Two African Americans Honored With Major Awards
Filed in Honors & Awards on December 18, 2015
A. Van Jordan, the Henry Rutgers Presidential Professor at the Newark campus of Rutgers University in New Jersey, is the winner of the 2015 Lannan Literary Award for Poetry. The Lannan Foundation, based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, was funded by the estate of J. Patrick Lannan, a Chicago financier and patron of the arts.
Professor Jordan joined the Rutgers faculty in 2014 from the University of Michigan. He is a graduate of Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio. Professor Jordan holds a master’s degree in communication from Howard University and a master of fine arts degree in creative writing from Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina. He is the author of four collections of poetry including The Cineaste (W.W. Norton, 2014).
Walter Bumphus, president of the American Association of Community Colleges, has been selected to receive the inaugural Marie Fielder Medal from Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara, California. Marie Fielder was an African American educator who was one of the founding members of the university’s faculty.
Dr. Bumphus holds a bachelor’s degree in speech communication and a master’s degree in guidance and counseling from Murray State University in Kentucky. He earned a doctorate in higher education administration from the University of Texas.
