Honors & Awards

The Association of American Publishers has presented the 2025 PROSE Excellence Award in Humanities to Matthew Morrison for his book Blacksound: Making Race and Popular Music in the United States.

Crystal Sanders' award-winning book, A Forgotten Migration: Black Southerners, Segregation Scholarships, and the Debt Owed to Public HBCUs, explores Black southerners' efforts to secure post-baccalaureate education during the era of legal segregation.

"I am immensely proud of our students," said Karl Twyner, dean of humanities at Rust College. "They worked diligently to prepare for this once-in-a-lifetime experience. Through it, they gained international exposure for themselves and the college, received valuable feedback from world-class judges, and created lifelong memories."

A leading authority on social equity in government, Dr. Gooden currently serves as dean of the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University.

The Honda All-Star Challenge is an annual academic competition for students and faculty at historically Black colleges and universities. This year's top finisher, Hampton University, received a $100,000 grant for their win.

"I accept this award not as an individual milestone, but as a celebration of the collective—of every student, every partner, every institution that dared to believe in the power of education to liberate, elevate, and transform," said Dr. Lomax, president and CEO of the United Negro College Fund.

A Carolina Distinguished Professor at the University of South Carolina, Dr. Boutte is a scholar of promoting anti-racism and pro-Blackness within education.

Dr. Simpson is an associate professor and chair of the department of mathematics at Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina. She studies the design of clinical trials, the metrics of aging, and initiatives to increase diversity in the field of statistics.

Claflin University President Dwaun Warmack has had an extensive career in student affairs and higher education, including service with several historically Black universities. Before assuming the Claflin presidency in 2019, he spent five years as president of Harris-Stowe State University.

"Investing in HBCUs, TCUs, and MSIs yields exponential returns, as these institutions serve as engines of economic growth, social mobility, and ladders of opportunity for millions of students and their communities," write the authors. "Their work goes beyond addressing historical inequities; it is essential to building a stronger, more inclusive, and more competitive future for the nation."

A distinguished professor at Texas Southern University, Dr. Bullard is a leading scholar in the field of environmental justice. He currently serves as founding director of the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice.

The Debate Team at historically Black Texas Southern University has won the Speech and Debate Tournament held by the International Forensic Association, marking the team's fifth IFA championship.

Michelle Petty Grue, assistant teaching professor of writing at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Anna Charity Hudley, professor of eduaction at Stanford University, were recently recognized for their co-authored paper, "Black Linguistic Justice from Theory to Practice."

With more than 225 jazz recordings to his credit, Professor Allen has performed with several Grammy Award-winning jazz artists. His career in academia includes faculty positions with the University of Missouri-Kansas City and the Juilliard School in New York City.

Prior to joining the Georgia State University faculty in 2020, Dr. Johnson spent several years as a law enforcement officer in Memphis, Tennessee. For his expertise in racially disparate justice outcomes, the Western Society of Criminology has presented him with the 2025 W.E.B. Du Bois Award.

Major Jackson, the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, was honored by Yale's Beinecke Library for his recent book, Razzle Dazzle: New and Selected Poems 2002-2022.

Dr. Bennett was the first Black woman to be board-certified by the American Board of Urology. She currently teaches at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she was the university's first woman faculty member in the urology department.

Dr. Bolden-Tiller is the dean of the College of Agriculture, Environment, and Nutrition Sciences at Tuskegee University, where she has taught for nearly two decades.

Dr. Dennie's award-winning book, Mary Ann Shadd Cary: Essential Writings of a Nineteenth-Century Black Radical Feminist, examines the works of North America's first Black woman newspaper editor.

Marsha McGriff, vice chancellor for equity and inclusion at the University of Masssachusetts Amherst, has been selected to receive the 2025 Diamond Award for Excellence in Diversity and Inclusion Leadership from the Atlanta-based Not Alone Foundation. The foundation's stated mission is fighting kidney disease.