Freeman Hrabowski to Receive American Council on Education’s Lifetime Achievement Award
Dr. Hrabowski has served as president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County since 1992. Over the course of his career, President Hrabowski has been a strong advocate for increasing opportunities for African American students in STEM disciplines.
Patricia Smith Wins the $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award
Patricia Smith teaches in the English department at the College of Staten Island of the City University of New York System. The $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, given out by Claremont Graduate University in California, is the largest in the world for a single volume of poetry.
Trudier Harris Wins Nonfiction Writing Award From the University of Alabama
Trudier Harris, University Distinguished Research Professor of English at the University of Alabama, received the Clarence C. Cason Award in Nonfiction Writing from the journalism department at the university for her body of work on women and Black southern writers.
Three African American Men Honored With Prestigious Awards
The honorees are Ernest E. Jeffries, associate dean of students at Davidson College, Robert Smith, a graduate of Tougaloo College who was a major figure in the civil rights movement, and Roscoe Mitchell of Mills College.
Berkeley’s First Tenured Black Scholar Has a Building Named in His Honor
Dr. David Blackwell, an accomplished statistician, joined the mathematics department at Berkeley in 1954 and stayed on the faculty there until retiring in 1988. In 1965, he was the first African American to be inducted into the National Academy of Sciences.
Syracuse University’s Marcelle Haddix Wins Outstanding Book Award From AACTE
Dr. Haddix is being honored for her book Cultivating Racial and Linguistic Diversity in Literacy Teacher Education: Teachers Like Me. Dr. Haddix will be honored at the association's 70th annual meeting in Baltimore.
Johns Hopkins University Scholar Honored for Work to Promote Diversity in Nursing
Phyllis Sharps, professor and associate dean for community programs and initiatives at the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing in Baltimore, was named as the recipient of the Diversity in Nursing Award from Modern Healthcare.
Two Black Scholars Honored by State Universities
Pamela Scott-Bracey of Mississippi State University, was named Collegiate Teacher of the Year by the Southern Business Education Association. Tennessee State University has announced that its multimedia newsroom will be named in honor of the late Getahn Ward, a long-time adjunct professor of journalism.
Reginald Rogers Named Educator of the Year by the National Society of Black Engineers
The Dr. Janice A. Lumpkin Educator of the Year Award from the National Society of Black Engineers is given annually to a collegiate faculty member who demonstrates commitment to advancing education in engineering, science or mathematics.
Kwame Dawes Names a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets
Kwame Dawes is Chancellor's Professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He will serve as a judge for the Academy’s largest prizes for poets and act as an ambassador of poetry in the world at large.
African American Scholar Wins National Book Award in Fiction
Jesmyn Ward is an associate professor of English at Tulane University. This is the second time she was won the National Book Award in fiction. In 2017, she was chosen as a MacArthur Fellow.
Three African American Women Scholars Honored With Notable Awards
The honorees are Elizabeth F. Desnoyers-Colas an associate professor at Georgia Southern University, Stacy Hawkins, an associate professor at Rutgers Law School in Camden, New Jersey, and Deborah Deas, the dean of the School of Medicine of the University of California, Riverside.
University of Cincinnati Names a Building After an Alumna and Civil Rights Pioneer
Civil rights leader Marian Spencer is being recognized by having a dormitory on the campus of the University of Cincinnati named in her honor. Ironically, when she was a student at the university in the 1940s, she was prohibited from campus housing due to her race.
Lauret Savoy Honored by the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment
Lauret Savoy, the David B. Truman Professor of Environmental Studies at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, won an award for excellence in environmental creative writing for her book Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape.
Two Black Students at Harvard Awarded International Rhodes Scholarships
Two Black students at Harvard University have been awarded Rhodes Scholarships, allocated to their home country or region. Terrens Muradzikwa is an economics major from Zimbabwe and Mandela Patrick is a computer science major from Trinidad.
Notable Honors for Two African American Women in Academia
M. Shawn Copeland, a professor of theology at Boston College, was presented with the Marianist Award from the University of Dayton and Mary Jo Fayoyin, dean of library services at Savannah State University was honored by the American Library Association.
Colby College President’s House Named to Honor a Former Slave
Samuel Osbourne, born into slavery in Virginia in 1833, came to Maine after the Civil War and served as a janitor at the college for 37 years. His daughter was the first African American woman to graduate from Colby College.
Stretch of Interstate 85 in North Carolina Named to Honor John Hope Franklin
Now, nearly nine years after the death of one of the most prolific and respected historians of the twentieth century, a section of Interstate 85 near Durham, North Carolina, has been designated the Dr. John H. Franklin Highway.
Two African Americans Scholars Receive Notable Honors
The honorees are Shelly Haley, professor of classics and professor of Africana studies at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, and Eric A. Stewart, a professor in the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida State University.
Simmons College in Boston Names a College in Honor of Journalist and Alumna Gwen...
Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts, announced that it will rename its College of Media, Arts and Humanities after Gwen Ifill, the noted journalist and Simmons College alumna who died in 2016.
A New Tribute to Educator and Civil Rights Icon Benjamin E. Mays
Earlier this month a new statue of Benjamin E. Mays, the educator and civil rights leader was unveiled at the Dr. Benjamin E. Mays Historical Preservation Site near Epworth, South Carolina, near where Dr. Mays was born. Dr Mays was president of Morehouse College from 1940 to 1967.
Three African American Men From the Academic World Receive Distinguished Honors
The honorees are Wayne A.I. Frederick, president of Howard University, George C. Hill, professor emeritus at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, and Roderick L. Ireland, a Distinguished Professor at Northeastern University in Boston.
Ladee Hubbard to Receive the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence
Ladee Hubbard, who teaches in the Africana studies program at Tulane University in New Orleans, is being honored for her debut novel The Talented Ribkins, the story of an African American family whose members have unique superpowers.
Washington State University Scholar to Be Awarded the Bullitt Environmental Prize
Cornelius Adewale, a doctoral student in the School of the Environment at Washington State University, is working on improving the environmental impact of agriculture. He hopes to develop methods to reduce chemical fertilizers but produce more food.
George Mason Honors Civil Rights Icon Roger Wilkins
George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, recently named its North Plaza in honor of Roger Wilkins, a civil rights leader, journalist, and a former long-time faculty member at the university. Wilkins died this past March.
Chemical Engineer at Arizona State Honored as Educator of the Year
Jean Andino, an associate professor of chemical engineering at Arizona State University, received the Educator of the Year Award from the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers.
Colson Whitehead Honored Once Again for His Novel The Underground Railroad
Colson Whitehead won the 2017 Hurston/Wright Award for fiction presented by the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation. The novel has previously won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, the 2016 National Book Award for Fiction, and the Carnegie Medal of Excellence.
Council of Social Work Education Honors June Gary Hopps for Lifetime Achievement
June Gary Hopps is the Thomas M. "Jim" Parham Professor of Family and Children Studies in the School of Social Work at the University of Georgia. Earlier she was dean of the Boston College School of Social Work.
Distinguished Honors for Three African American Faculty Members
Professor Charles Ogletree is having an endowed chair named in his honor at Harvard Law School. Jawole Willa Jo Zollar of Florida State University was honored for lifetime achievement in dance and Trudier Harris of the University of Alabama has honored for being the first tenured Black faculty member at the College of William and Mary.
Four Black Scholars Receive Prestigious Honors or Awards
The honorees are Barbara Krauthamer of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Chinyere Oparah of Mills College in Oakland, California, Livingston Alexander of the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, and Anthony K. Wutoh of Howard University.
Honors and Awards for Five African Americans With Ties to Academia
Those presented with awards or who received honors are Torina D. Lewis of Clark Atlanta University, Hank Aaron at the University of Notre Dame, Charles Ogletree of Harvard Law School, Thomas J. Freeman of Texas Southern University, and Wilma Harper Horne at Hampton University.
Julian Randall Selected to Receive the 2017 Cave Canem Award in Poetry
Julian Randall, a second-year student in the master of fine arts creative writing program at the University of Mississippi, has been selected as the winner of the 2017 Cave Canem Poetry Prize from the Brooklyn, New York-based Cave Canem Foundation.
A Historical Marker at the University of Alabama Honors Autherine Lucy Foster
After a three-year legal battle, in 1956 Autherine Lucy Foster enrolled in a graduate program in education at the University of Alabama. Angry protests by White students ensured. Foster was suspended three days later "for her own safety" and she was later expelled.
University of Virginia School of Medicine Honors an Early Black Graduate
Dr. Vivian Pinn was the only woman and the only African American in the 1967 graduating class. She later served for 20 years as director of the Office for Research on Women's Health at the National Institutes of Health. Now, the medical research building at the University of Virginia has been renamed in her honor.
College of Business Administration at Alabama State University Named for Former Dean
Alabama State University has named its College of Business Administration to honor Percy J. Vaughn Jr. Dr. Vaughn was recruited to establish the College of Business Administration in 1975. He served as dean for 35 years until his retirement in 2010.
Darlene Clark Hine Receives Lifetime Achievement Award From the Southern Historical Association
The John Hope Franklin Lifetime Achievement Award is given out every five years. The award committee stated that "we cannot conceive of a more deserving candidate. Hine's career has been deeply active, productive, and consequential."
