JBHE: Latest News for 12/9/10

Honors and Awards

• Jinx Coleman Broussard, the William Dickinson Distinguished Professor in the Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University, was inducted into the Mass Communication and Journalism Hall of Fame at the University of Southern Mississippi.

Dr. Broussard earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at LSU and a Ph.D. in mass communications at the University of Southern Mississippi.

• The city of Atlanta recently changed the name of a portion of Fair Street to Atlanta Student Movement Boulevard. The name change honors the college students from the city who were instrumental in tearing down Jim Crow segregation in Atlanta.

• Maya Angelou, author, poet, and Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University, will be presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom next month in Washington, D.C. Professor Angelou is one of 15 recipients of the award. Other African Americans who will be honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom are Congressman John Lewis and basketball legend Bill Russell.

• The Black Student Union at Peru State College in Nebraska was awarded the 2010 Governor’s Points of Light Award by Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman. The student group was honored for its volunteer efforts in the community.

Blacks make up 2 percent of the undergraduate student body at the college.

• J. Marshall Shepherd, associate professor of geography at the University of Georgia, won the Charles E. Anderson Award from the American Meteorological Society. The award is given to a scholar who has promoted diversity in the atmospheric sciences.

Dr. Shepherd holds bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees from Florida State University. He was the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in meteorology at Florida State.