Honorary Degree

Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa

Ivory V. Nelson, Ph.D.

Chemist, Educator, Scholar

Born in Shreveport, Louisiana, Dr. Ivory V. Nelson served in many capacities as an educator and an administrator. He also served in the US Air Force from 1951-1955 and in the Korean War from the ages of 17-18. His duties as a Radio Operator included monitoring the radio traffic of the Russians and Chinese. He achieved the rank of Staff Sargent and had a Top Secret Cryptographic clearance.

Dr. Nelson’s career in higher education includes working as a professor of Chemistry, the department chair, assistant dean, VP of research, and acting president at Prairie View A & M University, Texas. In 1983, he became the first African American to serve as the Executive Assistant to the Chancellor of the Texas A&M University System. Dr. Nelson was the first African American to assume the role of the Chancellor of the Alamo Community College System in San Antonio, Texas. He was also the first African American president of Central Washington University.

Dr. Nelson served as the twelfth president of Lincoln University of Pennsylvania from 1999 - 2011. During his tenure at Lincoln, he increased student enrollment and secured $325 million in private and public funds for campus construction and renovations. In November of 2010, the Lincoln University Board of Trustees unanimously passed a resolution that approved the naming of the newly constructed science building in his honor. Subsequently, the building, which opened in 2009, was named the “Ivory V. Nelson Center for the Sciences” in recognition of his significant contributions to advancing the legacy of Lincoln University, particularly for his role in making vast improvements to the campus infrastructure.

Over the course of his career, Dr. Ivory V. Nelson has been involved in many public service activities and received many honors and awards. He served on the President’s Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities, the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Education, and the NCAA III President’s Council, among others. He received a Fulbright lectureship, was conferred the title of President Emeritus by Central Washington University, and received the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund Education Leadership and Educational Excellence Award, among other honors and awards.

While at the University of Kansas, Dr. Nelson’s academic honors included induction into Phi Beta Kappa honorary society, Phi Lambda Upsilon honorary chemical society and the society of Sigma Xi for scientists. He was also inducted into Kappa Delta Phi education honor society, Phi Kappa Phi and Sigma Phi Sigma physics honor society.

Dr. Nelson is the author of eleven technical publications in the field of analytical chemistry, a chapter in one book and a chapter in a monograph. He is listed among the world’s top scientists in a book entitled, Distinguished African American Scientists of the 20th Century. The Central Washington University Foundation honored Dr. Nelson by establishing a $50,000 Ivory V. Nelson endowed Graduate Fellowship in Chemistry and the Board of Trustees of CWU passed a resolution in August 1999 conferring on him the title of President Emeritus.

Dr. Nelson earned a bachelor’s degree in secondary education, chemistry from Grambling State University (1959), and he has the distinction of being the first African American to receive a Doctor of Philosophy degree in analytical chemistry from the University of Kansas (1963).

He is married to Patricia Ann Nelson, Ed.D. They have four children.