Honors & Awards

Four Black Women Share an Award From the Association for Women in Mathematics

The four women mathematicians sharing the award are Erica J. Graham, an associate professor of mathematics at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, Raegan Higgins, an associate professor of mathematics at Texas Tech University, Candice Price, an associate professor of mathematics and statistics at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, and Shelby Wilson, a senior professional at the Applied Physics Laboratory Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Sep 02, 2022 | 1 comment View Post

Shaina Phenix Awarded the Miller Williams Poetry Prize from the University of Arkansas Press

Shaina Phenix, an assistant professor of English at Elon University in North Carolina, is the winner of the 2023 Miller Williams Poetry Prize from the University of Arkansas Press. Phenix will receive a cash prize, and her manuscript To Be Named Something Else will be published in the Miller Williams Poetry Series in the spring of 2023.

Sep 02, 2022 | 0 comments View Post

Charles Dumas Wins the Living Legend Award at the National Black Theatre Festival

Professor Dumas, who has written, directed, produced or acted in more than 300 plays, joined the faculty at Penn State in 1995 and now holds the status of professor emeritus. He is presently a professor in residence at the African-American Theatre Program at the University of Louisville.

Aug 19, 2022 | 1 comment View Post

Carlotta Berry Wins the Distinguished Educator Award From the Society of Women Engineers

Carlotta A. Berry is the Dr. Lawrence J. Giacoletto Endowed Chair for Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute, Indiana. She has helped start two advocacy organizations, Black In Engineering and Black In Robotics, to bring awareness to systemic racism in STEM.

Aug 12, 2022 | 0 comments View Post

University of Nebraska Renames a Building to Honor a Trailblazing Black Scholar

Gwendolyn Newkirk is believed to e the first faculty member of color in the College of Education and Human Sciences. In 1975, Dr. Newkirk was elected the first African American president of the American Home Economics Association, an organization that had previously refused to accept her as a member because of her race.

Aug 02, 2022 | 0 comments View Post

Tulane University’s Jesmyn Ward to Receive the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction

Jesmyn Ward, a professor of creative writing in the School of Liberal Arts at Tulane University in New Orleans, has been announced as the recipient of the 2022 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. At 45, Professor Ward will be the youngest person to receive the library’s fiction award. Professor Ward is one of only six writers to receive the National Book Award more than once and the only woman and the only Black American to do so.

Jul 29, 2022 | 0 comments View Post

Black Educational Pioneer Mary McLeod Bethune Honored With a Statue at the U.S. Capitol

Each of the 50 states is now permitted to choose who will represent the state in the National Statuary Hall of the U.S. Capitol. Recently, a statue of Mary McLeod Bethune, founder of what is now Bethune-Cookman Univerity in Daytona Beach, Florida, was unveiled to represent the state of Florida.

Jul 22, 2022 | 1 comment View Post

Cato T. Laurencin to Receive the Highest Honor of the American Chemical Society

Dr. Laurencin, who holds an endowed chair at the Univerity of Connecticut, is recognized as the leading international figure in polymeric biomaterials chemistry and engineering who has made extraordinary scientific contributions, while at the same time he has had profound contributions to improving human health.

Jul 15, 2022 | 0 comments View Post

Association of Public and Land-grant Universities Honors Ohio State’s James L. Moore III

The Michael P. Malone International Leadership Award is given annually to recognize individuals who have made significant contributions to international education at public land-grant institutions.

Jul 05, 2022 | 2 comments View Post

Marlese Durr Honored For Her Scholarship and Diversity Efforts in the Discipline of Sociology

Marlese Durr, professor of sociology at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, was honored with the Jessie Bernard Award from the American Sociological Association. Dr. Durr has taught at Wright State University for 28 years. Her research and publications largely focus on African American women and managerial and labor markets in the public sector.

Jul 01, 2022 | 0 comments View Post

Florida State Dance Professor Honored by the Association of Performing Arts Professionals

Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, the Lawton and Nancy Smith Fichter Professor in the College of Fine Arts at Florida State University, received the Award of Merit for Achievement in the Performing Arts from the Association of Performing Arts Professionals.

Jun 03, 2022 | 0 comments View Post

Emery N. Brown Selected to Share the Gruber Neuroscience Prize

Awarded annually by the Gruber Foundation, the prize honors scientists for major discoveries that have advanced the understanding of the nervous system. The prize, which includes a $500,000 award, will be presented to Dr. Brown and his co-recipients on November 13 at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.

May 27, 2022 | 0 comments View Post

Salamishah Tillet of Rutgers University-Newark Wins the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism

Salamishah Tillet, the Henry Rutgers Professor of Creative Writing and African American and African Studies, is being honored for her commentaries in The New York Times on “Black stories in art and popular culture – work that successfully bridges academic and nonacademic critical discourse.”

May 13, 2022 | 0 comments View Post

Vicki Crawford of Morehouse College Awarded France’s Legion of Honor

Vicki Crawford, an associate professor of African American studies and director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Collection at Morehouse College in Atlanta, was honored for her academic work as well as her efforts to spread the teachings and the philosophy of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

May 13, 2022 | 1 comment View Post

Spelman College Awards Outgoing President by Naming a New Building in Her Honor

Spelman College, the liberal arts educational institution for women in Atlanta, announced that it will name the new 84,000-square-foot Center for Innovation & the Arts in honor of Mary Schmidt Campbell, the tenth president of the college, who is stepping down from her post.

May 06, 2022 | 0 comments View Post

Rosephanye Powell Wins the Luise Vosgerchian Teaching Award From Harvard University

Professor Powell teaches applied voice, art song literature and vocal pedagogy at Auburn University in Alabama. She also serves as the Women’s Chorus conductor and the Auburn University Gospel Choir’s co-conductor.

Apr 29, 2022 | 0 comments View Post

Two African Americans Among the Eight Winners of the 2022 Windham-Campbell Prizes

Administered by Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, the awards are conferred annually to eight authors writing in English anywhere in the world. Two of this year’s winners are African American women with ties to the academic world.

Apr 29, 2022 | 0 comments View Post

American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering Honors Emery N. Brown

Emery N. Brown is the Edward Hood Taplin Professor of Computational Neuroscience and Health Sciences and Technology in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science at MIT and the Warren M. Zapol Professor at Harvard Medical School.

Apr 22, 2022 | 0 comments View Post

Long-Time Clemson University Executive Honored for Her Recent Doctoral Dissertation

Altheia Richardson, assistant vice president for strategic diversity leadership at Clemson University in South Carolina, has received the Outstanding Dissertation Award from the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education. The award recognizes a completed dissertation that has contributed substantially to the literature and the field of diversity and inclusion in higher education.

Apr 20, 2022 | 1 comment View Post

Four Scholars Honored for Their Book on Educating African American Children

George Johnson of South Carolina State University, Gloria Boutte of the University of South Carolina, Joyce King of Georgia State University, and Lagarrett King of the University at Buffalo are being honored by the Society of Professors of Education.

Apr 15, 2022 | 0 comments View Post

E. Patrick Johnson Has Received the Frederick Douglass Medal From the University of Rochester

The Frederick Douglass Medal is a joint initiative of the Office of the President and the Frederick Douglass Institute established in 2008 at the University of Rochester to honor individuals of outstanding achievement whose scholarship and community engagement honor the legacy of Frederick Douglass. Dr. Johnson teaches at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

Apr 08, 2022 | 0 comments View Post

Carnegie Mellon Univerity Professor Honored for Lifetime Achievement in Academic Engineering

Shawn Blanton, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, received the Golden Torch Award for Lifetime Achievement in Academia from the National Society of Black Engineers. He is the founder and director of the Advanced Chip Test Laboratory at the university.

Apr 08, 2022 | 0 comments View Post

Brown University’s Glenn Loury Wins the $250,000 Bradley Prize

Glenn Loury is a professor of social sciences, economics, and international and public affairs at Brown University. The Bradley Prize is given to notable leaders whose accomplishments reflect the Bradley Foundation’s mission to restore, strengthen and protect the principles and institutions of American exceptionalism.

Apr 01, 2022 | 1 comment View Post

New Cornell University Fellowship Honors The First Black Student to Earn a Ph.D. in Botany

The Thomas Wyatt Turner Fellowship will support up to 10 graduate students from 1890 institutions, which are historically Black colleges and universities that are land-grant universities. They will spend the 2022-23 academic year on the Cornell University campus.

Mar 29, 2022 | 2 comments View Post

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers Wins the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, a professor of English at the University of Oklahoma and author of five poetry collections, was the winner in the fiction category of the National Book Critics Circle Awards. She was honored for her novel The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois.

Mar 25, 2022 | 0 comments View Post

Two African American Historians Win the $300,000 Dan David Prize

The Dan David Prize is the largest history prize in the world. It is awarded by the Dan David Foundation at Tel Aviv University in Israel to up to nine early and mid-career scholars and practitioners in the historical disciplines. The honor comes with a $300,000 prize. Kristina Richardson of Queens College-CUNY and Tyrone Freeman of IUPUI are among the winners.

Mar 18, 2022 | 0 comments View Post

The First Building on the Campus of the University of South Carolina Named for an African American

During the Reconstruction period, Celia Dial Saxon was one of the first African American students to attend South Carolina College, later the University of South Carolina. She taught school in Columbia, South Carolina for 57 years.

Mar 11, 2022 | 0 comments View Post

E. Patrick Johnson Wins the National Communication Association’s Highest Honor

E. Patrick Johnson, dean of the School of Communication and the Annenberg University Professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, recently received the Distinguished Scholar Award from the National Communication Association. He has taught at Northwestern University for more than two decades.

Mar 04, 2022 | 1 comment View Post

Barbara Ransby Selected to Receive an Award From the Caribbean Philosophical Association

University of Illinois Chicago historian Barbara Ransby has been named a recipient of the Caribbean Philosophical Association’s Frantz Fanon Lifetime Achievement Award. She was selected for the award “because of the historical and political importance of her writings, her tireless work as an institution-builder and activist.”

Feb 25, 2022 | 0 comments View Post

Sarah Price of Florida A&M University Recognized for Her Leadership in the Field of Kinesiology

Sarah L. Price, associate dean for the College of Education at Florida A&M University, recently received the Jerry R. Thomas Distinguished Leadership Award from the American Kinesiology Association.

Feb 25, 2022 | 0 comments View Post

Emory University’s Carol Anderson to Receive the Gittler Prize from Brandeis University

The Joseph B. and Toby Gittler Prize honors those who have made outstanding and lasting scholarly contributions to racial, ethnic, and religious relationships. The award and a $25,000 prize will be presented at a ceremony on the Brandeis campus this coming fall.

Feb 18, 2022 | 0 comments View Post

Nikky Finney Selected to Receive the 2022 Thomas Robinson Prize for Southern Literature

Nikky Finney, the John H. Bennett Jr. Chair in Creative Writing and Southern Letters at the University of South Carolina, will be honored in April by the Spencer B. King Jr. Center for Southern Studies at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia.

Feb 15, 2022 | 0 comments View Post

Cornell University Scholar Wins the Best Book Prize From the African Studies Association

Dr. Naminata Diabate is an associate professor of comparative literature at Cornell. The prize recognizes the most important scholarly work in African studies published in English and distributed in the United States during the preceding year.

Feb 11, 2022 | 0 comments View Post

Eastern Connecticut State University Names Science Building After Its Former President

Serving as president from 1988 to 2006, Dr. David G. Carter was the first African American to lead a four-year institution of higher education in Connecticut and also in New England. He later served as chancellor of the state university system.

Feb 04, 2022 | 0 comments View Post

Wright States’ Marlese Durr Honored for Her Work on Feminist Issues

Dr. Durr’s research focuses on African American women in managerial positions in public institutions as well as specialized interests in labor markets, social networks, entrepreneurship, inner-city neighborhoods, and stressful life events for African American women.

Jan 28, 2022 | 0 comments View Post

Two Scholars on Reparations Share an American Book Festival Prize

William A. Darity Jr. of Duke Univerity and A. Kirsten Mullen have won the 2021 American Book Festival Best Book Award in the Social Change category for their book From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century.

Jan 21, 2022 | 3 comments View Post