Honors and Awards

• Henry Louis Gates Jr., Fletcher University Professor and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research at Harvard University, received the Hale Award from the trustees of the Richards Free Library in Newport, Rhode Island. The award, which recognizes outstanding contributions to literature and letters, is given annually to a New England scholar.

• North Carolina A&T State University has endowed a professorship to honor Shirley T. Frye, an alumna, educator, and community organizer. The Shirley T. Frye Distinguished Professorship in Urban Education was founded with a $500,000 endowment provided by the C.D. Spangler Foundation and the University of North Carolina system.

• Karen Kossie-Chernyshev, associate professor of history, received the 2009 J. McCleary Teacher of the Year Award from Texas Southern University.

Dr. Kossie-Chernyshev holds bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees from Rice University. She also has a second master’s degree from Michigan State University.

• The football field in the Carrier Dome at Syracuse University has been named in honor of Ernie Davis. In 1961 Davis was the first African American to win the Heisman Trophy, awarded annually to the nation’s best college football player. Davis died in 1963 from leukemia at the age of 23.

Copyright © 2009. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. All rights reserved.