Monthly Archives: February, 2023

The Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Columbia University in New York has announced that it will acquire the archives of Tania León, the noted composer, conductor, and educator. Her orchestral work Stride, commissioned by the New York Philharmonic in celebration of the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment, was awarded the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Music.

Michael L. McFrazier, dean of Prairie View A&M University’s College of Education was named acting president of the university. His tenure will be a short one. Dr. McFrazier will serve as acting president for three months until Tomikia P. LeGrande, the current vice provost for strategic enrollment management at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, will become president on June 1.

Alma B. Littles is the new interim dean of the College of Medicine at Florida State University. Cameron Rashad Thomas has been named dean of the chapel at Talladega College in Alabama and Ja’Wanda Grant was appointed dean of students at Maryville College in Maryville, Tennessee.

Appointed to new positions or taking on new duties are Michelle Robinson at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Charles D. Brown II at Yale University, Patricia Smith at the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University in New Jersey, and Angela Byars-Winston of the School of Medicine and Public Health at the University of Wisconsin.

Taking on new administrative duties are Kafui Kouakou at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut, Rashonda Austin at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, Teriya Richardson at Texas Southern University in Houston, Troy Miller at the University of Southern Indiana, and Christian Mitchell at the University of Chicago.

First awarded in 2015, the Mason Award is a highly competitive award that attracts applications from the very best early-career female chemists across the country. Dr. Okafor's research focuses on understanding how protein function is regulated.

Taking on new administrative roles relating to diversity are Vernese Edghill-Walden at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, B. Afeni McNeely Cobham at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, and Shawna Watkins at the Tulsa campus of the University of Oklahoma.

While a senior at Spelman College in Atlanta, Pope along with a young Julian Bond wrote "An Appeal for Human Rights," which laid the groundwork for the formation of civil rights protests by college students in Atlanta.