PEOPLE AT THE HOUSE
Sophomore Jarrell Jordan Named 2016-17 White House HBCU All-Star
Ulrica Wilson (center) accepts the Vulcan Materials Company Teaching Excellence Award with President John Wilson ’79 and Provost Garikai Campbell.
Ulrica Wilson Wins Vulcan Teaching Excellence Award By ADD SEYMOUR JR.
MOREHOUSE COLLEGE mathematics professor Ulrica Wilson has been named the institution’s 2016-2017 Vulcan Teaching Excellence Award winner. Established by the Vulcan Materials Company and co-sponsored by the Georgia Independent Colleges Association, the award goes to an outstanding professor who demonstrates strong academic skills in the classroom and provides leadership and support in other areas of campus life. Wilson, an assistant professor whose research interests are in non-commutative ring theory and combinational matrix theory, joined Morehouse in 2007. She is also the associate director for Diversity and Outreach at the Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics at Brown University. She has received a number of awards, grants and fellowships during her teaching career, including fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson, Ford and Irvine foundations. Wilson has spearheaded work on grants designed to help Morehouse students get into graduate programs. She has mentored students as they complete their own research, and has served on curriculum committees, tirelessly working to make sure students get the academic support they need. Wilson also organizes an annual workshop to provide faculty participants from around the country on best practices for supervising undergraduate research projects. She also co-directs a program that prepares women for doctoral study and mentors them towards success in graduate school and in their careers. n MOREHOUSE MAGAZINE
14 WINTER 2017
SOPHOMORE Jarrell Jordan has been named a 2016-17 HBCU All-Star by the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Jordan, a political science major from Birmingham, Ala., is one of 73 students from 63 HBCUs who has been recognized for their accomplishments in academics, leadership and civic engagement. “I’m elated and honored to represent Morehouse as a White House ambassador. My mission is to help change the lives of people all over the world,” said Jordan, who is executive secretary of the Morehouse College Student Government Association, a Bill Gates Millennium Scholar, and a member of the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel Assistants. Over the next year, the students will serve as ambassadors by providing outreach opportunities and communicating with other students about the value of education and the initiative as a networking source. n
Troy Story ’62
Anna Blumenthal
Story and Blumenthal Retire AFTER MORE THAN 60 combined years of providing instruction to scores of men of Morehouse, two longtime Morehouse professors have retired. Troy Story ‘62, a professor of chemistry, is leaving Morehouse after 39 years, while Anna Blumenthal, associate professor of English, retired after 22 years with the College. Story joined Morehouse College in 1977 after spending seven years as an assistant professor of chemistry at Howard University. He chaired the chemistry department at Morehouse from 1983 to 1999. Blumenthal taught writing, world literature, and, her specialty, American Literature. She was published in numerous journals in the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom in the area of 20th-century American Literature. Her work explored the plays of August Wilson and Trinidadian-Canadian poet, Claire Harris. n