Since 2014, Dereck J. Rovaris Sr. has served as vice provost for diversity at Louisiana State University. Earlier, he was associate vice chancellor for academic and multicultural affairs at the Louisiana State University Heath Sciences Center in New Orleans.
LeRonn P. Brooks has been named associate curator for modern and contemporary collections at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles and David L. Stamps has been appointed to the faculty in the School of Mass Communications at Louisiana State University.
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.
Dr. Reed currently serves as executive director of the Colorado Department of Higher Education. When she becomes Commissioner of Higher Education in Louisiana this summer, she will be the first African American to hold the position.
Dr. Fields currently serves as professor and chair of the department of agricultural economics and rural sociology at Auburn University in Alabama.
Currently, Dr. Amar is the associate dean for undergraduate studies and chief diversity officer at the School of Nursing at Emory University in Atlanta. Earlier, she was an associate professor and director of the advanced forensic nursing program at Boston College.
Dr. Reed served as under secretary of education for postsecondary diversity and inclusion in the Obama administration. She also served as head of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
A Black student at Louisiana State University found a racist message on her door at an off-campus apartment complex where many university students reside. Someone wrote “Go back 2 Africa Nigger monkeys” on a Halloween door ornament.
The university reports that there are 3,741 African Americans on campus this fall, an all-time high. But it must be pointed out that African Americans make up 12 percent of the student body at the university, whereas Blacks are 32.5 percent of the Louisiana population.
Adrienne R. Carter-Sowell of Texas A&M University was honored by the American Psychological Association and Saundra Yancy McGuire of Louisiana State University was selected to receive an award from the American Chemical Society.
Bobby R. Phills, former dean and director of land grant programs at Florida A&M University, was named chancellor of the Southern University Agricultural Research and Extension Center and dean of the university’s College of Agriculture.
Ivory Toldson, executive director of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities has resigned and will return to the faculty at Howard University. Kim Hunter Reed will now lead the office. She was a deputy undersecretary of education and former chief of staff for the Louisiana Board of Regents.
For the past decade Dr. Sheared has been serving as dean of the College of Education at California State University, Sacramento. Earlier, she served on the faculty at San Francisco State University.
Dr. Joiner, who will become interim chancellor in late August, is chair of the department of allied health at the university. He has also been serving as interim chair of the department of business administration at the Alexandria campus.
The goal of the new Brotherhood Initiative being launched this fall is to reduce the graduation rate gap between Black men and Black women and also to close the racial graduation rate gap. Joe Lott, an associate professor of education is leading the initiative.
The honorees are Walter Kimbrough, president of Dillard University in New Orleans, Joseph A. Johnson III, a retired professor of physics at Florida A&M University, and Isiah Warner, a professor of chemistry at Louisiana State University.
A journalism professor at Louisiana State University recently toured the campus of nearby Southern University, a historically Black educational institution in Baton Rouge. He was shocked by what he found.
Here is this week’s roundup of African Americans who have been appointed to new administrative positions at colleges and universities throughout the United States.
Donald Mitchell Jr. of Grand Valley State University is being honored at the Ethnographic and Qualitative Research Conference and Saundra Yancy McGuire of Louisiana State University will receive an award from the American Association for Advancement of Science.
Prior to joining the staff at the White House, Dr. Toldson was an associate professor of education at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Earlier he taught at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Barbara Guillory Thompson was the first African American women student to live in a dormitory on the Louisiana State University campus. Dr. Thompson later served on the Dillard University faculty for 42 years.
Dr. Kelley joined the faculty at Southern University in 1983. She served as chair of the chemistry department at the university and most recently was associate vice chancellor for academic affairs and dean of the Dolores Margaret Richard Spikes Honors College.
She served as president of the University of Maryland Eastern Shore and as chancellor of the Southern University System in Louisiana. Dr. Spikes was the first African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics at Louisiana State University.
Dr. Mighty has been serving as vice chancellor for clinical affairs at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in Shreveport. Earlier in his career, he was on the faculty at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
In Louisiana, free people of color enjoyed a relatively high level of acceptance and prosperity during the antebellum period. In 1810, free people of color made up 29 percent of the population of New Orleans.
Each year, only about 1,000 African Americans men earn doctoral degrees. Thus, it is noteworthy that this spring four African American men earned their doctoral degrees in one department at Louisiana State University.
Only 315 African American women have become licensed architects in the United States. Nicole Hilton is the first Black woman graduate of the School of Architecture at Louisiana State University to pass the Architect Registration Examination.
Dr. Jones currently holds the Sam M. Walton Leadership Chair and is dean of the College of Business at the University of Arkansas. He has also served as dean of the business school at Louisiana State University.
Here is this week’s news of grants to historically Black colleges and universities or for programs of particular interest to African Americans in higher education.
Donna Brazile, a key Democratic political strategist, author, and journalist has announced that she has donated her papers to the Special Collections Unit of the Louisiana State University Libraries. Brazile is a 1981 graduate of the university.
Jinx Coleman Broussard, a professor in the Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, received the History Division Book Award from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.
From 2005 to 2009, 19 percent of all Ph.D.s awarded in chemistry at LSU were earned by African Americans. Blacks were less than 10 percent of the chemistry Ph.D. recipients at the other 49 leading chemistry departments in the nation.
The new appointees are Dereck Rovaris Sr. at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Beverly L. Downing at Kentucky State University in Frankfort, and Kimathi Choma at Kansas State University in Manhattan.
There are a record 570 African Americans in the Class of 2014 at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. The new record is a 10.5 percent increase from the old record, set just a year ago.
Blacks are 32.4 percent of the Louisiana population so the Black undergraduate student population of 11.1 percent at Louisiana State University is about one third the percentage of Blacks in the state’s population.
Gina Eubanks was named the leader of the food and nutrition program at the AgCenter at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. She will continue in her role as the director of the Agricultural Center at Southern University, also in Baton Rouge.
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