Harvard’s Henry Louis Gates Jr. Honored by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences
Professor Gates received the Don M. Randel Award for Humanistic Studies from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The award has been given out only seven times since it was established in 1975.
Antoinette Landor of the University of Missouri Honored for Mentoring Undergraduate Researchers
Antoinette Landor, associate professor in the department of human development and family science in the College of Human Environmental Sciences at the University of Missouri, was recently named the 2020 Undergraduate Research Mentor by the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities.
Creighton University Chemistry Scholar Honored by the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation
Kayode Oshin, associate professor of chemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, has been named a Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar, an award honoring young faculty in the chemical sciences. He will receive a $75,000 award to help fund his research.
Asmeret Asefaw Berhe Wins the Joanne Simpson Medal From the American Geophysical Union
Asmeret Asefaw Berhe holds the Falasco Chair in Earth Sciences and Geology and is associate dean of the graduate division at the University of California, Merced. The main focus of her research is to understand the effect of changing environmental conditions on vital soil processes.
John Dabiri to Receive the 2020 Alan T. Waterman Award From the National Science...
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.
Howard University’s Kehbuma Langmia Honored by the National Communication Association
Kehbuma Langmia, professor and chair of the department of strategic, legal and management communications is the 2020 recipient of the Orlando L. Taylor Distinguished Scholarship Award in Africana Communication, presented by the National Communication Association.
Cato Laurencin Honored for Promotion of Social Justice in Medical Education
Cato T. Laurencin is the Albert and Wilda Van Dusen Distinguished Endowed Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery, professor of chemical engineering, materials sciences, and biomedical engineering, and one of only two University Professors at the University of Connecticut.
Simmons University Scholar Named Distinguished Educator of the Year in Social Work
Johnnie Hamilton-Mason was honored by the National Association of Black Social Workers. She is a professor and holds the Eva Whiting White Endowed Chair at Simmons University’s School of Social Work in Boston.
San Diego Mesa College Honors Its Former President Constance Carroll
Dr. Carroll was appointed chancellor of the San Diego Community College District in 2004. Earlier, she served as president of San Diego Mesa College for 11 years. The Humanities Institute on the campus of San Diego Mesa College will be named in her honor.
City of Tallahassee Honors Former Florida A&M University Professor Charles Evans
The city of Tallahassee, Florida, has renamed a pond in the Myers Park neighborhood to honor Charles E. Evans, a former professor at Florida A&M University. The pond used to be named for a segregationist justice of the Florida Supreme Court.
Two Prestigious Universities Bestow Honors on African American Scholars
Stanford University has named a theater on campus in honor of Harry Elam Jr., who taught at Stanford for 30 years before becoming president of Occidental College in Los Angeles. Rice University in Houston has named a grove after Rev. William A. Lawson a civil rights leader and former professor at Texas Southern University.
Three African Americans in Higher Education Honored With Prestigious Awards
The honorees are Francis A. Pearman, an assistant professor of education at Stanford University, Janice R. Franklin, dean of library and learning resources at Alabama State University, and David Stovall, professor of Black studies and criminology, law, and justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
George Washington University Professor Wins American Marketing Association Award
Vanessa Perry is the associate dean for faculty and research and professor of marketing at the George Washington University School of Business. She has been actively involved with The PhD Project, an organization that works to increase the diversity of business school faculty through mentorship.
Leo Rouse Receives the Distinguished Service Award From the American Dental Association
Leo E. Rouse, retired dean of the College of Dentistry at Howard University, was the first African American to serve as president of the American Dental Education Association. Earlier, he was the commander of the U.S. Army Dental Command.
A Trio of African American Scholars Receive Notable Honors or Awards
The honorees are Milton Morris, the director of Environmental Health Science at Benedict College in South Carolina, Stephanie Luster-Teasley, a professor of engineering at North Carolina A&T State University, and Alexander Byrd, associate dean of humanities and associate professor of history at Rice University in Houston.
Melissa Holloway Honored by the National Association of College and University Attorneys
Since May 2019, Mellissa Holloway has been general counsel for legal affairs at North Carolina A&T State University in East Greensboro. Earlier, she was deputy general counsel at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, and general counsel at North Carolina Central University in Durham.
Harvard’s Danielle Allen Awarded the $500,000 Kluge Prize From the Library of Congress
Danielle S. Allen, a University professor and professor of government who also serves as director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, has been awarded the John W. Kluge Prize from the Library of Congress. The prize recognizes scholarly achievement in disciplines not covered by the Nobel Prizes.
