Christopher Emdin was named to the Maxine Greene Chair for Distinguished Contributions to Education at Teachers College at Columbia University in New York City. For the past two years, he was Naslund Endowed Chair in Curriculum Theory and Director of Youth Engagement and Community Partnerships at the Race and Equity Center at the University of Southern California. Earlier, he was associate director of the Institute for Urban and Minority Education and director of the Science Education program at Teachers College.
Dr. Emdin is a graduate of Lehman College of the City University of New York. He holds a master’s degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, and a doctorate in urban education from the City University of New York.
Karen Cook-Bell, a professor in Bowie State University’s history and government department, has been awarded a University System of Maryland Wilson H. Elkins Professorship. The professorships are provided to support researchers and professors who demonstrate exemplary ability to inspire students and whose professional work and scholarly endeavors make a positive impact at their institutions and across the entire university system. She is the author of Claiming Freedom: Race, Kinship, and Land in Nineteenth-Century Georgia (University of South Carolina Press, 2018) and Running from Bondage: Enslaved Women and Their Remarkable Fight for Freedom in Revolutionary America (Cambridge University Press, 2021).
Professor Bell is a graduate of Savannah State University in Georgia. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in history from Howard University in Washington, D.C.
