Florida State University Professor Scotty Barnhart Wins His Third Grammy Award

Scotty Barnhart, professor of jazz trumpet at Florida State University, secured his third career Grammy Award for "Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album,"

United States Department of Agriculture Honors Ozzie Abaye for Excellence in Teaching

Ozzie Abaye, the Thomas B. Hutcheson Jr. Professor of Agronomy at Virginia Tech, has received with the 2023 Excellence in College and University Teaching Award for Food and Agricultural Sciences. Dr. Abaye states, "Teaching is not what I do for a living, but what I do to live."

University of Notre Dame Honors Maurice Cox With Henry Hope Reed Award

Maurice Cox has been named the 2024 laureate of the Henry Hope Reed Award at the University of Notre Dame for his dedication to education and public service.

Oscar Barton Wins Medal From the American Society of Mechanical Engineers

Morgan State University professor and dean, Oscar Barton, is the first African American recipient of the Edwin F. Church Medal from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. As part of the award, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers will establish an endowed scholarship in his name at Morgan State University.

Arizona State University’s Colleen Jennings-Roggensack Honored for Promoting Broadway Theater

Colleen Jennings-Roggensack, vice president for cultural affairs at Arizona State University and executive director of ASU Gammage, a multipurpose performing arts center on the campus of the university in Tempe, is the recipient of the 2023 Broadway League Leadership Award.

UNLV’s Frank Rudy Cooper Honored by the Association of American Law Schools

The association's C. Clyde Ferguson, Jr. Award honors a legal educator who has provided support, encouragement, and mentoring to colleagues, students, and aspiring educators, and has achieved excellence in the areas of public service, teaching, and scholarship.

Cato Laurencin Receives the John P. McGovern Compleat Physician Award

The award, presented by the Houston Academy of Medicine, seeks to identify and recognize multi-accomplished physicians who have enriched the field of medicine with excellence and humaneness. Dr. Laurencin is a University Professor and former dean of the medical school at the University of Connecticut.

Angela Mensah of the University of Arkansas Honored by the National Communication Association

Dr. Mensah was honored for her development of the service-learning designated course, "Communicating Body Image." Dr. Mensah's course aims to identify hidden assumptions about body image as it relates to the intersections of race, class, gender, and body image in America.

Lekelia Jenkins Named a Fellow of the International Science Council

Lekelia Jenkins, an associate professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society at Arizona State University, has been named a fellow of the International Science Council, the highest honor that can be conferred on an individual by the council.

Julius B. Fleming, Jr. Selected to Receive the Hooks National Book Award

Julius B. Fleming, Jr., assistant professor of English at the University of Maryland, College Park, is the winner of the Hooks National Book Award from the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change at the University of Memphis.

De’Etra Young Received the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Teaching Award

Dr. Young is associate dean for academics and land-grant programs at Tennessee State University. The award recognizes excellence in agricultural sciences teaching and student engagement.

Frank X Walker Is the Grand Prize Winner of the 2023 Black Authors Matter...

The Black Authors Matter Children’s Book Awards were established to honor excellence in African American literature. A panel of award-winning and/or award-nominated authors evaluated more than 150 entries. Frank X Walker is the first African American writer to be named Kentucky Poet Laureate. He is a professor of English and African American and Africana studies at the University of Kentucky.

Belinda Edmondson Wins Book Award From the Modern Language Association

The Modern Language Association of America announced it is awarding its first annual Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for African Studies to Belinda Edmondson, Distinguished Professor in the departments of English and Africana studies at Rutgers University-Newark.

University of Chicago’s Tina Post Wins Best Book Prize

Tina Post, an assistant professor of English at the University of Chicago, recently received the Best Book Prize from the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present.

Dorothy Butler Gilliam Wins the Kiplinger Award From the National Press Club

Dorothy Butler Gilliam was the first African American woman reporter at the Washington Post. She taught at Howard University, American University, and the George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs.

K.C. Mmeje Honored by the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA) Foundation

K.C. Mmeje is vice president for student affairs at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. The NASPA Pillars of the Profession Award acknowledges remarkable individuals within the student affairs and higher education community who demonstrate exceptional contributions to both the profession and the organization.

Yale University Scholar Wins Early Career Physics Award

Charles D. Brown II, an assistant professor of physics at Yale University, has been selected as the winner the Joseph A. Johnson Award for Excellence from the American Institute of Physics and the National Society of Black Physicists.

Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric & Composition Honors Gwendolyn Pough

Gwendolyn D. Pough, dean’s professor of the humanities and professor in the department of women’s and gender studies at Syracuse University in New York, is the latest recipient of the 2023 Ede Mentoring Award from the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric & Composition. The biennial award recognizes impactful mentorship of students, campus leadership, professionals, and others.

Clayborne Carson Wins the 2023 Freedom Award From the National Civil Rights Museum

In 1985, Professor Carson was asked by Coretta Scott King, Dr. King’s widow, to direct The King Papers Project with the mission of assembling and publishing the collected papers of her late husband.

University of Mississippi’s Viola Acoff Honored for Her Policymaking Role in Materials Engineering

Dr. Acoff became dean of the School of Engineering at the University of Mississippi on July 1. She is the first woman and first African American to hold the position. From 2014 to 2023, she was the associate dean for undergraduate and graduate programs at the University of Alabama.

Monica Walker Has Received the 2023 Anna Julia Cooper Excellence Award

Monica W. Walker, dean of instruction at the Community College of Baltimore County, recently received the 2023 Anna Julia Cooper Excellence Award from the Society for Experiential Education. The award recognizes Dr. Walker’s outstanding leadership of initiatives that demonstrate an exceptional commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice in experiential education.

Cornell’s Riché Richardson Wins Book Award From the Society for the Study of Southern...

Riché Richardson, professor of African American literature in the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell University in Ithaca New York, has been awarded the C. Hugh Holman Award from the Society for the Study of Southern Literature. The award will be presented to Professor Richardson at the Modern Language Association conference in January 2024.

Patricia Hill Collins Awarded the $1 Million Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture

The prize is given annually to an individual whose ideas have profoundly shaped human self-understanding and advancement in a rapidly changing world. Professor Collins joined the faculty at the University of Maryland in 2005. Earlier, she was the director of the African American Center at Tufts University and spent more than 20 years on the faculty at the University of Cincinnati.

UCLA’s Alvine Kamaha Honored by the American Physical Society

Alvine Kamaha, assistant professor of physics at the University of California, Los Angeles, won the 2024 Edward A. Bouchet Award from the American Physical Society for her leadership and accomplishments in the experimental search for dark matter in the universe and advancement of underrepresented minority scientists.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. Honored by the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society

The James Dent Walker Award is the highest national award that can be bestowed by the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society upon a person who has exhibited distinguished accomplishments through a significant and measurable contribution to the research, documentation, and/or preservation of African American history.

Clemson’s Chris Reid Honored by the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society

Dr. Reid, who is the immediate past president of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, was honored for his sustained contributions to both the HFES and the broader discipline, marking him as an influential figure in the human factors and ergonomics community.

Stanford’s Tirin Moore Wins the Andrew Carnegie Prize in Mind and Brain Sciences

Established by the Carnegie Corporation of New York as part of its centennial celebration, the prize recognizes trailblazers in the brain and behavioral sciences whose research has helped advance the field and its applications.

Robin Nelson Wins the Sussman Award From the American Association for the Advancement of...

Robin Nelson, an associate professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University, is being recognized for “her outstanding contributions to understanding human relationships and their evolutionary impact.”

Elementary School in Richmond Renamed to Honor Howard University Professor Emerita

Lois Harrison-Jones, professor emerita in the School of Education at Howard University in Washington, D.C., has been honored by the Richmond, Virginia School Board with the renaming of an elementary school in her honor. The school was previously named for a colonel in the Confederate Army.

Morgan State University President to Receive the 2023 Harold W. McGraw, Jr. Prize in...

President Davis WIlson, who is the first president of a historically Black college or university to earn this distinguished honor, was selected for the overall transformation he has led at Morgan State, including historic advancement in retention and graduation rates and the university’s engagement with adult learners. He was also recognized for his vigorous national advocacy on behalf of HBCUs and support of degree attainment for Black students.

Savannah State University’s Mulatu Lemma Named Top Professor of the Year

Professor Lemma has taught mathematics for more than 30 years, including the last 28 at Savannah State University. He has been selected as the 2023 Top Professor of the Year by the International Association of Top Professionals

University of Georgia’s J. Marshall Shepherd Honored by the Environmental Law Institute

Dr. Shepherd is a professor of geography, the Georgia Athletic Association Distinguished Professor, and the director of the atmospheric sciences program at the University of Georgia. Before joining the faculty at the University of Georgia, he was a research meteorologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Dr. Shepherd is an expert in the fields of weather, climate, and remote sensing.

Professor Michael Dawson Wins Award From the American Political Science Association

Michael C. Dawson, the John D. MacArthur Professor of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity Studies and professor of political science at the University of Chicago, received the Charles E. Merriam Award from the American Political Science Association. The award is given to a person whose published work and career represent a significant contribution to the art of government through the application of social science research.

Rita Dove to Receive Lifetime Achievement Award From the National Book Foundation

Rita Dove, the Henry Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Virginia, has been selected to receive the medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation, the nonprofit organization that presents the National Book Awards. She will be honored in New York on November 15.

Margie Lee Wins a Prestigious Award From the American Association of Avian Pathologists

Margie Lee, associate dean for research and graduate studies at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine, has been selected as the 2023 recipient of the Phibro Animal Health Excellence in Poultry Research Award which honors a scholar who has demonstrated sustained excellence in research of poultry disease and health over a period of 20 years or more.

Shana Stoddard Recognized by the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Shana Stoddard is an associate professor of chemistry at Rhodes College in Memphis. She is being honored by the society for showing a sustained commitment to breaking down local and/or systemic barriers against scientists and students from historically marginalized or excluded groups.

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