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award from the Commission on Women in the Profession of the American Bar Association. She joined the faculty as an assistant professor in 1994, and served as dean of the law school from 2006 to 2011.

Professor Nance is a graduate of Chicago State University. She holds a master’s degree in business and a juris doctorate from the University of Iowa.

Wanda Heading-Grant, vice president for human resources, diversity, and multicultural affairs at the University of Vermont, received the Inclusive Excellence Award for individual leadership from the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education.

Dr. Heading-Grant earned a bachelor’s degree in social work from the University of Vermont, a master of social work degree from Adelphi University in New York, and a doctorate in educational leadership and policy studies from the University of Vermont.

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