Four African Americans Who Have Stepped Down From Their Higher Education Posts

Forrester Lee, a professor of medicine at Yale University, has retired. He was a student, resident, and faculty member at Yale for 42 years. Dr. Lee’s academic career began at Dartmouth College in 1968 where he was one of twelve African-American students on campus. He became the first president of the newly formed Black Student Organization.

After working as an urban planner in Harlem, Dr. Lee enrolled at Yale Medical School. He continued at Yale for training in internal medicine and served as chief medical resident in 1983 before entering a fellowship in cardiovascular medicine at Yale.

Micheline Rice-Maximin, an associate professor of French and Francophone studies and co-coordinator of the Black Studies Program at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, has retired. She joined the faculty in 1991 after teaching at Trinity University and Brown University.

A native of Guadeloupe, Dr. Rice-Maximin graduated from the Sorbonne in Paris, with a concentration in British and North American studies and African American literature. She completed her Ph.D. in French from the University of Texas at Austin.

William Welburn, vice president for inclusive excellence for the Office of Institutional Diversity and Inclusion at Marquette University in Milwaukee, has retired. He joined the staff at the university 12 years ago. He served as associate dean of the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign from 2006 to 2009.

A native of West Chester, Pennsylvania, Dr. Welburn received his bachelor’s degree in journalism from Syracuse University in New York. He earned a master’s degree in library science from Atlanta University and a doctorate in library and information science from Indiana University.

Lynn Thompson, vice president for intercollegiate athletics at Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach, Florida, has retired after 30 years with the university’s athletics department.

Thompson graduated from then Bethune-Cookman College in 1980 with a bachelor’s degree on the pre-med track. He went on to earn a master’s degree from Clark-Atlanta University in 1984.

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