Notable Awards for Three African Americans
The honorees are Derron Wallace, an assistant professor at Brandeis University, Crystal A. George Mwangi, an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts, and Clyde Kennard, the first Black student to seek admission at the University of Southern Mississippi.
Tennessee State University to Establish the Dr. Levi Watkins Jr. Memorial Institute
The new initiative to honor Dr. Watkins at Tennessee State will have several components; an endowed scholarship fund for pre-med students, a lecture series on health care and STEM education, and on-campus societies to aid pre-med and STEM students.
Kara Walker Elected to Membership of the American Philosophical Society
This year the American Philosophical Society granted membership to 27 individuals. Of these, it appears that only one of the new members is an African American: Kara Walker, who holds the Tepper Family Chair in Visual Arts at Rutgers University in New Jersey.
Two HBCUs Recognize African Americans by Naming Auditoriums in Their Honor
The honorees are Carver Randle Sr., a practicing attorney who is a long-time supporter and former special assistant to the president of Mississippi Valley State University, and Wayne J. Riley former president of Meharry Medical College, who now serves as president of SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn.
Princeton’s Tera Hunter Wins Book Award From the Organization of American Historians
Tera W. Hunter, a professor of history and African American studies at Princeton University in New Jersey, has been awarded the Mary Nickliss Prize in U.S. Women's and/or Gender History from the Organization of American Historians.
Three Black Scholars Honored With Prestigious Awards
The honorees are Esther Ngumbi, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Illinois, Gerald Williams, interim director of the Division of Diversity and Inclusion at Valdosta State University in Georgia, and Ismail H. Abdullahi, an associate professor of library science at North Carolina Central University in Durham.
A Trio of Black Women Scholars Honored With Notable Awards
The honorees are Gloria Billingsley of Jackson State University in Mississippi, Sandra McGee of the School of Social Work at the University of Iowa, and Janice Jackson of the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Henry Louis Gates Jr. Awarded the 2018 Creativity Laureate Prize
Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University, was honored recently at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Tulane’s Jesmyn Ward to Receive the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Fiction
Jesmyn Ward, an associate professor of English at Tulane University in New Orleans, will receive the fiction award at the 83rd Annual Anisfield-Wolf Book Award ceremony in Cleveland this September. She is the only woman to win two National Book Awards.
Saint Louis University Honors the Late Black Scholar Norman White
Saint Louis University in Missouri has announced that it is establishing the Norman A. White Lecture that will present speakers "who embody the spirit of and commitment to social justice possessed by the late Saint Louis University faculty member." Dr. White died last December at the age of 64.
Shane McCrae to Receive the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Poetry
Shane McCrae is an assistant professor of writing in the School of the Arts at Columbia University in New York City. McCrae joined the faculty at Columbia University in 2017 after teaching for three years at Oberlin College in Ohio.
Donna Y. Ford of Vanderbilt University Recognized for Her Diversity Efforts in Gifted Education
Dr. Ford teaches in the department of special education and holds a joint appointment in the department of teaching and learning at Vanderbilt. She holds the Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair at the university’s Peabody College of education and human development.
Oregon State University Honors African American Novelist Colson Whitehead
Colson Whitehead has been selected to receive the 2019 Stone Award for Literacy Achievement from Oregon State University. The award is presented to an American author who has created a body of critically acclaimed work and has been a mentor to young writers.
Three African American Women Scholars Receive Prestigious Awards
The honorees are Zakiya Holmes Leggett of North Carolina State University, Cynthia Nance of the University of Arkansas School of Law, and Wanda Heading-Grant of the University of Vermont.
Tulane University’s Jesmyn Ward Nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award in Fiction
The five finalists for the PEN/Faulkner Award in fiction have been announced by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation in Washington, D.C. One of the five finalists is an African American: Jesmyn Ward, an associate professor of creative writing at Tulane University in New Orleans.
University of Oklahoma Names an Academic Department to Honor Clara Luper
The University of Oklahoma has announced that it is recognizing educator and civil rights leader Clara Luper by naming the department of African and African American studies in her honor. Known as the "Mother of the Oklahoma Civil Rights Movement," she taught high school history for 41 years.
University of Montana Honors an Early Black Faculty Member
Gloria Hewitt taught at the University of Montana for 38 years and was one of the first African American women to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics. A scholarship for graduate students in mathematics has been established at the university in her name.
Fannone Jeffers Wins the 2018 Harper Lee Award From the Alabama Writers’ Forum
Fanonne Jeffers, a tenured full professor of creative writing at the University of Oklahoma, will receive the honor during a gala dinner at the Alabama Writers Symposium in Monroeville, Alabama, on April 19.
Notable Awards for Three African American Faculty Members
The three honorees are Faye Belgrave, University Professor of psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University, Aldon Morris, who holds an endowed chair at Northwestern University, and Jeremy Winston, an assistant professor of music and chorus director at Central State University in Ohio.
Honors or Awards for a Trio of African American Scholars
The honorees are David Crockett of the School of Business at the University of South Carolina, Anjelica Gonzalez of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and the late Carroll F.S. Hardy, a long-time administrator at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.
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.
