Rutgers University to Launch the Samuel D. Proctor Institute for Leadership, Equity, and Justice

The Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University has announced that it will establish the Samuel D. Proctor Institute for Leadership, Equity, and Justice in the fall of 2019. The new institute is named for the late Samuel DeWitt Proctor, who was a Rutgers faculty member for 15 years and who served as the first Martin Luther King Jr. Chair and visiting professor in the Department of Africana Studies. Proctor was the first Black faculty member at Rutgers to have an endowed professorship named in his honor.

Dr. Proctor was a graduate of Virginia Union University and earned a Ph.D. in theology at Yale University. He served as president of Virginia Union University and what is now North Carolina A&T State University. He joined the faculty at Rutgers University in 1969 and taught there for 15 years. Dr. Proctor died in 1997.

The university has appointed Marybeth Gasman as the leader of the new institute. She will also hold the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Endowed Chair in Education in the Graduate School of Education.

Currently, Dr. Gasman is the Judy & Howard Berkowitz Professor of Education in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. She also serves as the founding director of the Penn Center for Minority Serving Institutions. She is a scholar of American higher education and focuses on historically Black colleges and universities, racism, diversity, philanthropy, and higher education leadership.

“I am honored to join Rutgers GSE as the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Endowed Chair in Education and a Distinguished Professor,” said Dr. Gasman. “We are at a critical moment for education in our country and I am looking forward to honoring the legacy of Dr. Proctor by advancing his and my collective vision for diversity, justice and equity in education in New Jersey and across the country. I am particularly excited to join a public research university that boasts such rich and beautiful diversity.”

Related Articles

3 COMMENTS

  1. Dr. Proctor earned his doctorate from Boston University not Yale. He started at Yale but transferred to Boston to be closer to Boston hospitals because of his ailing son.

  2. Dr.Proctor was President at Union in 1957 when I entered Union,he was one of the people that taught us to be all we could be,I believed him as did so many more Unionites.
    Thank you Rutgers for this payment of respect.

  3. I appreciate that Rutgers has created this Institute. It seems like an honor long overdue. However, When I see and hear that it is being headed by a white woman (I don’t know how she identifies) I feel frustrated, perplexed, and aghast. Another example of white privilege? I really wish this post was fulfilled by a black or brown academic (whose numbers are shrinking at universities).. Universities please do a better job of hiring people with identities associated with their positions.. This leader may have oppressed intersecting identities that are not obvious, but they do not trump their whiteness, privilege, and supremacy.

Leave a Reply

Get the JBHE Weekly Bulletin

Receive our weekly email newsletter delivered to your inbox

Latest News

California State University Sacramento Launches Black Honors College

Officially launching for the fall 2024 semester, the Black Honors College will support students from all backgrounds who study Black history, life, and culture by providing them with a specialized curriculum and mentoring opportunities.

Higher Education Gifts or Grants of Interest to African Americans

Here is this week’s news of grants or gifts to historically Black colleges and universities or for programs of particular interest to African Americans in higher education.

In Memoriam: Norman B. Anderson, 1955-2024

Dr. Anderson was the assistant vice president for research and academic affairs at Florida State University at the time of his death. He had an extensive career in clinical psychology, which led him to become the first African American chief executive officer of the American Psychological Association.

Georgia State University Launches Program to Support Black Women in Tech

While Black women account for roughly 29 percent of the Georgia State University undergradaute student body, they represent only 10 percent of the university's computer science majors and 18 percent of the computer information systems majors.

Featured Jobs