Honors and Awards in Higher Education for Five African Americans

Andrea Porter, assistant dean for student services at the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, has received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Ohio Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers. The award recognizes “an individual as espousing the best social work values and accomplishments throughout their career.”

Professor Porter holds a master’s degree in social administration from Case Western Reserve University.

Howard Henderson, a professor and director of the Center for Justice Research at Texas Southern University in Houston, and his doctoral student, Jennifer Bourgeois, have won the Minority Mentor-Mentee Award from the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. The award is presented to mentors who have made significant contributions to the professional development of criminal justice graduate students and junior faculty members.

Dr. Henderson is a graduate of Middle Tennessee State University where he majored in criminal justice administration. He holds a master’s degree in criminal justice from Tennessee State University and a Ph.D. in criminal justice from Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas.

Jackie Sibblies Drury, a lecturer in playwriting at the Yale School of Drama, has received the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Drama for her play, Fairview. The judges described the play as “a hard-hitting drama that examines race in a highly conceptual, layered structure, ultimately bringing audiences into the actors’ community to face deep-seated prejudices.”

Drury is a graduate of Yale University. She holds a master of fine arts degree in playwriting from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

The University of Georgia College of Education has launched an initiative to name the college for Mary Frances Early, the university’s first African American graduate. A native of Atlanta, Early came to UGA in the summer of 1961. Earlier that year, Charlayne Hunter-Gault and Hamilton Holmes became the first African American students to enroll at UGA. Early had started postgraduate work at the University of Michigan when she transferred to UGA to complete her studies. She became the first African American to earn a degree from the University of Georgia when she graduated on Aug. 16, 1962, with a master’s degree in music education. She returned in 1964 to continue her education, earning a Specialist in Education degree in 1967.

Princeton University will name a campus roadway for Robert J. Rivers Jr., one of the first Black undergraduates admitted to the university. Rivers, a distinguished surgeon who graduated in 1953, was also the first African American elected by the Board of Trustees to serve as a Princeton trustee. The roadway that enters campus from Nassau Street between Firestone Library and the buildings of the Andlinger Center for the Humanities will be named Rivers Way in his honor.

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