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.
Here is this week’s news of grants or gifts to historically Black colleges and universities or for programs of particular interest to African Americans in higher education.
Dr. Shannon began her career at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine as the main research lab technologist. In 1990, she left the lab to become director of the minority affairs office at the school, becoming the school’s first associate dean for minority affairs in 1998, a post she held until she retired in 2008.
Taking on new administrative positions relating to diversity are Tina Simpson at Tulane University in New Orleans, William Smith at the Huntsman Mental Health Institute at the University of Utah, Greneda Johnson at the University of Arkansas School of Law, and J. Camille Hall at the University of Missouri Kansas City.
After a long career in the National Football League, Pellomm McDaniels III earned master's and doctoral degrees and taught at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and Emory University. At the time of his death, he was curator of African American collections at the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library at Emory.
Here is this week’s roundup of African Americans who have been appointed to new administrative positions at colleges and universities throughout the United States.
Appointed to new administrative posts are Cheryl Isaac at Pennsylvania State University, Brandon Martin at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Makayla McMorris at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, Delores Richardson Harris at North Carolina Central University, and Marco Barker at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Melvin Curtis Tyler served as vice chancellor of student affairs and enrollment management at the University of Missouri-Kansas City until just 10 days before his death.
Janet E. Helms, the Augustus Long Professor at the Lynch School of Education at Boston College, was presented with the Lifetime Achievement in Mentoring Award in Counseling Psychology by the Society of Counseling Psychology and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for the Psychological Study of Culture, Ethnicity and Race.
Sandra Miles will be the next dean of students and vice provost for student affairs at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and Camelia Moses Okpodu was appointed dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans.
Sabrina Madison-Cannon has been serving as a professor of dance and associate dean of academic and faculty affairs in the Conservatory of Music and Dance at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She will begin her new job this coming summer.
Taking on new roles are Sherilynn Black at Duke University, Aaron A. Bellow Jr. at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Daphne A. Bascom at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Rhoda Williams at Vanderbilt University and Rashida Atkins at Rutgers University-Camden.
This past May, Leo E. Morton, chancellor of the University of Missouri-Kansas City, announced that he would step down at the end of the 2017-18 academic year. Now Chancellor Morton has announced that he will leave the university in October.
Morton has led the university since December 2008. At that time, he was chair of the university's board of trustees and agreed to lead the university as interim chancellor until a new leader could be found. But a few months later, the board asked him to take the job on a permanent basis.
Here is this week’s news of grants to historically Black colleges and universities or for programs of particular interest to African Americans in higher education.
Since 2011, Professor Boise has been serving as dean of the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law at Cleveland State University in Ohio. Earlier, he served on the law school faculty at DePaul University in Chicago and Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.
A study of 232 public colleges and universities with overall graduation rate increases found that the rate for White students at these schools improved 5.6 percentage points over the past decade. But Black student graduation rates increased by just 4.4 percentage points.
The two Black finalists for dean of education at the University of Missouri-Kansas City are Keith B. Wilson, a professor at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, and Abul A. Pitre a professor at Prairie View A&M University in Texas.
The honorees are Thomas Calhoun of Jackson State University, Conella Coulter Brown, one of the first Black students at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and James Franklin Densler of the Morehouse School of Medicine.