Honors & Awards

John Dabiri to Receive the 2020 Alan T. Waterman Award From the National Science Foundation

Waterman awardees each receive $1 million over five years for research in their chosen field of science. Dabiri says the funding will allow him to pursue research into some of the ways climate change challenges and threatens modern life.

Cornell’s Derrick Spires Wins First Book Award From the Modern Language Association

In the book, Dr. Spires, an associate professor of English in the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, examines the parallel development of early Black print culture and legal and cultural understandings of U.S. citizenship between 1787 and 1861.

Sabrina Cherry of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington Wins Peace Corps Award

The Franklin H. Williams Award recognizes ethnically diverse Peace Corps volunteers who have returned from their assignments and have demonstrated a lifelong commitment to civic engagement, service, diversity, inclusion, and world peace.

Robert Bullard of Texas Southern University Honored by the United Nations

Dr. Bullard received the 2020 Champions of the Earth Lifetime Achievement award from the United Nations Environment Programme. Dr. Bullard was honored for his commitment and service to environmental justice.

The American Society of Criminology Honors Book by Berkeley Professor Nikki Jones

Nikki Jones, a professor of African American studies at the University of California, Berkeley, has won the 2020 Michael J. Hindelang Award from the American Society of Criminology. The award recognizes a book published within the past three years that makes the most outstanding contribution to research in criminology.

Louisiana State’s Tina Harris Honored by the National Communication Association

Tina M. Harris, who holds the Douglas L. Manship Sr.-Dori Maynard Race, Media, and Cultural Literacy Endowed Chair at the Manship School of Mass Communication, won the Francine Merritt Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Lives of Women in Communication.

Berkeley’s Nikki Jones Honored by the Western Society of Criminology

Nikki Jones, a professor of African American studies at the University of California, Berkeley, has been awarded the 2020 W.E.B. DuBois Award from the Western Society of Criminology for her work in raising awareness for racial and ethic issues in criminology and criminal justice.

Danielle Phillips-Cunningham Honored by the National Women’s Studies Association

Danielle Phillips-Cunningham, an associate professor of multicultural women's and gender studies at Texas Woman's University, is the recipient of a 2020 National Women's Studies Association's Sara A. Whaley Book Prize.

Emery Brown Awarded the Swartz Prize for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience

Emery N. Brown is the Edward Hood Taplin Professor of Medical Engineering and Computational Neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also serves as the Warren M. Zapol Professor at Harvard Medical School and is a practicing anesthesiologist.

Professor Claude Steele Honored for a Lifetime of Work in Social Psychology

The Legacy Award from the Society of Personality and Social Psychology honors figures whose career contributions have shaped the field. Dr. Steele, a professor emeritus at Stanford University, is perhaps best known for his work on the underperformance of minority students due to stereotype threat.

Oklahoma State University Bestows Additional Honors on Its First Black Student

In 1949, Nancy Randolph Davis became the first African-American student to enroll at what was then Oklahoma A&M College. Initially, she was required to sit in the hallway outside a classroom because of the color of her skin.

Yale University’s Hazel Carby Wins Book Award From the British Academy

Hazel V. Carby is the Charles C. & Dorathea S. Dilley Professor Emerita of African American Studies & American Studies at Yale University. The daughter of a White Welsh mother and a Black Jamaican father, Dr. Carby taught at Yale for 30 years before retiring from teaching at the end of the 2018-19 academic year.

Princeton University’s Deana Lawson Is the First Photographer to Win the Hugo Boss Prize

Sponsored by the German fashion house Hugo Boss and presented by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, the prize has been awarded biannually since 1996 and was established to “embrace today’s most innovative and critically relevant cultural currents.” The prize is considered among the most prestigious awards within the contemporary art world.

Jeanne Craig Sinkford Wins the Highest Award Given by the American College of Dentists

Dr. Sinkford was appointed associate dean at the Howard University College of Dentistry in 1967. In 1975, she broke the gender barrier when she was appointed dean of Howard University College of Dentistry, the first woman to lead a U.S. dental school. She served as dean from 1975 to 1991.

Anderson Sunda-Meya Wins the Excellence in Physics Education Award

Anderson Sunda-Meya, the Norwood Endowed Professor of Physics and associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences at Xavier University in New Orleans, has been awarded the 2021 Excellence in Physics Education Award from the American Physical Society.

University of Chicago’s Eve Ewing Honored at the Iowa City Book Festival

Eve Ewing is an assistant professor at the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago. The Paul Engle Prize honors writers who demonstrate a pioneering spirit in the world of literature and a commitment to engaging with the issues of the day.

College of Engineering at Cornell University Honors Its Former Dean, Lance R. Collins

Dr. Collins served as the Joseph Silbert Dean of Engineering at Cornell University from 2010 to 2020. On August 1, 2020, he became the inaugural vice president and executive director of Virginia Tech’s new Innovation Campus in Alexandria, Virginia.

Tamara Bertrand Jones Honored by the Association for the Study of Higher Education

Tamara Bertrand Jones is an associate professor of higher education in the College of Education at Florida State University. Her research examines the sociocultural influences on socialization during graduate education and the professional experiences of underrepresented populations, particularly Black women, in academia.

Harvard Business School Renames Building to Honor Its First Black Tenured Faculty Member

James I. Cash was the first African American to earn a basketball scholarship at Texas Christian University. After earning a master's degree and a Ph.D. in computer science at Purdue University, Dr. Cash joined the faculty at Harvard Business School in 1976. He became the first Black tenured faculty member in 1985.

Baylor University Honors Its First Black Graduate Student in Religion

The department of religion in the College of Arts & Sciences at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, has named a graduate student scholarship program in honor of Robert L. Gilbert, the first Black student to receive an undergraduate degree at Baylor University and the first Black graduate student in religion.

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