The Black Scholars Index » Subjects of Study

Dr. John A. Powell, Director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity

Leshell Hatley — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 23:41:18 +0000

Professor John A. Powell is an internationally recognized authority in the areas of civil rights and civil liberties and a wide range of issues including race, structural racism, ethnicity, housing, poverty and democracy. He is Executive Director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University and he holds the Gregory H. Williams Chair in Civil Rights & Civil Liberties at the University’s Michael E. Moritz College of Law.

Education
University of Minnesota, Post‐Graduate Human Rights Fellow, 1978 ‐ 1980
University of California‐Berkeley (Boalt Hall), Juris Doctor, 1973
Stanford University, Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, Philosophy Minor, 1969

Author
Professor powell has written extensively on a number of issues including structural racism, racial justice and regionalism, concentrated poverty and urban sprawl, opportunity based housing, voting rights, affirmative action in the United States, South Africa and Brazil, racial and ethnic identity, spirituality and social justice, and the needs of citizens in a democratic society. His written work includes four books, 18 book chapters, and more than 50 journal articles, op‐eds, essays, and position papers. He is highly regarded as a public speaker with more than 125 invited speeches and presentations since 2003.

Career
Previously, he founded and directed the Institute on Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota. He also served as Director of Legal Services of Greater Miami and was National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, where he was instrumental in developing educational adequacy theory. Professor powell has worked and lived in Africa, where he was a consultant to the governments of Mozambique and South Africa. He has also lived and worked in India and done work in South America
and Europe. He is one of the co‐founders of the Poverty & Race Research Action Council and serves on the board of several national organizations. Professor powell has taught at numerous law schools including Harvard and Columbia University. He joined the faculty at The Ohio State University in 2002.

The Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity
Under his leadership, The Kirwan Institute has taken a national leadership role in researching, developing, and advocating for regional solutions to problems associated with racialized space. To advance this work, Professor powell has developed an “opportunity‐based” housing model that provides a critical and creative framework for thinking about affordable housing, racialized space, and how an individualʹs destiny is impacted by where they live. The central principal of this model is that residents of
metropolitan regions are situated within a complex and interconnected web of opportunity structures that significantly shapes their quality of life. These opportunity structures include education, health care, employment, transportation, civic engagement and others.

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Information from The Kirwan Institute’s website.

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: Dean of the School of Education Howard University

Leshell Hatley — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 19:55:35 +0000

Dr. Leslie T. Fenwick has more than 25 years of experience in higher education, public policy, philanthropy, and urban PK-12 schools. Currently, she is dean and professor of educational policy and leadership at the Howard University School of Education.

Dean at Howard University

Under her leadership as dean, the School of Education submitted a record $18.1 million in grant proposals to federal agencies during one academic year, attained national recognition of its degree programs, hosted a campus visit by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, held a Capitol Hill policy forum on African American male student achievement (attended by nearly 200 educators and legislators), established a Visiting Scholar in Urban Education post, and received an $800,000 award from the U.S. Department of the Interior for capital improvements to the historic Miner Building, home to the Howard University School of Education. In addition to her duties as dean of the Howard University School of Education, she is co-principal investigator of the Ready to Teach Program, a $2.1 million award from the U.S. Department of Education designed to recruit and prepare African American males (and other underrepresented groups) as PK-12 teachers.

Career

Considered a scholar-administrator, Dr. Fenwick held successive appointments as a visiting scholar in education and visiting fellow at Harvard University. Additionally, she was a program officer at the Southern Education Foundation (SEF) where she successfully managed the implementation of an $11 million minority teacher pipeline project in 7 southeastern states supported by the Wallace Funds. Dr. Fenwick also served as associate dean of the School of Education and chair of the Department of Educational Leadership during her thirteen year tenure at Clark Atlanta University.

Fenwick has devoted her career to improving educational opportunity and outcomes for African American and other underserved students (in the education pipeline from the elementary through graduate school levels). Noted for her work in education policy circles, she is editor of numerous books and author of research articles and policy monographs about the strategic value of using urban school reform as a lever for community rebuilding and neighborhood revitalization, educational policy (particularly as it relates to race equity), and the principalship.

Author

Fenwick is a contributing author to The Last Word: Controversy and Commentary in American Education. The book features the best commentary essays in the 25-year history of Education Week and boasts selections from former President Bill Clinton, noted historian John Hope Franklin, and esteemed educators Linda Darling-Hammond and Howard Gardner among others. In January 2009, Dr. Fenwick appeared on C-SPAN as a panelist to discuss solutions to the nation’s education challenges. Most recently, she delivered framing remarks at the first hearing of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Commission which aired in its entirety on C-SPAN.

Education

Fenwick earned a BS in education from the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia and a PhD in educational policy and leadership from The Ohio State University. She is a member of the National Advisory Council for the George Lucas Education Foundation.

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Information obtained from Howard University

Jesse Russell, Pioneer of Signal Processing and Wireless Communications

Leshell Hatley — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 13:45:46 +0000

Jesse Eugene Russell

Jesse Eugene Russell is an African-American inventor and one of the visionaries’ whose innovative perspectives profoundly influenced the wireless communications industry, the driver of growth in 21st century. Trained as an electrical engineer at Tennessee State University and Stanford University, and recognized globally as a thought-leader, technology expert and inventor in the field of wireless communication for over 20 years, Russell has played a major role in shaping the wireless communications industry direction through his visionary leadership and innovative perspectives for standards, technologies as well as innovative new wireless service concepts.

He holds numerous patents and continues to invent and innovate in the emerging area of next generation broadband wireless networks, technologies and services, which is frequently referred to as 4G. Russell was inducted into the United States’ National Academy of Engineering during the Clinton Administration for his innovative contribution to the field of Wireless Communication. He pioneered the field of digital cellular communication in the 80s through the use of high power linear amplification and low bit rate voice encoding technologies and received a patent in 1992 (US patent # 5,084,869) for his work in the area of digital cellular base station design.

Russell is currently Chairman and CEO of incNETWORKS,Inc. a New Jersey, USA based Broadband Wireless Communications Company focused on 4th Generation (4G) Broadband Wireless Communications Technologies, Networks and Services.

Early Life

Jesse Eugene Russell was born April 26, 1948 in Hickville, Tennessee in the United States of America into a large African-American family with eight brothers and two sisters. He is the son of Charles Albert Russell and Mary Louise Russell. His early childhood was spent in economically and socially challenged neighborhoods within the inner-city of Nashville. During his early years, he focused on athletics and not academics.

Education

A key turning point in Russell’s life was the opportunity to attend a summer educational program at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. Russell participated in this educational opportunity and began his academic and intellectual pursuits. Russell continued his education at Tennessee State University Tennessee State University where he focused on electrical engineering. A Bachelor of Science Degree (BSEE) in Electrical Engineering was conferred in 1972 from Tennessee State University. As a top honor student in the School of Engineering, Russell became the first African American to be hired directly from a Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) by AT&T Bell Laboratories and subsequently became the first African-American in the United States to be selected as the Eta Kappa Nu Outstanding Young Electrical Engineer of the Year in 1980. Russell continued his academic pursuits and obtained his Master of Electrical Engineering (MSEE) degree from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, in 1973.

Inventions & Patents

Russell’s innovations in wireless communication systems, architectures and technology related to radio access networks, end user devices and in-building wireless communication systems has fundamentally changed the wireless communication industry. Known for his patented invention of the digital cellular base station, that enabled new digital services for cellular mobile users, Russell continues to innovate in the emerging next generation broadband wireless communication technologies, products, networks, and services as well as “Mobile Cloud Computing” which are shaping the forefront of the 4G Communication Industry.

Over 100 patents granted or in process, thirty years of experience in Research and Development at prominent institutions, and pioneering technologies such as the invention of the first digital cellular base station and fiber optic microcell utilizing high power linear amplifier technology and digital modulation techniques, which laid the foundation for the digital cellular evolution, digital cellular standards, personal communications networks as well as the emergence of “Mobile Cloud Computing” within 4G broadband wireless networks. These are only some of the inventions that have forged new directions for the wireless communication industry. Listed below are a few significant patents.

Patent No.	Description
7,437,158	Advanced multi-network client device for wideband multimedia access to private and public wireless networks
7,120,139	Broadband cable telephony network architecture IP ITN network architecture reference model
5,724,665	Wireless communication base station
5,655,003	Wireless terminal having digital radio processing with automatic communication system selection capability
5,608,780	Wireless communication system having base units which extracts channel and setup information from nearby base units
5,257,397	Mobile data telephone
5,084,869	Base station for mobile radio telecommunications systems

Other Professional Accomplishments

Jesse is currently building the first Broadband Wireless Communications Network focused on 4th Generation Hybrid Fiber-Wireless Communications Networks and Technologies that is fully compliant with International Telecommunications Union (ITU) standards. Russell continues to innovate and invent new wireless communications technology solutions as the Chief Executive Officer of incNETWORKS which designs, sells, and manages privately owned broadband wireless communications’ equipment and networks for emerging broadband cellular applications based on Software Defined Radio and Cognitive Radio techniques. Offering broadband wireless communications solutions to small and mid-size business customers, incNETWORKS is one of the emerging technology leaders in the development of MicroLTE product platforms for 4G.

Russell joined Bell Labs as a Member of the Technical Staff. He was one of the first designers to embrace the use of microprocessor in the design of equipment for use in the telecommunication network for monitoring and tracking calling patterns within the Bell System Network. The system was referred to as the traffic data collection systems, which using a microprocessor-based portable data terminals for interfacing to electro-mechanical switching systems.

Russell’s career, and knowledge in wireless technology and standards advanced, while he served in numerous positions; Director of the AT&T Cellular Telecommunication Laboratory (Bell Labs), Vice President of Advanced Wireless Technology Laboratory (Bell Labs), Chief Technical Officer for the Network Wireless Systems Business Unit (Bell Labs), Chief Wireless Architect of AT&T, and Vice President of Advanced Communications Technologies for AT&T Laboratories (formerly a part of Bell Labs).

As the Director of the AT&T Cellular Telecommunication Laboratory (Bell Labs), this Bell Labs Group formally managed by Russell is credited with the invention of cellular radio technology and received the United States’ Medal of Technology for the invention.

Russell continued to develop his expertise as he established and lead an Innovation Center focused on Applied Research in Advanced Communication Technologies that enabling AT&T to extend its existing portfolio of services and expand into new businesses and markets. As a key decision maker in the selection and development of emerging communications technologies, Russell’s efforts lead to the rapid realization of new access network platforms that enable AT&T to expand it’s broadband communication network options (i.e., Specialization: Cable Access Networks, DSL Access Networks, Power-line Carrier Access Networks, Fixed Wireless Access Networks, Satellite Access Networks and Broadband Wireless Communications Networks). The applications of these access technologies were one of the keys in expanding AT&T’s interest in re-building it local access services business.

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Information from Wikipedia

Video from Passing the Torch TV.

Dr. Ivory Toldson, Associate Professor of Psychology at Howard University

Leshell Hatley — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 14:58:10 +0000

Dr. Ivory Toldson

Dr. Ivory A. Toldson is an associate professor at Howard University, senior research analyst for the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, and current editor-in-chief of “The Journal of Negro Education.” Dubbed a rising “2028 presidential candidate” by the Washington Post, “a modern day Harlem Renaissance writer,” by the New African Journal, and “Young Researcher of the Year” by Southern University, Dr. Toldson, according to Howard University’s Quest Magazine, is “a much sought-after lecturer and researcher on a number of serious sociological and psychological issues that have implications for African Americans.” According to Capstone Magazine, “Toldson has spent a lot of time traveling across the country talking with teachers about misleading media statistics that invariably either link Black males to crime or question their ability to learn.”

Research

Dr. Toldson has more than 40 publications and research presentations in 29 US states, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Scotland, South Africa, and Paris. He has been featured on C-SPAN2 Books, NPR News, The Al Sharpton Show on XM Satellite Radio, and WKYS 93.9. Dr. Toldson’s research has been featured on The Root, Essence.com, BET.com and The Griot. He also gave expert commentary in three documentaries on Black male achievement: Beyond the Bricks, Hoodwinked, and the Promise Tracker. Known as a “myth buster,” Dr. Toldson has publish reports challenging the merits of popular research reports and news sources that present negative statistics about Black people, which have been widely discussed in academic and popular media.

Author

In 2005, Dr. Toldson won EboNetwork’s Changing Faces award for outstanding literary achievement for is novel, “Black Sheep: When the American Dream Becomes a Black Man’s Nightmare.” Dr. Toldson is also the author of “The Breaking Barriers Series,” which analyzes academic success indicators from national surveys that together give voice to more than 10,000 Black male pupils from schools across the country. Through his consulting firm, CREATE, LLC, he routinely works with schools to increase their capacity to promote academic success among Black males.

Career

After completing coursework for a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology at Temple University, Dr. Toldson became a correctional and forensic psychology resident at the United States Penitentiary. There, he worked with 1960s era political prisoners and modern casualties of the War on Drugs, and completed his dissertation on Black Men in the Criminal Justice System. Upon completion, Dr. Toldson joined the faculty of Southern University and became the fourth recipient of the prestigious DuBois Fellowship from the US Department of Justice. He also served as the clinical director of the Manhood Training Village. He has received formal training in applied statistics from the University of Michigan, and held visiting research and teacher appointments at Emory, Drexel, and Morehouse School of Medicine.

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Information taken from The Journal of Negro Education, videos from Youtube.

Alecia A. DeCoudreaux: 13th President of Mills College

Leshell Hatley — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 02:33:26 +0000

Alecia A. DeCoudreaux has been named the 13th president in Mills College’s 159-year history. She will assume leadership of the College on July 1, 2011.

Born in Chicago, Illinois, DeCoudreaux received a bachelor of arts degree in English and political science from Wellesley College in 1976 and a doctor of laws degree from the Indiana University School of Law at Bloomington in 1978.

DeCoudreaux brings to the Office of Mills College President an extensive and distinguished professional background. A senior executive at Eli Lilly and Company, one of Fortune magazine’s “Global Top Companies for Leaders,” she has served in a variety of important executive leadership roles over the span of the past three decades. As both a graduate of a women’s college and as chair of the board of Wellesley, one of the largest and most selective women’s colleges in the nation, DeCoudreaux provides Mills with a multifaceted professional background.

DeCoudreaux’s professional career is enhanced by extensive involvement in the communities where she has lived and worked, including volunteerism, community activism, and a record of service on numerous charitable and nonprofit boards. DeCoudreaux’s academic experience includes successful service as both a trustee and board chair at Wellesley, director of the Wellesley College Alumnae Association, director of the Indiana University Foundation, and member of the Indiana University School of Law Board of Visitors.

DeCoudreaux’s distinguished professional career began with private practice and continued through executive leadership positions in a Fortune 125 company. Currently DeCoudreaux serves as vice president and deputy general counsel at Eli Lilly and Company. She had been vice president and general counsel of Lilly USA since December 2005. Previously, DeCoudreaux was employed by Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro, in San Francisco, before joining Lilly in 1980 as an attorney. In 1987, she became general counsel for Advanced Cardiovascular Systems, Inc., a former Lilly subsidiary located in Santa Clara, California. DeCoudreaux became director of community relations for Eli Lilly and Company in 1990, director for corporate affairs (state government and community relations) in 1991, and director of government relations (Washington DC) in 1993. She was named executive director of Lilly Research Laboratories, medical administration in 1994. In 1995, she became executive director of Lilly Research Laboratories, research planning and scientific administration, and was named vice president, law, Lilly Research Laboratories in June 1997. In November 1999, she became secretary and deputy general counsel of Eli Lilly and Company.

While achieving professional success, DeCoudreaux has demonstrated creativity, social responsibility, and community involvement. She has also shown acumen for budget management, fundraising, and alumnae relations and engagement. In addition to her positions at Wellesley, DeCoudreaux’s extensive board experience includes service as a board member of The Mind Trust; a member of the Economic Club of Indiana Board of Governors; a member of the United Way of Central Indiana Women’s Initiative; honorary director of Indiana University Foundation, where she served as director from 1998 through 2007; and an emeritus board member of the Indiana University School of Law at Bloomington Board of Visitors, the Women’s Fund of Central Indiana, and Indianapolis Downtown, Inc.

“It is with great honor that I accept the position of president of Mills College,” said Alecia DeCoudreaux. “It has been my stated long-term ambition to fill a leadership role in women’s education. I’m proud of the career I’ve led up until now, and I’ve certainly developed the professional and life skills necessary to fulfill the position of Mills College president. But ever since my college years at Wellesley, I’ve maintained my passion for women’s education. I’m ready now to follow my passion and that passion is what carries me into the academic world.”

DeCoudreaux continues, “I’m looking forward to working with the faculty, staff, and alumnae of Mills, whose reputation for passion and creativity is well known and highly regarded. I’m also looking forward to leading our diverse student body of bright young women and graduate students pursuing their advanced degrees. I am so honored to be a part of such a highly regarded institution with such a proud history. I will work hard to ensure my leadership builds on the success of the 12 great women and men who held this office before me. My first order of business as I plan our vision for the future is to listen to those around me.”

DeCoudreaux will succeed current Mills President Janet L. Holmgren on July 1, 2011. Holmgren, who began her 20-year presidency in 1991, will return to teaching at Mills, writing, and pursuing new avenues for women’s leadership.

What Colleagues Say About Alecia DeCoudreaux
“I am delighted for Alecia. This is a logical next step in her impressive career. Alecia DeCoudreaux has been enormously important to Wellesley. She has been deeply committed to advancing the college’s liberal arts mission, and Wellesley has thrived under her leadership. She has been highly skilled at directing a complex board governance structure in service of Wellesley’s goals and priorities. The trustees and I will miss her strong leadership.

“But Wellesley’s loss is Mills College’s gain. With her long and distinguished history of serving Wellesley well, I know she will do the same at Mills College. During Alecia’s tenure as chair of the board, Wellesley has successfully recruited and retained faculty of exceptional distinction and dedication. She has overseen a steady increase in fundraising and admission results. Alecia leaves us in a position of great strength. She has helped to secure Wellesley’s place as one of the finest undergraduate institutions in the world.” —H. Kim Bottomly, president of Wellesley College

“Alecia DeCoudreaux has provided exemplary service to Eli Lilly and Company over the span of three decades in a variety of important executive leadership roles. In addition, her admirable commitment to community service has benefited Indianapolis and many other locales. Alecia is a capable, caring, and enthusiastic leader, and a person who has served as a mentor and coach for numerous colleagues at Lilly and across the broad community. We wish her the very best in the next stage of her career as president of Mills College, where I have no doubt she will be very successful.” —John C. Lechleiter, PhD, chairman, president, and chief executive officer of Eli Lilly and Company

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Information and image from Mills College website.

Dr. Joy Lawson Davis: Gifted Education Researcher & Author

Leshell Hatley — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 16:05:11 +0000

Dr. Joy Lawson Davis has over 30 years of experience in the field gifted education. Among her positions have been that of a teacher; district level coordinator; and five years as State Specialist for Gifted Programs for the Virginia Department of Education.

Education

2008 Educational Doctorate, The College of William & Mary, (Major: Educational Policy, Planning and Leadership/Program; Emphasis – Gifted Education).

1992 Master of Arts in Education, The College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA.(Major: Gifted Education)

1975 Bachelor of Fine Arts, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond VA (Major: Art Education)

Career

Dr. Davis is the author of the newly released book: Bright, Talented, & Black: A Guide for Families of African American Gifted Learners. Dr. Davis has been a consultant to educators around the world. As an assistant Professor of Education at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, she teaches undergraduate & graduate courses in Diversity Education & Gifted Education, respectively.

She has also provided professional development workshops/seminars for educators in the Caribbean and South Africa serving as a consultant to the International Gifted Education Teacher Development Network (Iget).

Research

Dr. Davis’ research and publication interests have focused on improving access, equity, and retention of culturally diverse learners in gifted education programs and in family involvement in the lives of their gifted children, with particular emphasis on the needs of African American gifted learners. She holds two degrees (Masters and Doctorate) in gifted education from The College of William & Mary in Virginia, and is serving a second term as Chair of the National Association for Gifted Children’s Diversity & Equity Committee.

Most recently, Dr. Davis was named to the Advisory Board of Gifted Child Today, a practitioner-oriented peer reviewed journal with the largest subscription base of any gifted education journal in the nation.

Dr. Davis’ CV can be viewed here.

Service

Dr. Davis is also an ordained Baptist Minister, serving churches and communities in the Middle Peninsula of Virginia since 1995. She is married, has three adult children and shares four grandchildren w/ her husband.

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Information and photo provided by Dr. Joy Lawson Davis

Lowery Stokes Sims: first African-American curator to be hired by New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art

Leshell Hatley — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 14:20:15 +0000

Lowery Stokes Sims is Curator at the Museum of Arts and Design. From 2000-2007 Sims was executive director then president of The Studio Museum in Harlem and served as Adjunct Curator for the Permanent Collection. Sims was on the education and curatorial staff of The Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1972-1999. A specialist in modern and contemporary art she is known for her particular expertise in the work of African, Latino, Native and Asian American artists. She has published extensively and her research on the work of the Afro-Cuban Chinese Surrealist artist Wifredo Lam was published by the University of Texas Press in 2002. In 1997 she organized a survey of the work of Richard Pousette-Dart at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Sims has lectured nationally and internationally and guest curated numerous exhibitions most recently at the National Gallery of Jamaica, Kingston, Jamaica (2004), The Cleveland Museum of Art and the New York Historical Society (2006). She is the editor and an essayist for the catalogue of the National Museum of the American Indian’s 2008 retrospective of Fritz Scholder. In 2003-04 Sims served on the jury for the memorial for the World Trade Center and between 2004 and 2006 served as the chair of the Cultural Institutions Group, a coalition of museums, zoos, botanical gardens and performing organizations funded by the City of New York. Sims was a fellow at the Clark Art Institute in spring 2007. In 2005 and 2006 she was Visiting Professor at Queens College and Hunter College in New York City and in fall 2007 Visiting Scholar in the Department of Art at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

Here are links to her work on WorldCat - http://worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n84-228840

Education

Sims received her Ph.D. in art history in 1995 from the Graduate School of the City University of New York. The subject of her dissertation was “Wifredo Lam and the International Avant-Garde, 1923–1992,” which was published by the University of Texas Press (2002). Sims has received honorary degrees from the Maryland Institute College of Art (1988), Moore College of Art and Design(1991), Parsons School of Design at the New School University (2000), the Atlanta College of Art (2002), College of New Rochelle and Brown University (2003). She holds a B.A. in art history from Queens College of the City University of New York, her M.A. in art history from Johns Hopkins University. She graduated from Bishop Reilly HS in Fresh Meadows in 1966.

At the MET

At the Metropolitan Museum, she participated in the organization of several exhibitions including Ellsworth Kelly (1979), John Marin: Selected Works from the Museum’s Collection (1981), Henry Moore: 60 Years of His Art (1983), and Charles Burchfield (1984). In 1991, she curated Stuart Davis, American Painter, and she was the principal author of the catalogue. In 1995, Ms. Sims coordinated the Museum’s venue of the exhibition I Tell My Heart: The Art of Horace Pippin, organized by the Museum of the Pennsylvania Academy of Art, and curatedPaul Cadmus: The Seven Deadly Sins and Selections from the Collection. In 1997, Dr. Sims curated the exhibition Richard Pousette-Dart, 1916–1992 and coordinated Francesco Clemente: Indian Watercolors organized by the Indianapolis Museum of Art. In 1999 she organizedHans Hofmann in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and coordinated the exhibition Barbara Chase-Riboud: Monument Drawings, organized by the St. John’s Museum in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Sims also organized several exhibitions from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum in cooperation with the American Federation of Arts, for which she was also involved in writing catalogues: The Figure in Twentieth Century Art: Selections from the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1985), The Landscape in Twentieth Century Art: Selections from the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1991), American Still Life Painting (1995). For more than a decade, Dr. Sims also was responsible for the annual installation of the Museum’s Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden, including the 1999 installation, Abakanowicz on the Roof.

The Studio Museum in Harlem

At The Studio Museum in Harlem, Sims was the coordinating curator for the 2003 exhibition, Challenge of the Modern: African American Artists, 1925–1945, and Fred Brown: Icons and Heroes (2003), which she originally curated for the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art.

In 2004 she was the curator for Curator’s Eye, focusing on contemporary Installation art in Jamaica, at the National Gallery, Kingston, Jamaica. She was also the curator for The Persistence of Geometry, selections from the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art, which was shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland in 2006. That same year she co-curated Legacies: Contemporary Artists Reflect on Slavery at the New York Historical Society.

Lectures & Teachings

Sims has written extensively on modern and contemporary artists, with a special interest in African, Latino, Native and Asian American artists. She has lectured at Princeton University, Vassar College, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the High Museum, the Columbus Art Museum,University of Arizona at Tucson, Birmingham Art Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the University of Texas at Austin, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Florida International University, San Antonio Museum of Art, Hobart and William Smith College, The National Gallery of Bermuda, Ball State University and Wellesley College, among other institutions. In 1991 she received the Frank Jewett Mather Award from the College Art Association for distinction in art criticism.^[1]

Sims has also had extensive experience teaching art history and museum practice at Queens College, the School of Visual Arts in New York City, and the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. She also has been a lecturer for the Internship Program at The Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Curatorial and Museum Training Internship courses at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University; and a visiting critic and lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania, the Maryland Institute College of Art, the University of Texas at Austin and theUniversity of Hawaii. In 2005 she was appointed A.D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University.

Guest Curator

She has served nationally and internationally as a juror and guest curator at The Queens Museum, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Pratt Institute, the Caribbean Cultural Center (New York), Cooper Union, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, the California Museum of Afro-American History and Culture, the Maryland Institute College of Art, and the Contemporary Art Center in New Orleans and the National Gallery, Kingston, Jamaica.

Public Appointments

While at the Studio Museum Sims served as Chair of the Cultural Institutions Group, a coalition of botanical gardens, historic sites, museums and zoos funded by the City of New York. She also served on panels for the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, TheMetropolitan Transportation Authority of New York City, The Metropolitan Life Foundation, The New York State Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts and the Humanities. In 1981, Ms. Sims was elected member of the Commission on the Status of Women of the City of New York, and in 1987 was appointed for a five-year term to the New York State Council on the Arts by Governor Mario Cuomo. She has served on the board of Art Table, Inc. and the Caribbean Cultural Center and the advisory committee of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at the New School for Social Research, and the advisory committee of the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. She is currently on the boards of the Art Matters and Tiffany Foundations and Art 21. In 1993, she was elected to the board of the College Art Association for a four-year term, and was co-chair of the studio art program for the 1994 annual conference of the CAA. In 2003-2004, she served on the jury for the World Trade Center Site Memorial Competition to choose the memorial for the World Trade Center site. In 2006, she was the Porter Colloquium Keynote Speaker.

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Information and Images from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowery_Stokes_Sims

http://juliemenin.com/category/topics/entertainment/?sort=alphabetical

Eva B. Dykes – 1st Black Woman to Complete Requirements for PhD – 3rd to be Awarded

Leshell Hatley — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 13:35:28 +0000

Eva Beatrice Dykes was the first black American woman to fulfill the requirements for a doctoral degree, and the third to be awarded a PhD. She was born in Washington, D.C. on Aug 13, 1893, the daughter of Martha Ann Howard and James Stanley Dykes.

Education

She graduated from Howard University with a B.A. degree, summa cum laude. She attended Radcliff College (now a part of Harvard University) and received another B.A. degree, magna cum laude, and a M.A. degree. In 1921, Eva received a Ph.D. degree from prestigious Radcliff College, and was the first African-American woman to complete the requirements for the degree in the United States. She specialized in English, Latin, German, and Greek language studies. While at Radcliffe, she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

Her dissertation was titled “Pope and His influence in America from 1715 to 1815”, and explored the attitudes of Alexander Pope towards slavery and his influence on American writers. Dykes was the first black American woman to complete the requirements for a doctoral degree, however, because Radcliffe College held its graduation ceremonies later than some other universities, she was the third to graduate, behind Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander and Georgiana Simpson.

Career

Dr. Dykes taught at Walden University in Nashville, Tennessee, and Dunbar High School and Howard University in Washington, D.C. In 1944, she joined the faculty of Oakwood University in Huntsville, Alabama, where she served as chair of the English Department and the Division of Humanities. Her willingness to leave prestigious Howard University to teach at Oakwood was key point in the move toward accreditation for the small Adventist College.

While at Oakwood University

Dr. Dykes left an indelible imprint on the lives of Oakwood’s young people for almost four decades. Caring, but uncompromising in her teaching, she set a high standard for her successors in the Division of Humanities. A devout member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, she never missed an opportunity to help build faith in her students.

Author

She Fulfilled the Impossible Dream - Story of Eva Dykes

Dr. Dykes authored numerous articles and several books, including The Negro in English Romantic Thought. Dr. DeWitt Williams wrote a biography of her life entitled She Filled the Impossible Dream. Dr. Dykes was a columnist for Message magazine for many years. An outstanding pianist and organist, she founded the Aeolians and gave the choral group its unique name.

Here is an article about Eva Dykes by Dr. DeWitt Williams.

Books By & About Eva B. Dykes

Honors & Awards

In 1973, in recognition of her outstanding career as a dedicated educator and mentor of young people, Dr. Dykes received the Certificate of Merit from the Department of Education of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventist. Also in 1973, the newly completed Oakwood University Library was named in her honor. In 1975, Dr, Dykes was recognized at the General Conference session in Vienna, Austria, for her contribution to Christian education. In 1980 she was made a Professor Emeritus.

Virtual tour of the Eva B. Dykes Library at Oakwood University:

*Check out the library’s Facebook page - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Eva-B-Dykes-Library/104598846259941

End of Life

Dr. Dykes taught for more than 50 years. She died on October 29, 1986 at the age of 93.

In an article about her, author Louis B. Reynolds says: “When God has put an impossible dream into our hearts . . . he means to help us fulfill it. Eva Dykes believed this to be true when, as a young woman, she heeded the call to prepare herself to help others and to attain the highest competence in order to do it. Through the years God has given her many other dreams of specific tasks He wanted her to do.

“‘It is when we resist God,’ she says, ‘that we remain nothing. When we submit to Him, whatever the sacrifice or hardship, we can become with His help far more than we dare dream.’”

Dr. A. Wade Boykin: Distinguished Researcher in Psychology and Education

Leshell Hatley — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 14:18:45 +0000

Dr. A. Wade Boykin is a full professor and the Director of the graduate program in the Department of Psychology at Howard University. From 1994, to 2004 he has served as co-director of the Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed At Risk (CRESPAR), a U.S. Department of Education-funded national research and development center that operated jointly out of Howard University and Johns Hopkins University.

“We deliberately speak of children being placed at risk, rather than at-risk children. The notion of the at-risk child suggests that the child has some kind of affliction or disorder that is primarily responsible for difficulties he or she experiences in school. The term placed at risk acknowledges that very often these difficulties stem more from a variety of adverse circumstances, including ones that originate in schools themselves, than from a fundamental flaw in the child.”

Education

B.A., psychology, Hampton University; M.A. and Ph.D., experimental psychology, University of Michigan.

Research

Dr. A. Wade Boykin now serves as executive director of the Capstone Institute for School Reform at Howard. Dr. Boykin has done extensive work on research methodology; the interface of culture, context, motivation, and cognition; Black child development; and academic achievement in the American social context. In applying his expertise in these and other areas, he has conducted research and evaluation projects and held workshops for several school districts across the country on topics such as evidence-based approaches to school reform, culturally responsive pedagogy, multicultural education, and minority student achievement.

Research Directions of Black Psychologists

Dr. Boykin is co-editor of Research Directions of Black Psychologists (Russell Sage, 1979), which was a finalist for the American Psychological Association’s 1980 Book of the Year. He currently is completing work on two other books: The Psychology of African American Experiences: An Integrity-Based Perspective (Allyn and Bacon), for which he is the first co-author, and Promoting High Achievement for All Children: Evidence-Based Programs, Practices and Procedures, for which he is first co-editor. He also has published numerous research and theoretical journal articles and book chapters relevant to his research interests.

The Black Cultural Ethos

Boykins (1986) described the Black Cultural Ethos with the following nine elements:

Spirituality: conducting one’s life intuitively as though governed by supreme forces.
Harmony: emphasizing versatility and wholeness.
Movement: interweaving the ideas of rhythm often associated with music and dance into everyday life.
Verve: preferring intense stimulation and action that are variable and colorful.
Affect: placing a premium on feelings, emphasizing a special sensitivity to emotional cues, and cultivating emotional expression.
Communalism: committing to the interdependence of people and to connectedness that esteems social bonds and responsibilities over individual privileges.
Expressive Individualism: cultivating a distinct personality and a proclivity for spontaneous, genuine personal expression.
Orality: emphasizing oral and aural (i.e. use of sound in an out-of- the-ordinary way) modes of communication.
Social perspective of time: viewing time as a social phenomenon marked by human interaction and by the event shared by others.

The nine elements above were derived from a description by Nobles (1980), as “a derivation of West African beliefs, values and traditions and, notwithstanding the immense variability among Blacks as a group, characterizes the way African Americans perceive, interpret and interact with the world.”

As described by Nobles (1980), the Black cultural ethos (BCE) is a derivation of West African beliefs, values and traditions and, notwithstanding the immense variability among Blacks as a group, characterizes the way African Americans perceive, interpret and interact with the world.

NOTE: Uplift, Inc. (nonprofit organization that powers BSI) this work into our research and development with Myles & Ayesha.

Career

Dr. Boykin’s distinguished professional career includes having served as co-director of the Task Force on the Relevance of the Social Sciences to the Black Experience, Yale University, and as a member of the National Education Association’s Emergency Commission on Urban Children; the National Academy of Education’s Panel on Strengthening the Capacity for Research to Contribute to Educational Practice and Public Policy; the American Educational Research Association’s Panel on Improving Federal Educational Research Programs; the American Psychological Association’s Task Force on Scientific Perspectives on Intelligence Tests and Group Differences in Test Scores; and the Minority Student Achievement Network’s Research Advisory Panel. He also serves on the editorial board of Sage Publications’ book series on Race, Ethnicity and Culture and on the editorial boards of several scholarly journals.

REFERENCES

Boykin, A. (1986). The triple quandary and the schooling of Afro-American children. In U. Neisser (Ed.), The school achievement of minority children: New perspectives, pp 57-92.

Nobles, W. (1980). African philosophy: Foundations of Black psychology. In R.

Jones (Ed.), Black psychology (pp. 23-36). NY: Harper and Row

Nobles, W. (1980). African philosophy: Foundations of Black psychology. In R. Jones (Ed.), Black psychology (pp. 23-36). NY: Harper and Row

===

Information and images from:

http://www.cetla.howard.edu/featured_teacher/archive/boykin.html

http://www.capstoneinstitute.org

[HBCU Presidents] Victor Ukpolo: Chancellor of Southern University of New Orleans

Leshell Hatley — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 10:14:49 +0000

Victor Ukpolo, Ph.D., a native of Nigeria, was officially appointed chancellor of Southern University at New Orleans on January 7, 2006 by the Southern University System’s Board of Supervisors.

UPDATE: Our original feature of Dr. Victor Ukpolo is presented below. It highlights many of his scholarly accomplishments. However, we have since learned that his dealings since becoming Chancellor of Southern University of New Orleans have been less than desirable. He has been called an “infultrator” among other things.

Specifically, we have learned that “The students, and faculty senate gave him a ‘Vote of No Confidence’. In addittion, he was involved in orchestrating the illegal enrollment of ghost students, firing of prominent staff who uncovered his illegal dealings, closing of 22 academic programs, mismanagement of financial funds etc. The Nigerian caboceer isn’t an assest to the community, and he is not leading the struggle in maintaining the legacy of SUNO. However, Dr. J. Bouie, Dr. Amedee, and Attorney Chambliss should be commended.”

Please review the articles below for more information:

http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008/11/top_suno_officer_quits_amid_in.html

http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008/09/case_tells_of_scheme_at_suno_t.html

http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009/05/indicted_former_councilwoman_r.html

http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2009/11/post_58.html

http://blog.nola.com/stephaniegrace/2009/06/stephanie_grace_former_us_rep.html

http://blog.nola.com/times-picayune/2007/10/protesters_call_for_reopening.html
(The students organized this protest, and Dr.Ukpolo refused to stand with us.)

What can be done about the future of SUNO? Let us know what you think?

Original Feature Below:

Education

Dr. Victor Ukpolo is a graduate of the University of Maryland in College Park, Md., and received master of arts and doctorate of philosophy degrees from The American University, Washington D.C. A native of Nigeria, Ukpolo started work in America as a dish washer and taxi driver to put himself through school.

Career

Dr. Ukpolo, formerly the Southern University System’s Vice President for Academic and Student Affairs, previously served as associate vice president for academic affairs at California State University in Los Angeles. He also served as associate vice chancellor for academic affairs/special assistant to the chancellor for academic research for the Tennessee Board of Regents. He started his career as an assistant professor of economics at Austin Peay State University, where he also held an administrative post as executive assistant to the President.

As an economist, Dr. Ukpolo serves as a member of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities’ Committee on Economic and Workforce Development.

At the Southern University of New Orleans

During his first semester as chancellor, an impressive 2,100 students returned to the University in Spring 2006—SUNO’s first post-Katrina semester—opposed to earlier projections of 1,200 to 1,500, holding classes on a temporary campus comprised of 45 modular trailer facilitates that were constructed by FEMA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. SUNO is one of the few hurricane-impacted institutions that continues to experience impressive student population growth. The Fall Semester 2006 featured a student population of 2,314, and the Fall Semester 2007 posted a student enrollment figure of 2,634, making SUNO the fastest growing four-year institution of higher learning in the region.

Reconstruction At Southern University of New Orleans in Katrina’s Aftermath

Dr. Victor Ukpolo

Dr. Ukpolo leads SUNO during a critical time in which all 11 buildings comprising the main campus remain uninhabitable post-Katrina. In the aftermath of the hurricane, he launched an aggressive marketing and reorganization campaign, which included the introduction of four innovative online programs to attract displaced students. By working through the legislative process, Dr. Ukpolo secured a definitive timeline from the Louisiana Office of Facilities, Planning & Control to reconstruct the main campus by Fall 2009 with 50% of the work being completed by 2008. The Health & Physical Education Building—the least damaged of the 11 buildings—was scheduled to open in Fall 2007.

The restructured campus was to include two brand new buildings: 1) a technology center to house e-learning, audio/visual and Internet technology departments, and 2) construction of a state-of-the-art student housing facility—the first such facility in SUNO’s history— an amenity that will greatly assist SUNO students’ dire need for affordable housing in the Greater New Orleans area and position SUNO to attract students from across the globe. Working with various local, state and federal legislators, Dr. Ukpolo secured a $44 million one-percent interest loan from the U.S. Department of Education’s HBCU Capital Financing Program to allow for the construction of the student housing facility.

The status of this reconstruction was not known at the time of writing this feature.

Post-Katrina New Orleans Crime Prevention Summit

Recognizing the important role institutions of higher learning can play in making communities better, Dr. Ukpolo offered SUNO’s expertise in planning the historic, post-Katrina New Orleans Crime Prevention Summit. He was among several SUNO professors who made key scholarly presentations during this cornerstone event. As a result of the Crime Summit, Dr. Ukpolo keenly capitalized on yet another opportunity to improve New Orleans by forming a joint partnership with the Orleans Parish Criminal Sheriff’s Office to provide educational opportunities for the agency’s employees and inmates under the supervision of Criminal Sheriff Marlin Gusman.

Funding the Future

Under his leadership, alumni giving and participation has increased to unprecedented levels through his regular “Chats with the Chancellor,” in which he travels to various cities to meet with alumni. Fundraising for SUNO is at an all-time high with major gifts donated to the institution by several major organizations and corporations. Looking toward future generations, Dr. Ukpolo established the Chancellor’s Emerging Leadership Program at Sophie B. Wright Charter School whereby eligible middle school students will earn an opportunity to attend SUNO on a full scholarship. Furthermore, an innovative dual enrollment program allows qualified high school students to earn college credits at SUNO.

Programs such as these demonstrate Dr. Ukpolo’s care, commitment and concern for many of SUNO’s students, who, like him, are the first in their families to attend college. His student-centered philosophy is designed to encourage students to neither make nor take any excuse in their quest towards pursuing their educational goals.

Awards

In 2010, Dr. Ukpolo was honored as a 2010 Role Model by Minority Access, Inc. at the organization’s Eleventh National Role Model Conference Awards Banquet in Las Vegas, Nevada. Minority Access, Inc. is a 501c(3) non-profit educational organization that supports individuals, academic institutions, federal, state, and local government agencies and various corporations to diversify campuses and work sites by improving the recruitment, retention and enhancement of minorities. The organization is based in Hyattsville, Maryland.

He also received the 2010 Quintessence Award from the African Writers Endowment, Inc. The Quintessence Award is given each year as part of “Quintessence Ball: A Celebration of African People in World History”. The award is presented to at least one continental African leader and at least one African American leader “for distinguished accomplishments in the person’s field of endeavor, and for outstanding contributions to the history and heritage of African people.” The Quintessence Ball brings together African people from Africa, North America, and the Caribbean.

In 2006, the Tall Drums television team did a documentary on Dr. Ukoplo and the recovery efforts at SUNO.

Tahir Hemphill: Linguistic Researcher – Hip Hop Word Count

Leshell Hatley — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 15:48:42 +0000

Tahir Hemphill is described as a Creative Strategist. Creative Director. Reluctant Messiah. Peripheral Visionary. Hip-Hop Enthusiast. Native Queens New Yorker. Follow him @tahero.

As part of The Hip-Hop Word Count project, Tahir Hemphill hosts a series of Rap Research Groups which make for lively and casually moderated discussions between Rap enthusiasts, historians, creative technologists, cultural critics, linguists, teachers, MC’s and academics. Four meetings have occurred so far.

Early Life

Born in the Lower East Side, New York, Tahir grew up in a house filled with the artistic influences of his grandmother Clora Tee. Her drawings, which combined bible verses and encyclopedia entries, are spiritually resonant and scientifically verified. From a young age and with this as his backdrop, Tahir was groomed to be an engineer, and with that training he entered the arts. This pull between the profound and profane, between art and science informs his process and life.

Education

Tahir holds a Regents Diploma from Brooklyn Technical High School in Electrical Engineering, a B.A. degree in Spanish Language from Morehouse College (Minor in Mathematics) and a M.S. degree in Communications Design from Pratt Institute where he authored and designed the book Visual Alchemy, a treatise on the work and processes of creatives who use traditional advertising techniques to promote subversive anti-consumerist or pro-social campaigns.

Linguistic Researcher

While at Eyebeam, Tahir will be working on the Hip-Hop Word Count, a searchable ethnographic database built from the lyrics of over 50,000 Hip-Hop songs from 1979 to present day. Tahir currently operates the Brooklyn based creative enterprise Staple Crops.

Fundraiser for Hip-Hop Word Count

Eyebeam Resident Tahir Hemphill is hosting a Friendraiser to rally support for the final 10-day stretch of the Hip-Hop Word Count Kickstarter campaign. The party will feature a presentation of the project, music curated from a search of the Hip-Hop Word Count, computers for your Kickstarter donations, and even a giant microphone piñata.

*Tell them BSI sent ya!

No related posts.

Kaya Henderson: Interim Chancellor of DC Public Schools

Leshell Hatley — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 20:01:58 +0000

On November 1, 2010, Kaya Henderson became the Interim Chancellor of DC Public Schools.

Early Life

A native of Mt. Vernon, N.Y, Henderson was born on July 1, 1970, and attended Mt. Vernon public schools, where she graduated from Mt. Vernon High School with honors. Henderson was strongly influenced by her late mother, Kathleen Henderson, an educator who became a school principal at the age of 30. The elder Henderson worked in Yonkers, New York City and Long Island Public Schools.

Education

Kaya Henderson received her bachelor’s degree in international relations from Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, and her Master of Arts in leadership, also from Georgetown University.

Career

Her education career began as a middle school Spanish teacher in the South Bronx, and she spent her summers overseeing the professional development of new teachers at summer institutes with Teach for America. She also served Teach for America as a recruiter and the national director of admissions. In 1997, she became the executive director of Teach For America-DC, where she was responsible for 170 teachers in more than 50 DC public schools.

Accomplishments

In 2000, Henderson began her work with The New Teacher Project, where she eventually became the Vice President for Strategic Partnerships, overseeing the organization’s work on improving teacher hiring for school districts from a process, policy and capacity-building perspective.

She also launched alternative certification programs—including the DC Teaching Fellows Program—in a number of districts. Her work significantly contributed to the organization’s two major reports: Missed Opportunities and Unintended Consequences.

In 2001, she worked closely with DCPS leadership and the Washington Teachers’ Union to make significant policy changes to improve teacher hiring in the district.

She came to DCPS as Deputy Chancellor in 2007. She led the district’s human capital efforts, and served as chief negotiator for the groundbreaking 2010 contract between DCPS and the Washington Teachers’ Union.

Henderson’s team also led the development of IMPACT, a new and innovative teacher assessment system designed to ensure that an effective teacher is leading every classroom in DCPS. Henderson’s work in developing human capital at DCPS has served as a model for other school districts throughout the country.

She has shared the successful strategies developed at DCPS with other districts and countries in national and international conferences.

[Black Organizations] National Black Child Development Institute

Leshell Hatley — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 16:22:43 +0000

National Black Child Development Institute – For the past 40 years, the National Black Child Development Institute (NBCDI) has been steadfast in its mission to improve and advance the lives of Black children and their families, through advocacy and education. Along with our affiliate network – composed of volunteers from across the nation – we have worked to improve child welfare services, make universal early care and education a reality, build family support services, press for educational reform and provide vital information regarding our children’s health.

As we are now well into the new millennium, it is critical that we continue to dedicate ourselves to giving every child a chance. We believe that such a vision should recognize the pivotal role that all members of our community must play if equity and access are to become a reality for our children. This includes parents, the faith community, social and civic clubs, barber shops, and schools – all of us must become part of the mobilization on behalf of our children.

To achieve our mission, NBCDI reaches out to our partners and constituencies, reflecting our belief that leadership can and should be nurtured at the local level; that families and children at the local level can best articulate their needs; and that by working together with the professional community, state and local government, and the private sector we can make a difference.

Preparing our children to function in a global society where having access to the latest technology is considered the norm makes education extremely critical to our future work. Every child deserves a chance, and we are committed to uncovering every chance available to our children.

NBCDI is headed by Dr. Carol Brunson Day. She is the former Executive Director of the National Association for the Education of Young Children. For 20 years she served as CEO & President of the Council for Professional Recognition. Dr. Day was also the liaison for the international exchange between the schools in Reggio Emilia, Italy & the early childhood community in the U.S. She sits on numerous national boards including Zero to Three Editorial Board, National Center for Professional Development & Inclusion National Advisory Panel, & T.E.A.C.H. Early Childhood Technical Assistance Center National Advisory Panel.

Education

Dr. Day has a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a M.Ed. in Early Childhood Education from the Erikson Institute in Chicago & a Ph.D. in Education from Claremont University in Claremont, CA.

Books By Dr. Day

An author of numerous publications, she also has expertise in African-American culture and heritage.

Information and image from http://www.nbcdi.org

Dr. Marjorie Lee Brown: The 2nd Black Women to Obtain a PhD in Math in the US

Leshell Hatley — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 17:16:48 +0000

Dr. Marjorie Lee Brown (1914-1979) grew up and was educated in a society that was prejudicial against any African-Americans, especially women. However, Browne had a love of mathematics and was determined to study the subject to the highest possible standards. She achieved these goals and became one of the first Black women in the United States to obtain a Ph.D in Mathematics.

Early Life

Browne was born on 9 September 1914 in Memphis, Tennessee. She was the daughter of Mary Taylor Lee and Lawrence Johnson Lee, but unfortunately Browne’s mother died when she was just two years old. Instead her father, a railway postal clerk, and stepmother, Lottie Lee, a schoolteacher, raised her. Her father had also completed two years of college, which for a black man of the time was very rare. Lawrence Lee was known in the local area to be very good at mental arithmetic and it was this love of mathematics that he passed on to his daughter. Browne was also encouraged to study mathematics by her stepmother.

Lawrence Lee was more privileged than most Blacks at the time, and wished to share his good fortune with others, especially his children so he made a point of sending them to the best schools available.

Education

Dr. Browne was a pupil at LeMoyne High School. This was a private school started after the American Civil War by the Methodist and Congregational Churches with the specific aim educating Black people. By the time Browne left high school she was not only known as a gifted maths student, but also a noted tennis player.

Browne’s years at university coincided with the Depression. However, she could afford to attend Howard University in Washington D.C, due to a combination of loans, jobs and scholarships. In 1935 Browne received her B.S. degree from Howard, where she graduated cum laude.

Following graduation she taught mathematics and physics at Gilbert Academy in New Orleans, Louisiana, a private secondary school for Black students. However, Browne only kept this post for one year as she then enrolled at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, from where Browne gained her Masters degree in mathematics in 1939. She became one of the first women to receive this advanced degree. Upon this she became a member of the teaching staff at Wiley College, in Marshall, Texas, between 1942 and 1945. During the summer breaks Browne started work on her doctorate at the University of Michigan.

Over the years there have been conflicting opinions regarding the year in which Marjorie Lee Browne gained her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. Browne had become a teaching fellow at the University of Michigan in 1947. All the requirements for a Ph.D. were completed in 1949, but the earliest graduation ceremony was not until February 1950. In Browne’s lifetime convention said that she had obtained her Ph.D. in 1949, however, in 1999 some references changed the date to 1950. At this time she was referred to as being only the second African-American women to gain a Ph.D., Evelyn Boyd Granville being the first. No matter which stance is taken Browne was still one of the first two African-American women to obtain a Ph.D. in mathematics. Her thesis was titled On the One Parameter Subgroups in Certain Topological and Matrix Groups, which was written under the supervision of G Y Rainich.

Career

In 1949, Browne joined the faculty of mathematics at North Carolina Central University, then called North Carolina College, where she stayed until her retirement in 1979. For 25 years she was the only person in the department to have a Ph.D. She became Chair of the Mathematics Department in 1951, a post she retained until 1970. Browne taught for 15 hours a week, teaching both undergraduate and postgraduate courses. Also during her time at NCCU Browne supervised 10 masters degrees.

Fellowships

Between 1952 and 1953 Browne won a fellowship from the Ford Foundation. This is an organisation that offers grants to innovative people and institutions worldwide. Examples of the areas for which grants can be obtained are asset building and community development, education, media, arts, culture, peace and social justice as well as others. Browne’s grant allowed her to study combinational topology at Cambridge University. This also provided her with the opportunity travel throughout Western Europe. Brown was also a National Science Foundation Faculty Fellow studying computing and numerical analysis at the University of California at Los Angeles. She won a similar fellowship while studying differential topology at Columbia University, New York, in during 1965 – 66.

Successful Research Proposals & First Computer at and HBCU

In 1960 Browne was the principal author of a successful proposal that won a grant from IBM, which allowed the NCCU to obtain its first computer for use in academic computations. She was also the overseer of its installation. She also obtained, in 1969, for her department the first Shell Grant for awards to outstanding mathematics students. While at NCCU, Browne held positions other than that of department chair. These were Principal Investigator, Coordinator of the mathematics section and Lecturer of the Summer Institute for secondary school science and mathematics teachers.

That grant from IBM brought her department one of the first computers in academic computing, almost certainly the first at a historically black college. But her devotion to education was more than just bringing in grants. She took a personal interest in teaching, and, in the last years of her life used her own money to help gifted students pursue their education in mathematics.

Book Author

During the summer Browne was occupied with instructing secondary school teachers. Due to her leadership in this scheme NCCU became the first institution primarily for Black people in the United States to be granted the funds for a National Science Foundation Institute for secondary teachers of mathematics. For 13 years Browne served as director of the mathematics section of these Institutes. Four sets of lecture note were written by Browne to be used by these teachers. These notes were Sets, Logic and Mathematical Thought (1957), Introduction to Linear Algebra (1959), Elementary Matrix Algebra (1969), and Algebraic Structures (1974).

Browne’s other published work was her paper A Note on the Classical Groups. This was published in the American Mathematics Monthly in 1955. The purpose of the paper was to set forth some topological properties and the relations between certain classical groups.

Awards

Due to this work for the continuation of education for secondary teachers, Browne became the first recipient, in 1975, of the W W Rankin Memorial Award for Excellence in Mathematics Education, given by the North Carolina Council of Teachers.

Service

During the latter part of her life Browne used much of her own money to help gifted mathematics students to continue their education.

Remembered

Marjorie Lee Browne died at her home in Durham, North Carolina, of a heart attack, on the 19 October 1979. She was 65 years of age. She will be remembered for helping any student that came to her prepare for and complete their Ph.D.’s, encouraging them to do what she had achieved.

According to an interview she gave shortly before her death, mathematics was a comfort to her when she was growing up:

“I always, always, always liked mathematics. As a child I was rather introverted, and as far back as I can remember I liked mathematics . . . I could do it alone.”

===

More information about Dr. Marjorie Lee Brown can be found here:

http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/browne.htm
http://www.girlgeeks.org/innergeek/inspiringwomen/browne.shtml
http://www.learn-math.info/historyDetail.htm?id=Browne
http://sciencewomen.blogspot.com/2008/09/marjorie-lee-browne-mathematician-and.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marjorie_Lee_Browne
http://www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/PEEPS/browne_marjorie_lee.html

Photo from: http://www.learn-math.info/historyDetail.htm?id=Browne

Ory Okolloh: Kenyan Activist & Google’s New Policy Manager for Africa

Leshell Hatley — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 15:41:27 +0000

Ms. Ory Okolloh is the co-founder and Executive Director of Ushahidi and heads to Google as its new Policy Manager for Africa.

Early Life

Okolloh was born into a relatively poor family. She has said that her parents sent her to a private elementary school that they could “barely afford,” which “set the foundation for what ended up being my career.

Education

Ory graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. degree in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh, and graduated with a J.D. from Harvard Law School.

Activist

In 2006 she co-founded the parliamentary watchdog site Mzalendo (Swahili: “Patriot”). The site sought to increase government accountability by systematically recording bills, speeches, MPs, standing orders, etc. When Kenya was engulfed in violence following a disputed presidential election in 2007, Okolloh helped create Ushahidi (Swahili: “testimony”), a website that collected and recorded eyewitness reports of violence using text messages and Google Maps. The technology has since been adapted for other purposes (including monitoring elections and tracking pharmaceutical availability) and used in a number of other countries.

Okolloh also has a personal blog, Kenyan Pundit, which was featured on Global Voices Online.

Career

She also works as a legal consultant for NGOs and has worked at Covington and Burling, the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, and the World Bank in the past.

Public Speaker

She is a frequent speaker at conferences including TED Global and Poptech on issues around citizen journalism, the role of technology in Africa, and the role of young people in reshaping the future of Africa. She currently lives in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Heading to Google

Here, Ory writes about her new job at Google.

Dr. Jayfus Doswell: BioTechnology & Robotics Entrepreneur, Researcher, and Product Engineer

Leshell Hatley — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 16:14:17 +0000

Dr. Jayfus T. Doswell

Dr. Jayfus Doswell is an accomplished entrepreneur and engineer. As the founder of Juxtopia, LLC, he and his company have manufactured robotics and context-aware augmented reality products. He is also the Chair of The Juxtopia Group, a nonprofit which host several interesting endeavors. One of which is occurring next week on December 8th, The Juxtopia Urban Learning Technology Conference. For more information and to register for this conference, please visit http://www.juxtopia.org/jult2010.

Early Life

Dr. Jayfus T. Doswell was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland and attended Baltimore City public schools. Dr. Doswell was trained early in music (i.e., classical piano and violin) and studied martial arts (i.e., Tae-Kwon-Do, Kung-Fu, and Akido). Dr. Doswell competed in both and achieved concert master in a local Baltimore youth orchestra, and often won first place in martial art tournaments.

Education

After graduating from Baltimore City College High School, Dr. Doswell was accepted to Oberlin College on an academic scholarship to study Neuroscience and Pre-Med. After taking a few courses towards pre-med, Dr. Doswell graduated with degrees in computer science and cognitive neuropsychology. Dr. Doswell then enrolled in Howard University’s System and Computer Science program where he received his best education in software engineering where his knowledge secured him positions as a young senior software engineer at Lockheed Martin, Bearing Point, and SAIC.

While working, Dr. Doswell entered a Ph.D. program at age 26. Dr. Doswell also decided while working and earning a Ph.D. to start Juxtopia (juxtapositions among utopias) to improve human learning, life, and leisure performance.

Entreprenuer

Dr. Doswell took the Ph.D. in Information Technology from George Mason University in 2005 and immediately afterwards in 2005 secured Juxtopia’s first Small Business and Innovative Research Grant (SBIR) from the National Science Foundation that launched the R&D funding for Juxtopia’s flagship product, the Context-Aware Augmented Reality goggles and software. Furthermore, at the point of Dr. Doswell’s graduation, he contributed his 399 page dissertation on the architecture of developing a software based virtual instructor to the research community on learning technology, and he subsequently created the IEEE Virtual Instructor Pilot Research Group (VIPRG) that immediately attracted multidisciplinary researchers around the world to collaborate on building an international working standard on the virtual instructor architecture. Dr. currently directs this group under The Juxtopia Group, described in this bio.

Career

Dr. Jayfus T. Doswell is currently founder, president, and chief executive officer (CEO) of Juxtopia®, LLC, a privately held biomedical and information technology company with a mission to improve human performance. At Juxtopia, LLC, Dr. Doswell initiated the alliance of colleges and universities that collaborate effectively on developing various subsystems for Juxtopia products for which colleges and universities may achieve technology transfer based license royalty. Additionally, Dr. Doswell initiated the commercial product based learning methodology for which college students starting at the community college level contribute to building innovative products for Juxtopia. Moreover, 100% of Juxtopia’s product development is supported by federal and state based grants including National Science Foundation SBIRs, U.S. Army Medical Research and Material Command funding, Maryland TEDCO, and MIPS funding.

Dr. Doswell also chairs the Juxtopia Group, Inc., a not for profit, 501c3 organization with a mission to improve the performance of underserved and disadvantaged populations in both learning and health. One of The Juxtopia Group’s program is the Juxtopia® Urban Robotics Brilliant Application Network (JURBAN) that entered into the Google Lunar X PRIZE competition, and is the only team in Baltimore, Maryland, and one of the only space robotics teams on the east coast to compete in this challenge. Moreover, it is the only team in the Google Lunar X PRIZE competition significantly comprised of team members from underserved and disadvantaged groups and HBCUs and Minority Serving Institutions. The Juxtopia Group also organizes conferences including the International Virtual Instructor, Juxtopia Urban Learning Technology, and Space Entrepreneurship Forum conferences. Furthermore, The Juxtopia Group publishes the International Journal for Urban Learning Technology (iJULT).

The Juxtopia Group is also the proud sponsor of the Annual Juxtopia Urban Learning Technology (JULT) Conference happening next week on December 8, 2010 as a part of Computer Science Education Week. For more information and to register, please visit http://www.juxtopia.org/jult2010.

Service

Dr. Doswell also serves as the chair of Biotechnology at Sojourner Douglass College in Baltimore, Maryland and currently building the program from the ground up. To create a biotechnology entrepreneurship pipeline, Dr. Doswell was contracted by Baltimore City Public Schools (BCPS) to create the Biotechnology Curriculum for BCPS to create a four year biotechnology curriculum with a capstone course to train inner city Baltimore students on creating biotechnology and biomedical innovations with commercial potential. Dr. Doswell also facilitated alliances with local Biotechnology Companies where graduating students at high school or college can secure internships or high paying employment opportunities.

Dr. Doswell also sits on several not for profit boards and is an active member of the American Public Health Association (APHA) Health Informatics and Information Technology (HIIT) Section, American Telemedicine Association (ATA), Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (IEEE), and the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE).

Research

Dr. Doswell actively conducts research on how to improve human performance and focuses on research including cognitive science for human performance systems; wearable devices and operating systems; virtual instructor development; consumer telehealth and remote monitoring; personalized medicine; biomedical device design; public health informatics; and nanoinformatics.

Jerri DeVard: Nokia’s New Chief Marketing Officer

Leshell Hatley — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 14:43:07 +0000

Jerri DeVard

Jerri L. DeVard has been Principal of DeVard Marketing Group since 2007. She is responsible for national marketing, advertising, brand management, online marketing and multicultural marketing. Nokia just hired Ms. DeVard as their new Chief Marketing Officer (November 2010).

Ms. DeVard is also a member of the Board of Trustees at Spelman College and has been since 2005. She is currently the Vice Chair.

Early Life

DeVard was born in Harlem, an uptown neighborhood of New York City with a rich African-American history. Her mother, Jean DeVard-Kemp, taught her the value of education by her own example, earning a college degree, a master’s, and a Ph.D. while working as a single mother supporting two children. Jerri DeVard describes her mother as her “hero.”

Education

Ms. DeVard graduated from Spelman College with a degree in Economics (Class of 1979) and obtained an MBA in Marketing from Clarke Atlanta University’s Graduate School of Business.

Career

Ms. DeVard served as the Senior Vice President of Retail Markets Group of Verizon Enhanced Communities. She served as Senior Vice President of Marketing and Brand Management of Verizon Communications Inc. from 2003 to 2005. Ms. DeVard served as the Chief Marketing Officer for Citigroup, where she was responsible for the overall marketing, sales and integration of Citigroup’s e-commerce division as well as development and execution of the advertising and marketing for the AOL and Microsoft Partnerships. Prior to 2003, she held a variety of positions, including the Chief Marketing Officer of the e-Consumer business at Citibank N.A.; Vice President of Marketing for Revlon Inc.’s Color Cosmetics; Vice President of Marketing for Harrah’s Entertainment; Director of Marketing for the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings; and several brand management positions at the Pillsbury Company.

Ms. DeVard has significant expertise in brand management and marketing solutions for consumer products companies. She serves as a director of Gurwitch Products, as a member of PepsiCo African American Advisory Board. She served as an Independent Director of Tommy Hilfiger Corporation from February 2, 2004 to 2006.

“Jerri has an incredible ability to see things from the eye of the customer,” says Stephen P. Joyce, vice president and managing director of Citibank where DeVard was appointed vice president of new business development in March 1998. “Her energy level is infectious, and she inspires others to want to follow her lead.”

Service & Recognition

DeVard was recognized as one of Black Enterprise magazine’s 75 Most Powerful African-Americans in Corporate America and was named among the Wall Street Journal’s Women to Watch. DeVard is a member of the Board of Directors of Tommy Hilfiger Corp. She also serves on the Pepsi African-American Advisory Board. In addition, she serves on the Board of Directors of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), the Executive Leadership Council and the Executive Committee for the American Advertising Federation Board (AAF). DeVard is also a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.

Ever the optimist, DeVard offers this key to success: “Find what you’re good at, know what you enjoy, then develop the confidence to go after what you want.”

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Information obtained from various resulting articles from a Google Search of Jerri DeVard.

Image from: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/11/24/businessinsider-jerri-devard-11.DTL

[From Our Black Scholars Directory] Rondalynne McClintock: PhD Student in Information Systems

Leshell Hatley — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 19:50:05 +0000

Rondalynne McClintock

Rondalynne McClintock is a PhD student in Information Systems at Claremont Graduate University and an Educational Consultant working with students in grades 8+ to apply for scholarships and prepare for University. She and another Ed Consultant recently formed the North American Association of Minority College Planners to build social capital in local communities of color. Additionally, she runs a community-based study group called The Scholarship Club for parents and students discussing how to find, apply for, and win scholarships.

Education

Cal Poly Pomona, BS, Engineering, 1995
Claremont Graduate University, Masters, Education – Evaluation of Workplace Training Programs, 1999

Favorite Quote

Anyone, given enough time, can do anything

Greatest Challenge/Accomplishment

Getting through Graduate School

Black Scholars Directory Profile

To view Rondalynne McClintock’s full Black Scholar Directory, please visit here.

Dr. Khalil Gibran Muhammad: African-American Studies Professor and New Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

Leshell Hatley — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 15:50:00 +0000

Dr. Khalil Gibran Muhammad

Dr. Khalil Gibran Muhammad is a Chicago native and is a scholar of African-American history. He has served as an assistant professor of History at Indiana University (recently being recommended for tenure). He has deep roots in the civil rights movement, and is the Great-Grandson of the Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad.

Education

B.A. at University of Pennsylvania, 1993
Ph.D. at Rutgers University, 2004

Following the completion of his Ph.D. from Rutgers University, he spent two years as a Mellon Fellow at the Vera Institute of Justice, a criminal justice think tank in New York City. As a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Vera from 2003 to 2005, Muhammad studied the origins of New York’s four strikes legislation in the 1920s.

Career

Dr. Muhammad’s scholarship has been featured in the Washington Post, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and the Charlotte Observer, as well as on National Public Radio, Pacifica Radio, and Radio One. He was a commentator in a 2009 PBS documentary, Witnesses to History, chronicling the election of President Barack Obama, and a featured panelist at this summer’s National Urban League Centennial Conference. He appears monthly on local radio and writes for theDefendersonline.com, a blog of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. He speaks regularly about the history of race relations and its ongoing challenges to student groups, community organizations, professional societies, and policy researchers.

Recently, Dr. Muhammad was selected as the next Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, effective July 2011.

Accomplishments & Highlights

Selected Awards

Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship on Race, Crime, and Justice at the Vera Institute of Justice, NYC. (2003-2005)

Research Interests

Race-relations and racial ideology
(Im)migration and urbanization (Northern U.S.)
Social science and social reform
Racial politics of criminal law, policing, juvenile delinquency, and punishment

Books

The Condemnation of Blackness: Ideas about Race and Crime in the Making of Modern Urban America. Cambridge, MA: (Harvard University Press).

Condemnation was selected by the San Francisco Chronicle as a top ten title for Black History Month, and recommended in the April issue of Ebony Magazine.

Glenn Loury of Brown University says Condemnation “is the most significant work in the study of race and American society to have appeared in the past decade.”

*You can here Dr. Khalil Muhammad discuss is book via an archived recording from a WBAI interview on March 3, 2010. Khalil Gibran Muhammad – WBAI “Talkback!” March 3, 2010

Articles

“White May Be Might, But It’s Not Always Right,” The Washington Post, Sunday Outlook Section, December 9, 2007.

“Race, Crime, and Social Mobility: Black and Italian Undesirables in Modern America.” in Shades of Black and White: Conflict and Collaboration Between Two Communities, edited by Dan Ashyk, Fred L. Gardaphe, and Anthony Julian Tamburri. Staten Island: American Italian Historical Association, 1999.

Personal Research Statement

In my research, I seek to uncover the various ways that social scientists and social reformers have imagined African Americans as a distinctly criminal population, and how their ideas about blacks as criminals have changed at specific times and places over the course of the 20th century. I am especially focused on the historical evolution of mainstream discourse around black criminality in comparison to white and immigrant criminality. I also study past and present connections between racial thinking and racial discrimination among crime-prevention agencies and within the criminal justice system. I am currently finishing my first book which is based on my dissertation entitled, “‘Negro Stranger in Our Midst’: The Origins of African-American Criminality in the Urban North, 1900-1940.”

On Being Director of the Schomburg

“My hope for the Schomburg Center,” he stated, “is to develop it as the premier brand for historical expertise on the great race debates of our time; privileging documents, material culture, visual historical media, living artists, and widely disseminated scholarship to raise public consciousness and historical literacy in the United States and around the globe.” Dr. Muhammad plans to build upon the Schomburg’s strong beginnings in online studies under Howard Dodson, “encouraging staff and users to embrace digital technologies as we reach out to youth, especially by creatively opening up the Center’s resources and exhibitions so that they can come to know us on their own terms.” – PRNewsWire.com

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Information from a variety of articles resulting from a Google search.

Photo from:

http://photos.prnewswire.com/medias/switch.do?prefix=/appnb&page=/prnAuth.do&action=autodetails&prnid=20101117%252fNY03747

John McWhorter: American Linguist and Political Commentator

Leshell Hatley — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 16:37:32 +0000

Dr. John Hamilton McWhorter V

John Hamilton McWhorter V is an American linguist and political commentator. He is the author of a number of books on language and on race relations. His linguistic specialty is creole and the process through which it forms.

Education

McWhorter was born and raised in Philadelphia. He attended Friends Select School in Philadelphia, and after tenth grade was accepted to Simon’s Rock College, where he earned an A.A. degree. Later, he attended Rutgers University and received a B.A. in French in 1985. He received a master’s degree in American Studies from New York University and a Ph.D. in linguistics in 1993 from Stanford University.

Career

After graduation McWhorter was an associate professor of linguistics at Cornell University from 1993 to 1995 before taking up a position as associate professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1995 until 2003. He left that position to become a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, and a columnist for the New York Sun. Since 2008, he has been a lecturer at Columbia University.

Author & Commentator

He has published a number of books on linguistics and on race relations and makes regular public radio and television appearances on related subjects. He has spoken many times on National Public Radio and is an occasional contributor on Bloggingheads.tv. He has appeared twice on Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, once in the profanity episode in his capacity as a linguistics professor, and again in the slavery reparations episode for his political views and knowledge of race relations. He is also the author of the courses titled “Understanding Linguistics: The Science of Language” and “Story of Human Language” for The Teaching Company. His 2003 Authentically Black has been interview-reviewed on booknotes.org.

Dr. McWhorter writes and comments extensively on race, ethnicity and cultural issues for the Manhattan Institute. His Book, All About the Beat: Why Hip Hop Can’t Save Black America (Gotham Books), pointed beyond the empty gestures of the “hip-hop revolution” to a brave new politics for Black America, calling for a renewed sense of purpose and pride in black communities. He also writes for several online venues including WNYC & The Root. As a matter of fact, The Root is where BSI learned of him – when he responded to the recent NY Times article and its report of about the achievement gap and data distilled from National Assessment for Educational Progress.

Some Books by Dr. McWhorter

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Information from: http://www.answers.com/topic/john-mcwhorter

Image from: http://www.wnyc.org/articles/its-free-country/2010/sep/09/bullhorn-john-mcwhorter-all-talk-and-no-writing-politics/

[HBCU Presidents] Dr. Melvin N. Johnson: Tennessee State University

Leshell Hatley — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 15:25:41 +0000

Dr. Melvin N. Johnson

Dr. Melvin N. Johnson was named the seventh president of Tennessee State University on March 10, 2005. He assumed leadership of TSU on June 1, 2005. He leads one of Tennessee’s most productive public research universities. Dr. Johnson brings to TSU an exceptionally wide range of experience, as well as valuable state and national perspectives on higher education issues and policies.

More About Tennessee State University

Dr. Heather D. Wathington: Professor and Researcher of Higher Education for Students of Color

Leshell Hatley — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 15:29:21 +0000

Dr. Heather D. Wathington

Dr. Heather D. Wathington is an Assistant Professor in the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia, where she focuses on access and equity in higher education; the attainment and achievement of students of color; the development and purpose of minority-serving institutions; developmental education; and community college student success. She is an accomplished researcher and has a paper in Declining by Degrees: Higher Education at Risk. Here is an excerpt.

Education

* Ph.D., University of Michigan, 2004
* M.Ed., University of Pennsylvania, 1997
* B.A., Wellesley College, 1992

A detailed CV can be found here.

Career

Dr. Wathington previously served as Director of Programs, Office of Diversity, Equity, and Global Initiatives for Association of American Colleges and Universities, where she directed several grant programs related to the office’s mission and charge. She served as editor of Diversity Digest, a quarterly newsletter designed to highlight campus diversity work and assist student practitioners with their local diversity initiatives. After her time at Diversity Digest, Dr. Wathington served as Senior Research Officer, Research and Programs for Lumina Foundation for Education. Lumina’s goal is to increase the percentage of Americans who hold high-quality degrees, credentials and certificates to 60 percent by 2025. There, Dr. Wathington managed a $20 million portfolio of research and program grants focused on student access and success in postsecondary education and conducted and commissioned research on issues critical to the foundation’s mission.

Research Interests

Research Projects

News

Curry School Researchers Study Why Minorities Are Underrepresented in Research

Personal Statement

I am interested in issues of access, equity, and diversity in higher education. My research focuses on the academic achievement of low-income students and students of color in higher education, with a specific focus on understanding the educational contexts, levers, and practices that promote greater academic success for these students.

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Information & image from:

http://curry.virginia.edu/academics/directory/heather-d.-wathington

[From Our Black Scholars Directory] Craig Brookins, EdD: Associate Professor at North Carolina State University

Leshell Hatley — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 00:35:42 +0000

Craig Brookins, EdD

Craig Brookins, EdD is an Associate Professor of Psychology (Psychology in the Public Interest program) and Africana Studies at North Carolina State University. I directed Africana Studies from 19970-2009.

Education

Dr. Brookins received his B.S. degree from Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Michigan State University in the area of ecological/community psychology. His dissertation title was “An experimental evaluation of a volunteer parent aide program for first time African American mothers.”

Research

Dr. Brookins’ research interests are in the areas of community and school-based programs for African-American youth and families, rites-of-passage interventions, community development, identity and world view assessment, and study abroad experiences. He has also worked as a consultant on a variety of issues including male adolescent pregnancy prevention, diabetes prevention, alternatives to incarceration, mentoring programs for African-American youth and students, and effective schooling.

Organization Affiliations

Association for Black Psychologists

National Council for Black Studies

African Educational Research Association

More information

http://www.blackscholarsindex.com/directory/view-profile.php?sId=23

http://ids.chass.ncsu.edu/afs/CraigC.BrookinsPh.D.FacultyPage.php

Dr. Sheri L. Parks: Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland

Leshell Hatley — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 10:04:37 +0000

Dr. Sheri L. Parks

Dr. Sheri Parks is an Associate Professor and became co-director of Graduate Studies in the Department of American Studies at the University of Maryland in Summer 2009. Prof. Parks is particularly interested in the aesthetics of everyday experiences, including mass media and other popular culture artifacts. She is the host of “Clear Reception,” a radio show featured on public radio stations.

Prof. Parks has written extensively about popular culture, and has been interviewed by the media on everything from Google’s email program to TV viewing, and men and their leadership habits.

Education

Ph.D. Communication Studies (University of Massachusetts-Amherst, 1985)
M.A. Communication Studies (University of Massachusetts-Amherst, 1983)
B.A. English and Radio, Television and Motion Pictures (University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, 1978)

Research & Public Speaking

Her research focuses on public aesthetics, with particular concern for popular culture as public mythology and its effect upon individuals, families and minority cultures. She an active public intellectual, appearing in national and local media, and is in demand as a public speaker.

Books & Publications

Dr. Parks is the author of Fierce Angels: The Strong Black Woman in American Life and Culture.

Below is a list of her publications:

Lion Mother of the American Soul: The Black Maternal Figure in Popular Mythology. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, forthcoming.
“Black Families and the Media.” Managing Black/White Tensions at Home: Family Communication and Ethnic Cultural Diversity. Ed. T. Socha and R. Diggs. New York: Erlbaum, 1999.
“Through Our Own Eyes.” Black Film Review March 1995.
“Ridicule as an Educational Corrective.” Journal Of Educational Psychology 73 1981. 722-27.
“In My Mother’s House: Traditional Black Feminism in the PBS production of A Raisin in the Sun.” Theatre and Feminist Aesthetics. Ed. K. Laughlin and C. Schuler. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson, 1995.
“In My Mother’s House: Black Feminist Aesthetics, Television and A Raisin in the Sun.” Feminism and Theater. Ed. C. Schuler. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson, 1993.
“Feminism in the Lives of Ordinary Women.” Barnard College Occasional Papers. Fall 1990.
“The Effect of Ridiculing a Television Model on Children’s Imitation of the Model’s Behavior.” Human Communication Research 10 1983. 243-55.

Service / Honors / Recognition

Dr. Parks is active in the university’s civic engagement initiatives, as a steering committee member of the Coalition for Civic Engagement and as an instructor whose classes often include projects that benefit non-profit associations. In 2008 she was recognized by University of Maryland’s campus as the Outstanding Woman of Color and as Faculty of the Year in the University Honors Program.

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Information from:

http://amst.umd.edu/People/parks.htm

http://www.newsdesk.umd.edu/experts/hottopic.cfm?hotlist_id=17&expert_id_all=1668069556P

Dr. Larry E. Davis: Dean of the School of Social Work at the University of Pittsburgh

Leshell Hatley — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 15:32:40 +0000

Dr. Larry E. Davis

Dr. Larry E. Davis is the Dean of the School of Social Work at the University of Pittsburgh, where he is the Donald M. Henderson Professor and also the Director of the Center on Race and Social Problems. Dr. Davis came to the University of Pittsburgh in the fall of 2001. He had been a faculty member at the George Warren Brown Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri since 1977, where he was a Professor of Social Work and Psychology and the holder of the E. Desmond Lee Chair in Ethnic and Racial Diversity.

Education

Dr. Davis received his PhD from the University of Michigan’s dual-degree program in social work and psychology in 1977. He holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Michigan State University and a master’s in social work and a master’s in psychology from the University of Michigan. His professional interests include interracial group dynamics, the impact of race, gender, and class on interpersonal interactions, African American family formation, and youth.

Honors / Awards / Funding

He has received research funding from sources such as the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Health, and National Institute of Mental Health.

Publications

Some of his publications include “Too Many Blacks, Too Many Whites: Seeking a Racial Balance: Predicting Positive Academic Intentions Among African American Males and Females,” “Assessment of Practitioner Cross-Racial Treatment Experiences,” and “Essential Components of Groupwork with Black Americans.” He has written, edited, or co-authored four books: Race, Gender and Class: Guidelines for Practice with Individuals, Families and Groups (co-authored with Enola Proctor), Ethnic Issues in Adolescent Mental Health (Co-edited with Arlene Stiffman), Black and Single: Finding and Choosing a Partner who is Right for You (3rd edition 2004), and Working with African American Males: A Guide to Practice. He is a frequent lecturer and has given such talks as “The State of Black Singles in America” at the Smithsoni an Lecture Series in Washington D.C.

[HBCU Presidents] John Brown Watson (1869–1942): University of Arkansas Pine Bluff

Leshell Hatley — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 14:45:23 +0000

John Brown Watson was president of Agricultural, Mechanical, and Normal College (AM&N), now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff (UAPB), from 1928 until his death in 1942. Watson was a member of the first generation of black Americans born after the Civil War and representative of that demographic among his cohorts, identified as what Professor Willard B. Gatewood Jr. called “aristocrats of color.”

Early Life

Watson was born near Tyler, Texas, on December 28, 1869, to Crystal and Frank Watson; he was named for the antebellum abolitionist John Brown.

Education

Educated near his home, Watson passed the county teacher examination in 1887 and taught for two years. He entered Bishop College at Marshall, Texas, in 1891 at the seventh grade level and completed his high school diploma in 1898. After teaching for two more years, Watson entered Colgate University at Hamilton, New York, in the fall of 1900. He transferred to Brown University at Providence, Rhode Island, the following year and graduated with a Bachelor of Philosophy degree in the class of 1904. Mentored by John Hope, an 1894 graduate of Brown University and the first black president of Morehouse College and Atlanta University, Watson served as professor of mathematics and science at Morehouse College from 1904 to 1908.

Marriage

On September 25, 1907, he married Hattie Louise Rutherford, a graduate of Spelman College, of Rome, Georgia. Hattie Rutherford Watson was the elder daughter of freedman Samuel W. Rutherford, founder of the National Benefit Life Insurance Company, and Mary Anne Lemon Rutherford. In the spring of 1939, after almost thirty-two years of marriage, the Watsons adopted an infant daughter, Marian Anderson Watson, naming her after the famed contralto.

Career

In 1908, Watson left Morehouse College and, for twelve years, served as a secretary of the Colored Men’s Department of the International Committee of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). The organization’s appointment of Watson to an executive position represented a significant opportunity for his advancement to more visible careers. Watson, a graduate of an Ivy League institution and former faculty at Morehouse College, was a likely candidate for an administrative position in black higher education in the era of segregation. He also briefly served as liquidating agent for the Atlanta State Savings Bank and as state agent for the Southern Fire Insurance Company. In 1923, he assumed the administration of Leland College (American Baptist Home Mission Society) at Baker, Louisiana.

On June 1, 1928, the State Board of Education elected Watson as president of Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical, and Normal College at Pine Bluff (Jefferson County). The state legislature and two philanthropic agencies appropriated funds and bought a thirty-five-acre site for the institution two miles from the center of Pine Bluff. Construction began in early 1929, and students and faculty moved in before Christmas of the same year. The new physical plant consisted of eight new buildings valued at almost $600,000. Watson’s inauguration as president in the spring of 1930, at which John Hope delivered the commemorative address, enabled simultaneous dedication of the new campus site as well.

Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical, and Normal College at Pine Bluff NOW University of Arkansas Pine Bluff (UAPB)

Despite the postponement of Watson’s installation ceremony, he founded and co-edited with his wife, Hattie Rutherford Watson, the college newspaper, The Arkansawyer, and the same name also christened the new college catalogue. In 1929, he attended the annual conference of the Presidents of Negro Land-Grant Colleges, the state’s first participation in more than a decade. Watson’s other initiatives included both intercollegiate athletics and an intramural sports program, debate and dramatic clubs, and free night classes for the local community. The college was reorganized with four divisions: Arts and Sciences, Agriculture, Home Economics, and Education, including a training or practice school with both elementary and secondary grades.

Watson’s administration also coincided with the Roosevelt administration’s New Deal. The college participated in the distribution of the college and graduate student funds by the Negro Division of the National Youth Administration (NYA). AM&N was the site of NYA Camp Bethune for unemployed young black women in 1937 and for unemployed young black men in 1940. In 1938, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) funded a new library, two new dormitories, and eight brick faculty cottages.

AM&N College enrollment at the beginning of Watson’s tenure was thirty-six; the number of faculty and staff was thirty-two. At the time of United States’ entry into the World War II, the college enrolled almost 500 students, employed a faculty of sixty-six, and had a physical plant valued at nearly two million dollars.

Service

Watson maintained membership in several professional and private organizations, including the Association of Presidents of Negro Land-Grant Colleges, Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Sigma Pi Phi, the Monday Club of Atlanta, the Brown University Alumni Association, and St. Paul Baptist Church at Pine Bluff.

End of Life

Watson died at his home on the AM&N College campus on December 6, 1942. A memorial ceremony was held at AM&N College, followed by funeral services at Sale Hall Chapel on the campus of Morehouse College. He is buried in Atlanta. The WPA library completed in 1939, Childress Hall, was dedicated and renamed in his honor in 1958; the current library, completed in 1968, is the Watson Memorial Library.

Dr. Chad Jenkins: Associate Professor of Computer Science, Brown University

Leshell Hatley — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 10:48:13 +0000

Dr. Chad Jenkins was recently promoted and granted tenure within the Computer Science Department at Brown University. The Department announced the promotion of Chad Jenkins to Associate Professor with tenure, effective July 1, 2010.

“Chad’s promotion recognizes his outstanding research work, innovative teaching, and exemplary service,” said Department Chair Roberto Tamassia.

Education

Dr. Jenkins earned his B.S. in Computer Science and Mathematics at Alma College (1996), M.S. in Computer Science at Georgia Tech (1998), and Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of Southern California (2003). Prof. Jenkins was selected as a Sloan Research Fellow in 2009.

Awards

Dr. Jenkins was selected as a Sloan Research Fellow in 2009. He is a recipient of a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) for his work in physics-based human tracking and of a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for his work on robot learning from multivalued human demonstrations. He also received Young Investigator awards from the Office of Naval Research (ONR) for his research in learning dynamical primitives from human motion and from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) for his work in manifold learning and multi-robot coordination.

Research

Dr. Jenkin’s research addresses problems in robot learning and human-robot interaction, primarily focused on robot learning from demonstration, as well as topics in computer vision, machine learning, and computer animation. Videos of Chad’s current research work can be found on the YouTube channel of the Brown Robotics Group. Visit http://brown-robotics.org to learn more about Dr. Jenkin’s Robotics Lab at Brown University.

Prof. Jenkins’ work strives to address three basic questions. First, how can we capture data from the world that is representative of human performance? Second, how can machine learning and data analysis be used to extract dynamical structure from performance data? Lastly, how can we utilize learned dynamics for building autonomous robot controllers and perception mechanisms?

His previous efforts were mostly geared towards humanoid robotics with respect to learning primitive behaviors for robot control through imitation. More generally, he addresses perception, control, and learning issues at the intersection of robotics, computer vision, computer animation, machine learning and interactive systems.

Author

In 2009, Chad co-authored Creating Games: Mechanics, Content, and Technology with Brown CS alum Morgan McGuire. He has also authored chapters for several other books, including Data-Driven 3D Facial Animation, Human-Robot Interaction and From Motor to Interaction Learning in Robots.

“I consider myself very fortunate to be a part of the Computer Science Department at Brown,” said Chad. “My promotion is both a reflection of the supportive culture and community spirit of the department as well as the hard work of the students and post-docs who have been in my group. I look forward to continued success at Brown, especially with our new robotics lab space in the CIT building.”

[From Our Black Scholars Directory] Dr. Suzanne Henderson: Asst. Dean at St. John’s College

Leshell Hatley — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 21:15:26 +0000

Suzanne M. Henderson received her Ph.D. from Temple University in 2007. In February of 2008, she became Assistant Dean in the Graduate Division of St. John’s College at St. John’s University. In the short time Dr. Henderson has been at St. John’s University, she has been instrumental in the re-formulation and execution of policies that affect all graduate students in St. John College. Presently, she is teaching an African American Studies class in the Sociology dept.

Education

Dr. Henderson received her PhD in African-American Studies from Temple University in 2007. Here dissertation was entitled “The African American Experience of Orisha Worship.”

Greatest Challenge/Accomplishment

Dr. Henderson is a subject matter expert in the religious tradition of the Yoruba people of West Africa particularly African Americans who practice the tradition in the United States.

View her Black Scholars Index Directory Profile.

Dr. Charlene Drew Jarvis: Educator, Researcher, Politician

Leshell Hatley — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 00:11:41 +0000

Charlene Drew Jarvis (born July 31, 1941, Washington, D.C., as Charlene Rosella Drew) is an American educator and former scientific researcher and politician who served as the president of Southeastern University [now defunct] until March 31, 2009 (13 years). As president, Dr. Jarvis orchestrated a unique merger of the University with the Graduate School (formerly the USDA Graduate School). She is now a member of the KIPP DC Board of Trustees.

Dr. Charlene Jarvis is the daughter of the blood plasma and blood transfusion pioneer Dr. Charles Drew.

Education

Jarvis earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from Oberlin College in 1962, a Master of Science degree in psychology from Howard University in 1964, and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in neuropsychology from the University of Maryland, College Park, in 1971.

Political Career

Dr. Charlene Drew Jarvix

Ward 4′s representative to the Council of the District of Columbia, Arrington Dixon, won the election for chairman of the council in November 1978, leaving the Ward 4 seat vacant. Jarvis won the special election to fill the seat on May 1, 1979. She was then reelected to the council in 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, and 1996. Among her accomplishments were laws creating the Office of Banking and requiring national banks to invest in neglected communities; creating a Housing Producation Commission and a Housing Production Trust Fund; and helping to support commercial, retail and housing development through the Business Improvement Districts (BIDS) and tax increment financing (TIF). Jarvis sought reelection again in 2000, but she was defeated in the Democratic primary by Adrian Fenty.

As Chair of the Committee on Economic Development, Dr. Jarvis spearheaded efforts to increase revenues for the District of Columbia to answer the city’s financial crisis. She introduced legislation which paved the way for the new MCI Sports Arena and the new Convention Center, both of which will create jobs, increase business and increase tax revenues for the District of Columbia.

Service

Dr. Jarvis has served on the boards of, or as an advisor to: The National Institute of Mental Health, The Washington Chapter of the American Red Cross, The Breast Cancer Task Force of the Department of Health and Human Services, The Women’s Health Initiative of the National Institutes of Health, The National Museum of Health and the National Bone Marrow Program.

Acknowledgements & Honors

Dr. Jarvis has received more than 100 awards for her professional and civic accomplishments and her outstanding leadership, including an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Amherst College in 1994 and an honorary Doctor of Public Service degree from George Washington University in May 2001. In the January 2000 issue of the The Washingtonian Magazine, she was named one of the “Nineteen Ninety Nine Washingtonians of the Year. The Women’s Business Center, Inc. on May 9th will honor her for her outstanding support of women-owned businesses over the years. She is a nationally recognized speaker on legislative policy, health science and economic issues.

She is listed in the following publications: International Who’s Who of Professionals, 1998; Who’s Who Among Top Executives, 1998-1999 edition; Who’s Who of American Women 22nd edition, 2000-2001; Who’s Who in America, 54th edition 2000; Who’s Who Among African Americans; Who’s Who In Executives and Businesses, 2000 Millennium Edition; Who’s Who in the World, 18th edition, 2001; International Who’s Who of Professional & Business Women, 7th edition, 2000; the 2,000 Notable American Women, Millennium Edition; the Nationwide Register’s Who’s Who In Executives and Businesses, 2000 Millennium Edition; World Who’s Who of Women 15th edition, 2001 and Who’s Who in America 56th edition, 2002.

Dr. Dudley Weldon Woodard (1881-1965): Educator and Mathematician

Leshell Hatley — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 16:13:29 +0000

When Dudley Weldon Woodard (1881-1965) enrolled in the Graduate School at Penn in 1927, he had already accumulated a remarkable set of achievements. He had published his University of Chicago master’s thesis in mathematics, “Loci Connected with the Problem of Two Bodies” and had been teaching mathematics at the collegiate level for two decades. He had been a member of the faculty for seven years at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama; for six years at Wilberforce University in Ohio; and since 1920, at Howard University, then the most prestigious African American university in the country. At Howard, he also held the post of Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

Early Life

African-American mathematician Dudley Weldon Woodard was born October 3, 1881, in Galveston, Texas, where his father worked for the U. S. Postal Service. Woodard was a smart child whose curiosity was supported by his family.

Education

After finishing his primary education in his home state, Woodard attended Wilberforce College in Ohio, receiving a bachelor degree (A. B.) in mathematics in 1903. He then received a B. S. degree in 1906 and an M. S. degree in mathematics at the University of Chicago in 1907. From 1907 to 1914, Woodard taught mathematics at Tuskegee Institute and then moved to join the Wilberforce faculty from 1914-1920.

On Wednesday, 28 June 1928, Woodard became the 38th person to receive a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Penn. More significantly, Woodard was only the second African American in the nation to receive that degree (the first was Elbert Cox in 1925); his thesis was entitled “Loci connected with the Problem of Two Bodies.” Other publications include: “On Two-Dimensional Analysis Situs with Special Reference to the Jordan Curve Theorem,” and “The Characterization of the Closed N-Cell.”

Career

In 1921, he joined the mathematics faculty at Howard University. During this time received his Ph.D. in mathematics in 1928 at the University of Pennsylvania; Woodard became only the second African-American to earn a Ph.D. degree in mathematics. While at Howard, he was also selected dean of the College of Arts and Sciences (his son later also joined the faculty at Howard). Dr. Woodard established the M. S. degree program in mathematics, making Howard’s mathematical program one of the best for study among America’s historically Black universities and colleges. He also established a mathematics library at Howard. He attracted Elbert Cox to join him in 1929 and he established and sponsored several other professorships and many scholarly seminars in mathematics.

Promotion of Excellence in Mathematics

He was the thesis supervisor for many of Howard’s M. S. degree students. He established and sponsored several professorships and many scholarly seminars in mathematics. Among his colleagues and students, Woodard excelled and was very popular as professor and administrator. He was highly respected by those who knew him in the mathematical sciences community. Deane Montgomery, former president of the American Mathematical Society and the International Mathematical Union, described Woodard as, “an extremely nice man, well-balanced personally.” Leo Zippin, who was an internationally known specialist in Woodard’s field, said that he was “one of the noblest men I’ve ever known.”

Life

Dr. Woodard was not only a brilliant mathematician, but a man of dignity; he enjoyed life in spite of his racial environment. He used the phrase “Black is beautiful” in the 1930s; he often ignored the “colored” signs and visited any men’s restroom of his choice. He also ate at many “nice” restaurants and enjoyed the theaters of his choice in New York. He and his family once moved into what had been an all-white neighborhood because it was aesthetically nice and it was near Howard.

Woodard devoted his entire professional life to the promotion of excellence in mathematics through the advancement of his students, teaching, and research. Dudley Woodard retired in 1947 and died July 1, 1965 in his home in Cleveland Ohio.

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Information from:

http://www.math.upenn.edu/History/bh/text99.html

http://www.ldsgenesisgroup.org/history/dudleywoodard.html

Image from:

http://www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/PEEPS/woodard_dudleyw.html

[HBCU Presidents] Dr. Reginald S. Avery: Coppin State University’s 5th President

Leshell Hatley — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 15:55:08 +0000

Dr. Reginald S. Avery officially assumed the presidency of 108-year-old Coppin State University, on January 14, 2008. Dr. Avery, who was serving as Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the University of South Carolina Upstate, becomes Coppin’s fifth president, succeeding Dr. Stanley Battle who resigned last June to become Chancellor of North Carolina A&T State University. He brings more than 35-years of experience in higher education to Coppin State and vows a strong allegiance to its mission and a pledge to advance excellence and effectiveness.

Education

Dr. Avery holds a Ph.D. from the Florence Heller School of Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University, an M.S.W. from the George Williams College of Aurora University, and a B.S. in sociology from North Carolina A&T State University.

Career

Dr. Avery served as Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Professor at the University of South Carolina Upstate (USC) since 2003. In 2006-07, he served as the institution’s Acting Chancellor while the Chancellor was on sabbatical. Previously, he was Provost at Alma College in Michigan, Vice President for Academic Affairs at Kentucky State University and Founding Dean of the School of Professional Programs at Benedict College in South Carolina. He served on the faculty of the University of Tennessee and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. While holding leading posts at USC Upstate, Dr. Avery served on several boards, including those of the Spartanburg Area Chamber of Commerce, Urban League of the Upstate, and 100 Black Men.

Dr. Charles R. Drew: First Black Surgeon to Serve on American Board of Surgery

Leshell Hatley — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 15:21:16 +0000

Charles Richard Drew (3 June 1904 – 1 April 1950) was an African-American physician, surgeon and medical researcher. He researched in the field of blood transfusions, developing improved techniques for blood storage, and applied his expert knowledge to developing large-scale blood banks early in World War II. This allowed medics to save thousands of lives of the Allied forces. The research and development aspect of his blood storage work is disputed. Drew protested against the practice of racial segregation in the donation of blood, as it lacked scientific foundation, an action which cost him his job. In 1943, Drew’s distinction in his profession was recognized when he became the first black surgeon selected to serve as an examiner on the American Board of Surgery.

Early Life

Drew was born to Richard Y. Drew and Nora Burrell in Washington, DC. He attended Meads Mill Elementary School, and began working as a paperboy selling copies of the Washington Times-Herald while attending school. In 1918, he enrolled at Dunbar High School, a racially segregated high school with a reputation for being one of the strongest academic Black public schools in the country. Drew’s sister Elsie, who was ailing with tuberculosis, died of pandemic influenza in 1920. Her death was said to influence his decision to study medicine.

Education

His athletic achievements helped win him a partial scholarship to Amherst College in Massachusetts. Drew became a member of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. He did graduate work at McGill University, Montreal, and Columbia University, New York, where he earned his PhD. He become the first African-American man to earn a degree of Doctor of Science in Medicine.

Academic Career

Drew became a researcher and general surgeon, teaching and practicing within medical schools and teaching hospitals. He worked and taught at Freedman’s Hospital, Morgan State University, Montreal General, and Howard University. Soon after he began his career, in 1943 he was invited as the first black to be an examiner for the American Board of Surgeons.

Blood Plasma for Great Britain Project

Dr. Charles Richard Drew

In late 1940, during World War II before the US entered the war, and just after earning his doctorate, Drew was recruited by John Scudder to help set up and administer an early prototype program for blood storage and preservation. He was to collect, test, and transport large quantities of blood plasma for distribution in Great Britain. Drew went to New York to direct the United States’ Blood for Britain project. The Blood for Britain project was a project to aid British soldiers and civilians by giving US blood to Great Britain.

Drew created a central location for the blood collection process where donors could go to give blood. He made sure all blood plasma was tested before it was shipped out. He ensured that only skilled personnel handled blood plasma to avoid the possibility of contamination. The Blood for Britain program operated successfully for five months, with total collections of almost 15,000 people donating blood, and with over 5,500 vials of blood plasma. As a result, the Blood Transfusion Betterment Association applauded Drew for his work.

End of Life

From 1939, Drew attended the annual free clinic at the John A. Andrew Memorial Hospital in Tuskegee, Alabama. For the 1950 Tuskegee clinic, Drew and three other black physicians decided to drive rather than fly. Drew was driving around 8 a.m. on April 1. Still fatigued from spending the night before in the operating theater, Drew lost control of the vehicle. After careening into a field, the car somersaulted three times. The three other physicians suffered minor injuries. Drew was trapped with serious wounds; his foot had become wedged beneath the brake pedal. When reached by emergency technicians, Drew was in shock and barely alive due to severe leg injuries. Drew was taken to Alamance General Hospital in Burlington, North Carolina. He was pronounced dead a half hour after he first received medical attention. Drew’s funeral was held on April 5, 1950, at the Nineteenth Street Baptist Church in Washington, DC.

Urban Legend

A persistent urban legend holds that Drew was denied care—ironically, a blood transfusion—at a nearby hospital because of his race and bled to death. Dr. John Ford, one of the doctors traveling with Drew contradicted this in an interview: “We all received the very best of care. The doctors started treating us immediately. [...] He had a superior vena caval syndrome—blood was blocked getting back to his heart from his brain and upper extremities. To give him a transfusion would have killed him sooner. Even the most heroic efforts couldn’t have saved him. I can truthfully say that no efforts were spared in the treatment of Drew, and, contrary to popular myth, the fact that he was a Negro did not in any way limit the care that was given to him.”

Visit http://www.cdrewu.edu/about-cdu/dr-charles-drew for more information.

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Information from wikipedia.

Images from:

http://www.africamaat.com/CHARLES-RICHARD-DREW-1904-1950-Le

http://publicdomainclip-art.blogspot.com/2008/05/dr-charles-r-drew.html

[From Our Black Scholars Directory] Sheri Massey: School Library Media Specialist

Leshell Hatley — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 18:17:18 +0000

Dr. Sheri Massey received her Ph.D. in Information Studies from the University of Maryland in 2009. Her dissertation was entitled “Digital libraries in schools: The best practices of National Board- certified library media specialists.”

Research

Her research interests include digital libraries, multicultural children’s literature, the information seeking and use behaviors of children, and diversity in libraries and education. She is currently working as a school library media specialist to gain practical experience in the library field.

Dr. Massey has worked extensively on the International Children’s Digital Library (ICDL), an free online library for children of all ages with over 3,000 books in over 50 languages.

You can view her full Black Scholars Directory Profile here.

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You too can be a part of our Black Scholars Directory. Join today!

James H. Shelton III, Assistant Deputy Secretary for Innovation and Improvement

Leshell Hatley — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 19:41:57 +0000

James H. Shelton is the assistant deputy secretary for innovation and improvement within the US Department of Education, managing a portfolio that includes most of the Department’s competitive teacher quality, school choice and learning technology programs, housed in the Office of Innovation and Improvement.

Education

Shelton holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Atlanta’s Morehouse College as well as master’s degrees in business administration and education from Stanford University.

Role of Deputy Secretary for Innovation and Improvement

In this role, Shelton will help oversee the development and grant process for two new Education Department programs created as part of the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: the $4.35 billion Race to the Top Fund and the $650 million “Invest in What Works and Innovation” Fund.

These two programs will give the federal government leeway to reward districts and states that are deemed to be making substantial progress on student achievement.

Career

Previously, he served as a program director for the education division of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, managing the foundation’s national programs and work in the northeast region of the United States. Shelton has also been a partner and the East Coast lead for New Schools Venture Fund and co-founded LearnNow, a school management company that later was acquired by Edison Schools. He spent over four years as a senior management consultant with McKinsey & Company in Atlanta, Ga., where he advised CEOs and other executives on issues related to corporate strategy, business development, organizational design, and operational effectiveness. Upon leaving McKinsey, he joined Knowledge Universe, Inc., where he launched, acquired and operated education-related businesses.

The Department of Education

The U.S. Department of Education was created in 1980 by combining offices from several federal agencies. Its mission is to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access. The department has 4,200 employees and a $68.6 billion budget.

Take a look at where James Shelton fits within this picture.

Dr. Widad Elmahboub: Math Professor at Hampton University

Leshell Hatley — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 16:46:11 +0000

Dr. Widad Elmahboub is an assistant professor at the Mathematics Department at Hampton University. She will be featured this September in the 28th edition of Who’s Who of American Women. As an assistant professor in the HU Department of Mathematics, Elmahboub also serves as the team chair of the HU Research Center of Earth, Space and GIS Analysis (RCESG) Mathematics.

Education

She earned her PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the Environmental Engineering with emphasis in applied Mathematics and space Sciences. Her Master degree is in Engineering Physics and BS is in Astronomy.

Research

Her research interest is simulation and modeling for Planet Mars surface minerals. She developed a new methodology and algorithm to produce a highly accurate classification of earth resources using remote sensing/GIS.

She affiliated with NASA for utilization of large number of data in remote sensing and Mars research and also through graduate student research. She collaborated with Mathematics faculty and with the Physics Department and established the Research Center of Earth, Space and GIS analysis (RCESG) in the Mathematics Department at Hampton University through Department of Defense (DOD) grant.

She is active in Research and referred journal publications. She works hard with her undergraduate and graduate students on different research endeavors.

“I am very pleased,” stated Elmahboub regarding the recognition from Who’s Who of American Women. “Working hard always pays off.”

Her Biography has been published in Who’s Who in Science and Engineering 9th edition, Who’s Who in the World, and Who’s Who Women in America.

[From Our Black Scholars Directory] Dr. Beverly Greene – Professor of Psychology at St. John’s University

Leshell Hatley — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 18:29:46 +0000

Dr. Beverly Greene is a tenured Professor of Psychology at St. John’s University in New York and a Practicing Clinical Psychologist. Her area of specialization includes examining the role of institutionalized racism, sexism, heterosexism and other oppressive ideologies in the paradigms of psychology and practice of psychotherapy in organized mental health – understanding psychological resilience and vulnerability in socially marginalized people and their use in psychotherapy.

Education
B.A., 1973, New York University, Psychology
M.A., 1977, Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies, Adelphi University, Clinical Psychology
Ph.D., 1983, Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies, Adelphi University, Clinical Psychology

Dr. Greene was awarded a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the Derner Institute of Adelphi University, and was a Doctoral Fellow in Mental Retardation at the Mental Retardation Institute of New York Medical College in Valhalla, New York.

Author

She has served on the editorial boards of numerous scholarly journals and is the author of nearly 100 publications in the psychological literature. Nine of those publications have received national awards as significant contributions to the psychological literature on women, women of color, sexual minorities, African American women and families.

She is the founding co-editor of the APA Div. 44 book series Psychological Perspectives on Lesbian, Gay & Bisexual Issues.

Honors & Awards

She is also the recipient of numerous national awards that include:

the 1996 Outstanding Leadership Award from the APA Committee on Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Concerns;
2000 APA Society for the Psychology of Women Heritage Award;
2003 APA Committee on Women in Psychology Distinguished Leadership Award;
2004 Award for Distinguished Senior Career Contributions to Ethnic Minority Research(APA Division 45);
2005 Stanley Sue Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions to Diversity in Clinical Psychology (APA Division 12);
2006 Helms Award for Scholarship and Mentoring (TC, Columbia Univ Cross Cultural Roundtable);
2006 Florence Halpern Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions to Clinical Psychology(APA Division 12);
2007 Distinguished Scientific Contributions to LGB Psychology Award (APA Division 44);
2007 Distinguished Career Award (Assn for Women in Psych);
2008 Carolyn Wood Sherif Award(APA Division 35);
2009 Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest Senior Career Award(APA).

Service

A Fellow of 7 divisions of APA,(9,12,29.35.42.44.45) she has served in many leadership positions in the association and currently serves on the Division 35 Executive Board, the Association’s Policy and Planning Board and a representative of Division 44 to the APA Council of Representatives.

Organizational Affiliations

American Psychological Association, Fellow
Association for Women in Psychology
American Orthopsychiatric Association, Fellow
Academy of Clinical Psychology, Fellow

Information from Our Black Scholars Directory. Dr. Greene’s Profile can be viewed here.

You too can become a part of our Black Scholars Directory NOW!

[From Our Black Scholars Directory: Dr. Leon Prieto, Assistant Professor

Leshell Hatley — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 18:43:43 +0000

Dr. Leon Prieto was born and raised in the twin island Republic of Trinidad and Tobago.

Education

He moved to the US for school where he obtained a B.S in Business Administration from Claflin University, a MBA from Georgia Southern University, and a PhD in Human Resource and Leadership Development from Louisiana State University. The title of his dissertation was “The Influence of Proactive Personality on Social Entrepreneurial Intentions among African American and Hispanic Undergraduate Students: The Moderating Role of Hope.”

Favorite Quote

Cogito Ergo Sum (I think, therefore I am)

Biggest Accomplishment

He is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. and his biggest accomplishment is obtaining is doctorate.

You can view his Black Scholars Directory profile here.

Charles E. Phillips, Jr. – President of Oracle

Leshell Hatley — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 21:28:46 +0000

Charles E. Phillips is President of Oracle Corporation and a member of the Board of Directors. He joined Oracle in 2003. His responsibilities encompass global field operations.

Education

Mr. Phillips holds a BS in Computer Science from the United States Air Force Academy, a JD from New York Law School, and an MBA from Hampton University.

Career

Before joining Oracle, Mr. Phillips was with Morgan Stanley, a global investment bank. Prior to Wall Street, Mr. Phillips served as a Captain in the United States Marine Corps in the 2nd Battalion, 10th Marines.

Service

Mr. Phillips is on the boards of Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City, The American Museum of Natural History, New York Law School, and Viacom Inc. In February 2009, Mr. Phillips was appointed as a member to the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

Mari Evans: Poet, Author, Educator

Leshell Hatley — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 15:43:06 +0000

Mari Evans (born July 16, 1923 in Toledo, Ohio) is an African-American poet, living in Indianapolis. Shes is an activist for prison reform, is against corporal punishment, and works with theater groups and local community organizations.

Education and Employment

Evans attended the University of Toledo where she majored in fashion design. The fashion design major did not hold her interest and she left the University of Toledo without a degree. Evans began a series of teaching appointments in American universities in 1969. During 1969-1970, she served as writer in residence at Indiana University-Purdue, where she taught courses in African American Literature. The next year, Evans accepted a position as the writer in residence at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. From 1968-1973, Evans produced, wrote and directed the television program called “The Black Experience” for WTTV in Indianapolis, Indiana. Evans received an honorary degree from Marion College in 1975. Evans continued her teaching career at Purdue (1978–1980), at Washington University in Saint Louis (1980), at Cornell University (1981–85) at the State-University of New York – Albany (1985–1986).

Author

Mari Evans has written several poems, short fiction stories, children’s books, and plays. She is known for her many poems. One, called “When In Rome“, is taught in many high schools and college English classes. The poem ends, “I’m tired of eatin’ what they eats in Rome.” The last line provides the poem with its famous title. It is a dialogue poem, between Mattie and her possible slave owner, offering her unfamiliar foods in the pantry. She is also well known for the line, “I have never been contained except I made the prison.”

Mari Evans was a part of the Black Arts Movement. The BAM poets spread the message of Black cultural, psychological, and economical liberation. In 1970, Evans wrote “I am a Black Woman.” The second stanza reads,

“I am a black woman tall as a cypress strong beyond all definition still defying place and time and circumstance assailed impervious indestructible.”

Evans spoke of the need to make Blackness both beautiful and powerful.

Other books of poems and poetry include:

Night Star 1973-1978 (1981)
Where is the Music (1968)
A Dark and Splendid Mass, Harlem River Press (1992)
I am a Black Woman (1970)

Children’s books include:

Dear Corinne, Tell Somebody! Love, Annie: A book about secrets (1999)
Jim Flying High (1979)
J.D. (1973)
Singing Black: Alternative Nursery Rhymes for Children (1998)
Rap Stories (1974)

Plays include:

Eyes, a musical based on Their Eyes Were Watching God (1979)
River of My Song (1977)
Potrait of a Man (1979)
Boochie (1979)

Awards and Honors

John Hay Whitney Fellow, 1965-66
Woodrow Wilson Foundation Grant, 1968
Indiana University Writers Conference Award, 1970
First Annual Poetry Award, 1970
Black Academy of Arts and Letters, 1970
Copeland Fellow, Amherst College, 1980
National Endowment for the Arts grant, 1981-82
Photo put on Ugandan postage stamp, 1997
Nominated for a Grammy Award for the liner notes she wrote for The Long Road Back To Freedom: An Anthology of Black Music, 2002

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Information obtained from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mari_Evans. More information about Mari Evans can be found here.

[From Our Black Scholars Directory] Carol Westmoreland, Esq.

Leshell Hatley — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 15:57:52 +0000

Carol Westmoreland currently works for Amtrak in its Corporate Law Department. Her area of focus is largely transactions. Among other things, she negotiates contracts and other agreements for the company. In her tenure, she has negotiated almost a billion dollars in contracts for a variety of goods and services.

Education

Business Administration, Columbia Union College (now Washington Adventist University), 1994
Law, The George Washington University Law School, 2002

Favorite Quote

An act of kindness is the hardest thing to give away because its always returned.

Greatest Accomplishment

Ms. Westmoreland’s greatest accomplishment is by far my wonderful daughter Amber Peterson, who herself recently became a Black Scholar when she graduated from the University of Pennsylvania on May 16, 2009.

Click here to view Ms. Westmoreland’s Black Scholars Directory entry.

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You too can ‘Be Counted’ in our Black Scholars Directory. You should do so now!

[HBCU Presidents] Dr. Mervyn Warren – Interim President, Oakwood University

Leshell Hatley — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 18:35:31 +0000

Dr. Mervyn A. Warren is the interim President at Oakwood University.

Education

A graduate of Oakwood, he attended the seminary of Andrews University (M.A. and M.Div.). His Ph.D. is from Michigan State University, and he also has a D.Min. from Vanderbilt Divinity School. Dr. Warren is also the author of God Made Known and Black Preaching, Truth and Soul.

Dr. Warren is the father of Mervyn Edwin Warren, an American film composer, music conductor, record producer, music arranger, lyricist, songwriter, pianist, vocalist, and 5-time Grammy Award winner.

About Oakwood University

Oakwood University, a historically Black Seventh-day Adventist institution of higher learning, provides quality Christian education that emphasizes academic excellence; promotes harmonious development of mind, body, and spirit; and prepares leaders in service for God and humanity. A group of College constituents made the decision on December 2, 2007 to change the school’s name from Oakwood College to Oakwood University, effective January 1, 2008

Oakwood University

To learn more about Oakwood University, please visit http://www.oakwood.edu and their video channel, http://vimeo.com/oakwooduni.

Marcelo Worsley: Stanford PhD Student and AT&T Lab Fellowship Award Winner

Leshell Hatley — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 16:22:21 +0000

Marcelo Worsley’s interest in technology is really about how people experience technology and, more specifically, how technology can better help people learn.

Experience

Only 25 he already has years of experience helping young people learn and interact with technology.

Since high school he’s tutored and coached kids through programs such as MATHCOUNTS and Intel Computer Clubhouse. More than this, as an undergraduate, he recruited others to set up a distance tutoring program that used video conferencing to teach medical education to students in Africa (the program also raised more than $200,000 in medical equipment for Ethiopian schools). Education is something he cares about and he unstintingly volunteers his time.

Education

He’s currently pursuing an education PhD at Stanford in Learning Sciences and Technology Design. This interdisciplinary program systematically applies technological and psychological processes to understand how people learn and how to design technologies that support learning in the classroom. A key component is being able to capture clues to the learning process.

Marcelo Worsley

AT&T Research

Marcelo’s summer project at AT&T Research centers on multimodal interfaces that incorporate speech and gestures to make it easier and more natural for people to interact with technology. The idea is for devices to capture and interpret people’s natural ways of communicating with one another. Someone using a multimodal interface should be able to point at a map while saying “this is where you need to be” and for the interface to associate the gesture with the utterance and interpret both inputs.

Futuristic as that seems, natural interfaces may not be that far off. Low-cost sensors for capturing speech and gestures—microphones, accelerometers, and cameras—are all around, embedded in iPhones and other mobile devices (which can do double-duty in transmitting input to speech and gesture recognition programs residing on a computer or in the cloud).

The technology exists. What’s missing is a clear idea of what a natural interface will look like. With no start button or enter key, how best to signal the start of input to a device? A hand motion, a spoken command, a long pause? What’s most natural to people while also effective for devices?

With natural interfaces allowing people to talk and gesture freely and at the same time, there’s the added difficulty of aligning two or more input streams. Most work on speech recognition or computer vision has focussed on a single mode, and many questions remain regarding the most effective methods for robust integration (or fusion) of inputs from multiple different input modes. Gestures may precede, accompany, or follow spoken inputs, and handling groups of gestures within a single utterance can be complex.

More information about Marcelo Worsley can be found here:

http://soe.stanford.edu/publicservice/ProfileWorsley.php

http://www.research.att.com/articles/featured_stories/2010_07/201007_marcelo_ALFP.html

http://bmccain.com/prospective_students/meet_our_students.html

[From Our Black Scholars Directory] E.C. Hopkins, JD

Leshell Hatley — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 16:28:41 +0000

E. C. Hopkins, JD is a member of our Black Scholars Directory.

Education

He received a Business Law degree in 2010 in Business Law & Trial Advocacy from the University of Arizona. His thesis was entitled “A Guilty Pause, A Downward Glance or A Nervous Twitch: A Ten-Step Strategy for Exposing Nonverbal Lies on Cross-Examination.” He obtained a BS in Management in 1995 from the United States Air Force Academy.

Service

E. C. Hopkins is a member of Sigma Pi Phi, Inc. and Phi Beta Kappa Society.

Favorite Quote

“Yo soy: yo y mi circunstancia.” —José Ortega y Gasset, “Meditaciones de Quijote”

Scholar’s URL

More information about E. C. Hopkins can be found here – http://www.linkedin.com/in/echopkins

Dr. Enid Montague: Human Factors and Ergonomics Engineer & Asst. Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

Leshell Hatley — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 16:17:27 +0000

Dr. Enid Montague is a human factors and ergonomics engineer, assistant professor and Anna Julia Cooper Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering. Human Factors Engineering is the scientific discipline concerned with understanding the interaction between humans and other elements in a system, with the goal of enhanced performance, increased safety, and increased user satisfaction.

Education

She received her master’s and doctoral degree from Virginia Tech’s department of Industrial and System’s Engineering Human Factors Engineering and Ergonomics program with a certificate from the Center for Human-Computer Interaction.

Research / Career

Dr. Montague’s research explores the role of trust in technology in systems. She looks at why humans trust or distrust technology, the effects of trusting attitudes on system performance, and designing for appropriate trust. Dr. Montague has conducted research at Old Dominion University, the Virginia Modeling and Simulation Center, Eastern Virginia Medical School, Virginia Tech and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is currently the Director of the HCI Laboratory at th University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Dr. Montague at the HCI Lab at University of Wisconsin-Madison

Dr. Enid Montague and the HCI lab hosted an interactive talk about human-centered computing and engineering. The students participated in a series of interactive activities to show why human capabilities and limitations are necessary for good designs. The students then used participatory design methods to work on teams to brainstorm about solutions to an important problem; texting while driving. Graduate students from the human factors and ergonomics society student chapter helped with the activities and spoke about what inspired them to become engineers and why they really love what they do. Dr. Barker a professor from Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering at the University of Missouri joined in the activities and plans to give a similar presentation to junior high students at Missouri later this summer.

More information about Dr. Montague and her work can be found at http://www.enidmontague.com

[HBCU Presidents] Dr. Ray L. Belton: Southern University at ShrevePort

Leshell Hatley — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 15:08:32 +0000

Title: Chancellor Academic Division: Behavioral Sciences and Education Education: A.S., Southern University at Shreveport B.S., Southern University M.A., University of Nebraska Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin Year started teaching at SUSLA: 1987 We couldn't find much more information about h... Read more.. Related posts:

Dr. Joseph Monroe: (Retired) Dean of the College of Engineering at North Carolina A&T

Leshell Hatley — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 17:29:46 +0000

Dr. Joseph Monroe was the first African American in the country to obtain a Ph.D. in computer science in 1972, from Texas A&M University. A founding member of the first Computer Science Honor Society (now an international society), he established an accredited computer science program at A&T; held a Ronald E. McNair Endowed Chair Professorship in Computer Science at A&T (1991-2009); chaired the department of computer science at A&T (1991-2000); and served as dean of the COE at A&T (2000-2009).

“Dean Monroe has shown exemplary leadership in our prestigious College of Engineering, the nation’s No. 1 producer of African American engineers,” Thompson said (North Carolina A&T State University Interim Provost & Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Alton Thompson). “As one of our 1962 engineering mathematics graduates, Monroe brought valuable high-tech contributions to his beloved alma mater following a celebrated military, higher education and international career.”

Education

Dr. Joseph Monroe earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering Mathematics from North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University (NCA&TSU) in 1962.
Dr. Monroe then achieved a Master of Science degree in Computer Science from Texas Agricultural & Mechanical University (TAMU) in 1967.

Leadership

Dr. Monroe was a founding member of the first Computer Science Honor Society, Upsilon Pi Epsilon (UPE), in this same year (1967). UPE is the only national and international honor society in Computer Science; its purpose is to promote outstanding scholarship and original investigation in the field of computer science.

Career

Dr. Monroe subsequently assumed a faculty position at the United States Air Force Academy, where he advanced through both the academic and the military ranks during twenty-one years of service. He rose from Instructor to full Professor and from Captain to full Colonel while at the Academy.

United States Air Force Academy

In 1978, Dr. Monroe became the first African-American Permanent Professor at the United States Air Force Academy. This type of appointment is an honor of great distinction. There are no appointments at civilian institutions of higher learning that are equivalent to this appointment. Permanent Professors at the United States Air Force Academy are selected from the entire Air Force and they must have both outstanding academic qualifications and documented achievements of extraordinary significance. The President of the United States, with the advice and consent of the United States Senate, has the exclusive privilege to appoint Permanent Professors at the Academy. Dr. Monroe joined a very elite group of only twenty-two Permanent Professors out of a faculty of six hundred members when he received this appointment.

Other Positions

Dr. Monroe succeeded in numerous positions during his tenure at the Air Force Academy. He was the Assistant Dean of Faculty (1978-1981), the Head of the Department of Electrical Engineering (1981-1982) and the Head of the Department of Computer Science (1982-1987). In 1985, he hosted a successful accreditation visit by the Computer Science Accrediting Board (CSAB). The computer science program at the Academy was not only accredited during this visit; it joined the very first group of programs to be accredited by CSAB. Since this visit, Dr. Monroe continues to serve as an annual Visitor for CSAB and he has developed, delivered, and implemented accredited computer science programs for the Egyptian Air Force Academy, the Royal Thai Air Force Academy, Fayetteville State University, and North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University.

Leadership at North Carolina A&T

A strong proponent of professionalism in the engineering curricula with concern for undergraduate students, Monroe led an intense focus for all students in the college to obtain their professional licensure as engineers. A&T students are now more likely to take the exam required for this licensure, and are now passing the exam at a rate that is equal to or above the national average.

Monroe led the development of new programs in computer engineering, geomatics, computational science and engineering, and biomedical engineering (fall 2009 deployment). Geomatics leads A&T in the establishment of on-line courses, which will result in increasing professionalism in the surveying profession. In addition, all programs recently reviewed by ABET, the professional accrediting agency for colleges/schools of engineering, were successfully accredited.

Under Monroe’s leadership, A&T now has the most tenured or tenure track African American engineering professors in the nation. This is vital for A&T’s status as a national leader in the production of African American engineers at the bachelor’s, master’s and Ph.D. levels. During Monroe’s tenure, A&T graduated 21 Ph.D. engineers in 2004 and consequently achieved reclassification by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching as a “high research activity” doctoral university. He has vigorously supported research efforts and was instrumental in A&T’s No. 3 rank in the UNC System for research funding (over $11,400,000 awarded to COE in 2007-2008). A&T was awarded an Engineering Research Center (ERC) by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 2008. A&T is the first HBCU to obtain this award.
A native of North Carolina, Monroe is a strong proponent of collaborations that fosters A&T’s mission in the region and the state. In March 2009, he hosted a conference with two-year colleges across the state and the geomatics program at A&T to ensure a seamless transition for North Carolina students who wish to continue their geomatics training beyond the two-year level. He has vigorously supported many initiatives to ensure a seamless transition for two-year college students into all the engineering programs at A&T.

Other Accomplishments at NC A&T

Since joining the University of North Carolina System, Dr. Monroe has also succeeded in many different capacities. He was the Associate Vice President of Academic Affairs for the General Administration of this system from 1987 to 1988. Dr. Monroe then assumed the position of Vice Chancellor for Advancement at Fayetteville State University (1988-1989). He was Vice- Chancellor for Academic Affairs at Fayetteville State University from 1989 to 1991. In 1991, Dr. Monroe was awarded the distinguished Ronald E. McNair Endowed Chair Professorship in Computer Science at NCA&TSU, an appointment that he still vigorously holds today. He was also appointed Chair of the Department of Computer Science in 1991 and he chaired this department until the end of the 2000 academic year. Dr. Monroe is currently the Dean of the College of Engineering at NCA&TSU. In addition, he is a board member of the Board of Directors for the Industries of the Blind (since 1995), a board member of the Board of Directors for Computing at NASA (since 1995), and a Member the Board that governs the practice of Engineering and Surveying in North Carolina (since 1998).

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Information obtained from NC A&T’s website – http://www.ncat.edu.

Dr. Wanda Thomas Bernard: Distinguished Scholar & Leader in Social Work in Nova Scotia

Leshell Hatley — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 18:02:22 +0000

Dr. Thomas Bernard is Director of the School of Social Work at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Dr. Thomas Bernard has had a long and distinguished career in the field of social work. Dr. Thomas Bernard has worked in mental health at the Nova Scotia Hospital, in rural community practice with the Family Services Association, and since 1990, has been a professor at the Dalhousie School of Social Work, where she has held the position of Director since 2001.

Research

Her research with Black men and the violence of racism, particularly in the criminal justice system, has had significant impact on not only academic work but also agency and community-based practice. She has made major academic and professional contributions to the field of Black masculinity, to the investigation of Black women’s health and well being, and to an Africentric understanding of the strengths of Black families, including Black men’s experience of mothering and othermothering.

Leadership & Service

She has provided leadership in developing culturally relevant services and culturally specific programs in the health professions; she has organized numerous conferences and workshops meeting the requests of various academic, practitioner and community groups for anti-racist, Africentric perspectives on community issues such as violence, gender, and health. She has been instrumental in the development of community-based research teams in her field and has documented the challenges of participatory action research, especially in an academic context. She has participated in the innovative, multi-media dissemination of research findings focusing on media representations of African Canadians and domestic violence in the Black community.

Dr. Bernard has worked over the years to foster links among academics, frontline practitioners, and the community, in particular the African Nova Scotian community. Her multitude of invited presentations, keynote addresses, professional development workshops, and community outreach activities provide concrete evidence of her dedication to educating others about the need for further investigation into African Canadians’ health and well-being, including the provision of health services that will encourage increased access from marginalized populations. As she has become more established in her academic field, Dr. Bernard has been able to translate her productivity and leadership in community and professional activities into innovative and challenging research productivity.

She is a Founding Member of the Association of Black Social Workers and is its current President, a member of the Board of Directors of Boys and Girls Clubs of Canada, and a previous member of the Board of Accreditation of the Canadian Association of Schools of Social Work.

Awards

Dr. Thomas Bernard has received numerous awards, certificates and recognition over the years for her trendsetting work. Some of her awards include the Ron Stafford Memorial Award from the Nova Scotia Association of Social Work for effective community leadership and development work. She also received the Canada 125 medal for outstanding contributions to the country, and Dr. Thomas Bernard was awarded the Order of Canada Award by Governor General, Adrienne Clarkson in June 2005.

StoryTeller

Dr. Afua Cooper: African-Canadian Scholar, Author, and Poet

Leshell Hatley — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 14:46:00 +0000

Afua Cooper is a scholar, author, and poet. She earned her Ph.D. in Canadian history and the African Diaspora with a focus on the Black communities of 19th century Ontario.

Education

Afua holds a Ph.D. in history with specialties in slavery, abolition, and women studies. She is one of Canada’s premier experts and chroniclers of the country’s Black past. Dr. Cooper has done ground-breaking work in uncovering the hidden history of Black peoples in Canada. Her most recent history publication The Hanging of Angélique, The Untold Story of Canadian Slavery and the Burning of Old Montréal cogently explores the life and death of Marie-Joseph Angélique, a Portuguese-born Black slave woman who was hanged in Montréal in 1734 for allegedly setting fire to the city.

Scholar

Her doctoral dissertation was a biography of Henry Bibb, the renowned antislavery crusader. Further, she has done extensive work on Mary Bibb as a schoolteacher and abolitionist reformer. Afua has also done ground-breaking work on the enslavement of Black people in Canada. Such research has resulted in The Hanging of Angélique: The Untold Story of Slavery in Canada and the Burning of Old Montréal (HarperCollins, 2006); released in the United States by the University of Georgia Press. The French language version was published by L’Editions de L’Homme in 2007. Angélique has become a national bestseller and was nominated for the Governor General’s Award in 2006. Angélique has now gone in its third printing, and after almost two years of publication is still on the Canadian bestseller’s list as of 23 Nov. 2007.

Afua was the 2008-2009 Ruth Wynn Woodward Endowed Chair in the Women’s Studies Department at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia.

Author

Dr. Cooper’s work on Canadian Black history and slavery has made her the leading authority on such topics. Afua is also a well-known poet, having published five books of poetry, the latest of which is Copper Woman and Other Poems (Natural Heritage Press, 2006). In 2007 Dr. Cooper served as the co-ordinator of and advisor to the Ontario Bicentenary of the Abolition of the British Slave Trade Initiative for the Government of Ontario. She is writing a series of historical novels for the young adult audience. These novels are based on the experiences on enslaved children from the Black Diaspora. For that series, Afua recently completed The Young Phillis Wheatley, a fictionalized account of the life and art of the eighteenth-century Black poet Phillis Wheatley.

Performer

Afua is a dynamic and riveting performer. She has brought her poetry from page to stage in such diverse events as the prestigious Toronto Harbourfront International Reading Series, and Diaspora Dialogues. She has read all across Canada, the Caribbean, the UK, the United States, and West Africa. Known as a proponent of the African-Caribbean poetry genre, Dub poetry, Afua has fused together the scribal, literary, musical, and performative aspects of that artform in her performances. Cooper has worked with such bands as the Gayap Drummers, Juno award winner, Lazo and the Radicals; she now tours with the Dub Trinity Band. Further, she co-hosted and organized three international Dub Poetry Festivals in Toronto (1993, 2004, and 2005).

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Information obtained from: http://www.afuacooper.com/

Julieanna L. Richardson, Founder and Executive Director, The HistoryMakers

Leshell Hatley — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 21:03:31 +0000

Born June 10, 1954 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Julieanna L. Richardson created a unique path to heading up the largest national collection effort of African American video oral histories on record. With a diverse background in theatre, television production and the cable television industries, she combined her various work experiences and her passion for history to conceptualize, found and build The HistoryMakers.

Education

Richardson graduated from Brandeis University in 1976 with a B.A. in Theatre Arts and American Studies. It was during her studies at Brandeis that she first experienced the power of oral history, while conducting independent research on the Harlem Renaissance. While exploring the collections of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City, Richardson interviewed Butterfly McQueen and Lee Whipper as part of her project. Having access to these poignant life stories “made the history really come alive for me,” says Richardson. From this early exposure, the seeds for The HistoryMakers project first took root.

Career

Richardson received her J.D. in 1980 from Harvard Law School. She worked as a corporate lawyer at Jenner & Block prior to serving in the early 1980s as the Cable Administrator for the City of Chicago’s Office of Cable Communications. There she established the Chicago Cable Commission, the City’s regulatory body. She went on to found Shop Chicago, a regionally based home shopping channel. For eight years, her production company, SCTN Teleproductions, managed three local cable channels for TCI, the nation’s largest cable operator. SCTN Teleproductions served as the production arm for C-SPAN. Its clients also included GATX, Peoples Energy, ESPN, the Economic Club of Chicago, AT&T Broadband, and Prime Cable.

The History Makers

The HistoryMakers is a national, 501(c)(3) non-profit educational institution based in Chicago, committed to preserving, developing and providing easy access to an internationally recognized, archival collection of thousands of African American video oral histories. Richardson serves as the Founder and Executive Director of The HistoryMakers.

Richardson founded The HistoryMakers in 1999, which over seven years has quickly grown into a vibrant national initiative. The goal of The HistoryMakers is to create, over a five year period, a unique, one-of-a-kind national video archive of 5,000 first person narratives of African American HistoryMakers, both well known and unsung. This would represent the single largest archival project of its kind since the recording of former slaves during the WPA period of the 1930s. The purpose of this archive is to educate and to show the breadth and depth of this important American history as told by the first person; to highlight the accomplishments of individual African Americans across a variety of disciplines; to showcase those who have played a role in African American led movements and/or organizations; and to preserve this material for years and generations to come, creating a priceless collection. The HistoryMakers website can be found at www.thehistorymakers.com.

Julieanna Richardson resides in Chicago. The University of Illinois at Chicago’s Great Cities Institute recently named Julieanna Richardson the first Vernon D. Jarrett Fellow.

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Photo & Bio Courtesy of The HistoryMakers

Dr. Jacqueline Jordan Irvine: Renowned Educator, Author, and Researcher in Urban Education

Leshell Hatley — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 00:47:55 +0000

Dr. Jacqueline Jordan Irvine is Charles Howard Candler Professor of Urban Education in the Division of Educational Studies at Emory University.

Visiting Scholar in Urban Education at the Howard University School of Education

Dr. Jacqueline Jordan Irvine, a member of the National Academy of Education and the Charles Howard Candler Professor Emerita at Emory University, was named Visiting Scholar in Urban Education at the Howard University School of Education in January 2009 (and served through December 2009). A nationally recognized scholar who earned her undergraduate and master’s degrees at Howard University, Dr. Irvine’s published research examines urban education, the teacher pipeline, and culturally responsive pedagogy.

In establishing the Visiting Scholar in Urban Education position, Dean Leslie T. Fenwick remarked,

“This post and Dr. Irvine’s appointment to it signals to the educational policy and research communities that the Howard University School of Education is repositioning itself to assume a more nationally prominent role as it responds to the nation’s education challenges.”

In March, Dr. Irvine was recognized as a 2010 Howard University Charter Day Honoree for outstanding contribution to education and research.

Books

Professor Irvine’s specialization is in multicultural education and urban teacher education, particularly the education of African American students. Her books include Black Students and School Failure (Greenwood), Growing Up African American in Catholic Schools (Teachers College Press), Critical Knowledge for Diverse Students (AACTE), Culturally Responsive Lesson Planning for Elementary and Middle Grades (McGraw-Hill), In Search of Wholeness: African American Teachers and Their Culturally Specific Pedagogy (Palgrave Publishers), and Educating Teachers for Diversity: Seeing with the Cultural Eye (Teachers College Press). In addition, she has published numerous articles and book chapters.

Awards

Black Students and School Failure received the Outstanding Writing Award from The American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education and was selected as a Outstanding Academic Book by the American Association of College and University Research Librarians.

Dr. Irvine has received the Distinguished Career Award from the SIG on Black Education of the American Education Research Association, an award from the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development for exemplary contributions to the education of African American children, the 2000 Dewitt-Wallace/AERA Lecture Award, the 2001 AACTE Hunt Lecture, and the 2003 AACTE Lindsey Award for Distinguished Research in Teacher Education.

At Emory University’s 2000 Commencement ceremony, Professor Irvine received the Thomas Jefferson Award, the highest award given to an Emory University faculty member for service and research. A renowned educator, in 2004 Professor Irvine received the prestigious Crystal Apple Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching. At the 2005 meeting of the American Educational Research Association, she was presented AERA’s Social Justice in Education Award for her efforts to advance social justice through education research.

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Information from:

http://www.howard.edu/schooleducation/Research_Spotlight/RS1.html

http://www.des.emory.edu/irvine/

The Black Scholars Index » Subjects of Study

Dr. John A. Powell, Director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: Dean of the School of Education Howard University

Jesse Russell, Pioneer of Signal Processing and Wireless Communications

Dr. Ivory Toldson, Associate Professor of Psychology at Howard University

Alecia A. DeCoudreaux: 13th President of Mills College

Dr. Joy Lawson Davis: Gifted Education Researcher & Author

Lowery Stokes Sims: first African-American curator to be hired by New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art

Eva B. Dykes – 1st Black Woman to Complete Requirements for PhD – 3rd to be Awarded

Dr. A. Wade Boykin: Distinguished Researcher in Psychology and Education

[HBCU Presidents] Victor Ukpolo: Chancellor of Southern University of New Orleans

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Tahir Hemphill: Linguistic Researcher – Hip Hop Word Count

Kaya Henderson: Interim Chancellor of DC Public Schools

[Black Organizations] National Black Child Development Institute

Dr. Marjorie Lee Brown: The 2nd Black Women to Obtain a PhD in Math in the US

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Dr. Jayfus Doswell: BioTechnology & Robotics Entrepreneur, Researcher, and Product Engineer

Jerri DeVard: Nokia’s New Chief Marketing Officer

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Dr. Khalil Gibran Muhammad: African-American Studies Professor and New Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

John McWhorter: American Linguist and Political Commentator

[HBCU Presidents] Dr. Melvin N. Johnson: Tennessee State University

Dr. Heather D. Wathington: Professor and Researcher of Higher Education for Students of Color

[From Our Black Scholars Directory] Craig Brookins, EdD: Associate Professor at North Carolina State University

Dr. Sheri L. Parks: Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland

Dr. Larry E. Davis: Dean of the School of Social Work at the University of Pittsburgh

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Dr. Enid Montague: Human Factors and Ergonomics Engineer & Asst. Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Dr. Joseph Monroe: (Retired) Dean of the College of Engineering at North Carolina A&T

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Dr. Afua Cooper: African-Canadian Scholar, Author, and Poet

Julieanna L. Richardson, Founder and Executive Director, The HistoryMakers

Dr. Jacqueline Jordan Irvine: Renowned Educator, Author, and Researcher in Urban Education