Camille A. Brown was named the Claude and Alfred Mann Endowed Artist in Dance at the University of Southern California Glorya Kaufman School of Dance. A five-time Tony Award nominee, Brown is the artistic director and founder of Camille A. Brown & Dancers. She made history as the first Black artist to direct on the Metropolitan Opera’s main stage with Fire Shut Up in My Bones, and became the first Black woman to direct and choreograph a Broadway play since Katherine Dunham in 1955 with her revival of for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf. Brown is currently slated to direct and choreograph an upcoming Broadway revival of Dreamgirls.
Brown received her bachelor of fine arts degree in dance from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.
Robert R. Lindsey was appointed chair of the department of health and human performance at Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina. Dr. Lindsey, a professor of health education, has been a faculty member at the HBCU since 2006. He previously served as department chair from 2015 to 2018 and has taught courses in in health education, sport psychology, epidemiology, program planning and evaluation, minority health, global health, research, statistics, and quantitative methods.
Dr. Lindsey is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, where he majored in mathematics and statistics. He holds a master’s degree in exercise science with a concentration in sport psychology from the University of Missouri and a Ph.D. in health behavior from the University of Florida.
Ashley Leak Bryant is vice dean of the University of North Carolina School of Nursing. Dr. Bryant, the Frances Hill Fox Distinguished Term Professor, has been serving as senior associate dean for the university’s Office of Strategy and Global Affairs and as co-director of the Pan American Health Organization Collaboration Center in Quality and Safety in Nursing and Midwifery. Her research focuses on team-based palliative care for older adults with cancer and their care partners.
Dr. Bryant holds a bachelor’s degree in nursing and her master’s degree in nursing administration from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She earned a doctorate in nursing from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Amaryah Shaye Armstrong is a new assistant professor of religion at Columbia University in New York City. She is a scholar of race, religion, and sexuality whose work explores the intersections of Black thought, political theology, and continental philosophy of religion. She is completing work on her first book, Sentimental Theologies: Sense, Sex, and the Reproduction of Black Significance. She previously taught at Virginia Tech.
Dr. Armstrong is a graduate of Belmont University in Nashville, where she majored in English literature. She holds a master of theological studies degree from Emory University in Atlanta and a Ph.D. in religion from Vanderbilt University in Nashville.
Charles “Tré” Watkins III is a new assistant professor of political science at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, California. Dr. Watkins previously served as the university’s director of career services. His research focuses on Black placemaking and political participation, and his teaching specialties include research methods and methodology.
Dr. Watkins holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from California State University, San Bernardino, a master’s degree in sociology from Arizona State University, and a Ph.D. in education for social justice from the University of San Diego.
