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The Afro-American, April 4, 2015 - April 10, 2015
HBCU NEWS Penn. Lawmakers Applaud Lincoln’s Efforts to Keep Tuition Affordable
Rep. John Lewis to Deliver Hampton University Commencement Address
Members of the Pennsylvania General Assembly applauded Lincoln University’s efforts to keep tuition affordable and limit college debt. These statements were made by representatives of both the House and Senate Appropriations Committees during the budget hearings in Harrisburg on Tuesday. Acting President Valerie I. Harrison advocated for additional funding for Lincoln. “The University has taken very significant and specific steps to limit student college debt. We instituted a tuition freeze in February 2014, which allows a student who entered Lincoln as a freshman in the Fall 2014 to have the same tuition cost over the next three years,” Harrison said in her opening statement. “We believe that the four-year guarantee, coupled with our financial literacy curriculum, will motivate students to graduate in four years, a further step toward limiting student debt.” Lincoln University is one of four state-related institutions that testified before the lawmakers. The presidents of Penn State University, Temple University and the University of Pittsburgh also participated in the hearings. As a state-related university, the Commonwealth provides Lincoln with an annual appropriation, which was significantly reduced in 2011. Governor Tom Wolf has proposed a plan to fully restore the higher education cuts over the next two years. The General Assembly is working on their budget proposals and it is anticipated that a state budget will be approved by the General Assembly and Governor Wolf this summer.
Hampton University recently announced that Civil Rights leader and U. S. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) will serve as the University’s 145th Commencement speaker on May 10. Commencement will be held at Armstrong Stadium at 10 a.m. Often called “one of the most courageous persons the Civil Rights Movement ever produced,” John Lewis has dedicated his life to protecting human rights, securing civil liberties, and building what he calls “The Beloved Community” in America. His dedication to the highest ethical standards and moral principles has won him the admiration of many of his colleagues on both sides of the aisle in the United States Congress. John Lewis As a young boy, Lewis was inspired by the activism surrounding the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., which he heard on radio broadcasts. In those pivotal moments, he made a decision to become a part of the Civil Rights Movement. Ever since then, he has remained at the vanguard of progressive social movements and the human rights struggle in the United States. While still a young man, Lewis became a nationally recognized leader, and was dubbed one of the “Big Six” leaders of the national Civil Rights Movement. At the age of 23, he was an architect of and a keynote speaker at the historic March on Washington in August 1963. During the height of the Civil Rights Movement, from 1963 to 1966, Lewis was named chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which he helped form. SNCC was largely responsible for organizing student activities, including sit-ins and other activities. He later served as director of the Voter Education Project, helping to register millions to vote. In 1977, Lewis was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to direct more than 250,000 volunteers of the federal volunteer agency ACTION. In 1981, he was elected to the Atlanta City Council. While serving on the Council, he was an advocate for ethics in government and neighborhood preservation. He was elected to Congress in November 1986 and has served as U.S. Representative of Georgia’s Fifth Congressional District since then. Lewis received a bachelor’s degree in religion and philosophy from Fisk University, and is a graduate of the American Baptist Theological Seminary, both in Nashville, Tennessee. He has been awarded more than 50 honorary degrees from prestigious colleges and universities throughout the United States. For more information about the Hampton University Commencement Exercises, please visit commencement.hamptonu.edu.
N.C. Central Prof. Antonio Baines in PBS Cancer Special North Carolina Central University Biology Professor Antonio T. Baines, Ph.D., whose research centers on the interactions of proteins and their function in cells, will be featured in a UNCTV special on cancer airing at 8 p.m. April 1. UNC-TV is a PBS member television station licensed in North Carolina. The UNC-TV program appears in conjunction with the PBS documentary Cancer: Emperor of All Maladies, produced by Ken Burns. The PBS program is being aired in three parts at 9 p.m. daily on March 30, 31, and April 1 and is based on a book of the same title by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee. In the UNC-TV program, titled Cancer: Focus of Life, researchers discuss recent medical discoveries, as well as the stories of individual cancer patients in North Carolina, where more than Antonio Baines 350,000 residents are cancer survivors. Also participating in the UNC-TV show are NCCU alumnus and leukemia survivor Rashawn King, along with Neil Spector, M.D., of Duke University School of Medicine, breast cancer survivor Jamie Valvano, from the V Foundation for Cancer Research, and Deborah Mayer, Ph.D., R.N., of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center. The program includes a panel discussion about important cancer work ongoing in NC, as well as challenges for patients with cancer. It also offers viewers a look into the laboratories of Julius L. Chambers Biomedical Biotechnology Research Institute, where Baines evaluates interactions among proteins to identify functions they control in individual cells in an effort to slow or stop the spread of cancer.