University of Maryland
The Hill We Climb
Amanda Gorman
We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be: a country that is bruised but whole, benevolent but bold, fierce and free.
We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation, become the future.
Our blunders become their burdens.
But one thing is certain.
If we merge mercy with might, and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change our children’s birthright.
So let us leave behind a country better than the one we were left.
Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest, we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one.
Letter from the Chair
Dr. Sangeetha Madhavan
It has been a truly amazing year for African American Studies with a long list of impressive faculty achievements, new faculty joining the department, and our continued commitment to teaching and supporting the intellectual growth of UMD students. Sharon Harley was promoted to Professor with full throated endorsement by a group of nationally renowned scholars. We welcomed Periloux Peay who joined us as Assistant Professor having previously taught at Georgia State University, and Beka Guluma as a Postdoctoral Fellow after completing his PhD in Sociology at Stanford University. We also welcomed Natalie Rivera as Program Management Specialist; she has already proved her mettle in many ways. Congratulations to Jo Richardson for being elected to the National Academy of Medicine and for launching (w/Woodie Kessel) the PROGRESS initiative to combat gun violence. Our faculty have also been very successful in securing research grants. Angel Dunbar was awarded a grant from the National Institute for Mental Health to examine suicide among Black youth, Chinyere Osuji received a Dean’s Research Initiative award for her project on African immigrants in the nursing profession, and I received additional funding from the National Insitute for Child and Human Development for my ongoing project on marriage, kinship, and children’s well-being in Kenya. We also hosted a number of high profile speakers to engage the wider UMD community and were honored to have civil rights icon and renowned historian, Dr. Mary Frances Berry, the founder of the department, give the keynote address as part of the BSOS Feller Lecture Series. Kudos to our awesome PTK faculty who continue to teach classes that regularly have a wait list while pursuing their own research. Finally, a huge debt of gratitude to the incredible staff who enable the department to perform at its best!
Faculty News
Oscar Barbarin is the principal investigator for a project sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation examining the relationship between disparities among young Black boys and exclusionary discipline practices in schools as early as pre-school. He hopes that findings from national and statewide data, in addition to individual case studies, will inform researchers looking to offer assistance to school districts. Interest is primarily focused on replacing practices like suspension and expulsion with a more effective disciplinary alternative. He has authored a book on the emotional development of Black boys and youth entitled "Emotional Resilience in Black Boys: How Families, Schools and Neighborhoods protect against Racism, Poverty and Adversity". It is due to be released next year by Oxford University Press.
Robert Choflet’s article, “'We Wanted to Talk Plumbing': Organizing and Mutual Aid in Baltimore's High-Rise Public Housing,” was published in the Spring / Summer 2023 issue of Women’s Studies Quarterly. He was invited to share this research on the WSQ-organized “State/Power” panel at this year’s National Women’s Studies Association conference. He is currently doing oral history work with Baltimore residents who have been displaced from public housing. The project, entitled “Critical Reflection, Radical Imagination” recently received a seed grant which will, among other things, support the work of a research assistant for the Spring 2024 semester.
Faculty News
John Drabinski and Fatima Seck, a Doctoral Candidate in Comparative Literature, have expanded Conversations in Atlantic Theory, a podcast about books and the Atlantic World. They are approaching their 100th episode. He is co-PI of the Anti-Black Racism Minor. He was contracted by Cambridge University Press to edit two collections on the work of Frantz Fanon: The Cambridge Companion to Fanon and Frantz Fanon in Context. Both volumes will take stock of seventy-plus years of Fanon scholarship and chart new directions in the study of his work. He published the essays "Martinique Between Fanon and Naipaul," "The Time and Memory of Relation," and "Creolization as Decolonial Theory."
Cecily Hardaway contributed to several significant events aimed at promoting social justice, equity, and inclusive dialogue. She co-facilitated a session on Anti-Black Structural Racism and Social Inequality for high school students at the Judge Alexander Williams Center for Education, Justice, and Ethics' Social Justice Bootcamp. She was also a member of the organizing committee for the 2023 Time Use Data for Health and Well Being Conference at the University of Maryland. She moderated a session on children’s time use and was a panelist for a session focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion, tailored to early career scholars. Complementing these efforts, she engaged in a six-week program with the Maryland Intergroup Dialogue Collaborative, deepening intergroup dialogue on campus by examining race, power, and oppression.
Faculty News
Sharon Harley was promoted to Professor in 2023. This is a tremendous honor, especially among women and faculty of color at an R-1 university. She will spend her Spring 2024 sabbatical completing a biography for Yale University Press's Black Lives series. Based on her research and publications about Mary Church Terrell, a leading African American suffragist, club woman, and advocate for racial and women's equality, she assisted interns in the Library of Congress's Mary Church Terrell manuscript project, "Leverging Collection Data to Enable new forms of Storytelling and Research."
George Kintiba embarked on a project on African inventors with a colleague based in the Democratic Republic of Congo. To support this work, he has been awarded an AFAM seed grant to conduct fieldwork in various African countries. In addition, he also moderated a panel discussion on Blackness in Israel. He continues to engage students through his very popular courses and involvement in student-sponsored activities.
Jason Nichols became a contributing political writer for The Daily Beast and Newsweek. He is also part of "Chris Plante The Right Squad," a political panel show, where he has debated high profile government officials such as Congressman Matt Gaetz, Senator Markwayne Mullin, and former Senator Rick Santorum. He co-authored the first "Rap Laureate," a non-peer-reviewed research publication about the work of Lupe Fiasco and presented at the Global Conference on Hip Hop Education at California State University Long Beach. He served as a moderator for an event focused on the 2022 Midterms entitled "Policy Projections: Brave New World or More of the Same?" and participated in a panel discussion entitled "Terrapin Perspectives: Public health, Policy, and Practice - Exploring the Intersectional Impact of Gun Violence in the DMV."
Faculty News
Sangeetha Madhavan continues her leadership of the JAMO Project, a five year study funded by the National Institutes of Health. The project focuses on determining the extent to which kinship support and marriage benefit children in urban sub-Saharan African settings. The team, made up of researchers from UMD and Kenya, has successfully completed multiple waves of data collection and is in the process of analyzing data and preparing papers for publication and conference presentations. The team spent 2 weeks in Kenya in Summer 2023 as part of a mid-project workshop to take stock of what the project has uncovered and to chart future plans. One exciting idea resulting from the JAMO project is a focus on pregnancy and mental health in low-income communities in Africa, a topic we know very little
about but one that has significant consequences for individual and population health. Plans are underway to develop a funding proposal to the Wellcome Trust (UK). In addition, she will start new research on climate and health in India as part of a NIH project linked to the Indian Human Development Survey housed at the Maryland Population Research Center. She is teaching her I-Series course, Race, Reproduction, and Rights, in her role as Faculty Lead for the Health Matters Cluster in University Honors and continuing her mentorship of multiple doctoral students in sociology.
Ashley Newby began her role as Academic Advisor for the Anti-Black Racism minor housed in AFAM. She presented "Solidarity in the 21st Century Classroom" at the American Studies Association annual meeting in Montreal and also organized a panel discussion, "Dobbs and Disparities: Implications on Reproduction Health Care for Black and Marginalized Communities." She also has had two chapters on pedagogy published: "Writing and Research Training Program: A UCLA Campus Partnership to Support BIPOC, LGBTQIA, and Disabled Student Researchers" in Undergraduate Research and the Academic Librarian: Case Studies & Best Practices and "Research-Writing Pedagogy as Sustaining First-Generation College Student Identities in a Bridge Program" in Beyond Fitting In: Rethinking First-Gen Writing and Literacy Education.
Faculty News
Joseph Richardson's 2021 documentary Life After the Gunshot has won "Best Documentary Feature" at three national film festivals. In July 2023, the film screened at the Giffords National Conference on Gun Violence. This year, he was elected to the National Academy of Medicine. He also launched two initiatives in 2023: The Black and Brown Collective, a network for gun violence scholars of color, and PROGRESS (Prevent Gun Violence: Research, Empowerment, Strategies, and Solutions), which seeks to offer solutions to gun violence in a variety of situations.
Chinyere Osuji continued her work on African immigrants in the US nursing profession, supported by a seed grant from the BSOS Dean's Research Initiative. She also actively pursued her podcast production, releasing new episodes throughout the year. She has been chosen as a Lead Fellow for a cluster engaging with race and pop culture, for the University Honors College.
Shane Bolles Walsh has continued in his committment to student life and fostering equity, justice, and accessibility on the University of Maryland's campus. He continues to serve on the Senate Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Committee. Furthermore, he is currently building the archive for Judge Williams and the Judge Alexander Williams, Jr. Center for Education, Justice, and Ethics. He also received an AFAM seed grant to support his archival research on the life of Paul Robeson.
Faculty News
This year, Angel Dunbar published the chapter "Parenting, Socialization of Emotion, and the Development of Coping" in The Cambridge Handbook of the Development of Coping. She was awarded an R21 grant from the National Institutes of Mental Health for her project "Linking Racialized Disparities in School Discipline to Black Youth Suicidality." She also participated in several events at the 2023 Society for Research in Child Development: "Beyond the Survey: Innovative Methods for Measuring and Analyzing Ethnic Racial Socialization," "Parent-Child Interactions and Marginalized Contexts: The Role of Race, Gender, and Discrimination Experiences," "The Role of Teachers in Perpetuating or Dismantling Racialized Practices/Behaviors," and a poster session.
Mike Wagner spent part of the summer in Nairobi, Kenya alongside colleagues Sangeetha Madhavan, Ken Leonard (AREC), and Kirsten Stobenau (SPH) working on the JAMO project. This was his second trip to Kenya, and he was accompanied again by his wife, Erika. After attending the workshop, he and Erika traveled to several other areas in Kenya including Nakuru, Malindi, and Maasai Mara. They were reunited with their tour guide Sammy whom they met and became close with last year. Additionally, he devotes part of his time to working with Jessica Magidson, Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology.
Periloux Peay joined AFAM this year as Assistant Professor. His PhD is in Political Science, with a concentration on American Politics and Public Policy. His current research is on how those from under-represented communities employ collective strategies to shape political processes and outcomes from within and outside political institutions in America and is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF). His work can be found in Politics, Groups, and Identities, the Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics, Social Science Quarterly, Congress and the Presidency, and the National Review of Black Politics.
Faculty Highlight: Beka Guluma
Beka Guluma is one of the two new faculty members who joined AFAM this year. He completed his PhD in Sociology at Stanford, with a focus on the experience of African immigrant experience. I sat down with Beka to discuss his research, motivations, what excites him about joining AFAM at UMD, and what he hopes to accomplish in the next year.
Research interests: Beka's dissertation was focused on Oromo immigrants and the ways in which they negotiate their ethnic and racial identities, both in America and in the context of continued conflict in Ethiopia. He has conducted research in D.C. and the Minneapolis-St. Paul region with first- and second-generation immigrants, exploring how transnational idenity is formed and maintained. Currently, he has one paper on his dissertation work published, "I’m Not Habesha, I’m Oromo: Immigration, Ethnic Identity, and the Transnationality of Blackness"; his postdoctoral goals are to continue working on his dissertation and publish a book on his work. Motivations: Beka views science as a means of bettering the world. He admitted that his research is not what he initially set out to do academically because it felt too close to home, but world circumstances that coincided during his PhD program (protest in Ethiopia from 2014-2018 and the resurgance of the BLM movement in 2020) made the specific focus on Oromo advantageous. Beka expressed an interest in how people attach themselves to certain idenities and how it shapes them. What excites you about AFAM? In our interview, Beka expressed that African American Studies felt like a positive intellectual and cultural fit. The interdisciplinary and collaborative nature of UMD's AFAM were particular highlights. He also said that he was excited to be at a university with a large Black population, next to a large Black city with a rich history. Within the next year, he looks forward to collaborating with Dr. Madhavan on her JAMO project, beginning other projects related to Diaspora activism, and continuing work on disseminating his dissertation research.
Intramural Research Grants
BSOS DRI Seed Grant, 2023-2024: Chinyere Osuji
"Non-compliant: Resilience among African Immigrants in the Nursing Profession"
VPR Proposal Development Grant: Sangeetha Madhavan
To support mid-project workshop for the JAMO project
AFAM Faculty Seed Grants 2023-2024:
Robert Choflet, Lecturer
"Critical Reflection, Radical Imagination: Documenting the Intellectual Labor of Baltimore's Public Housing Residents"
Cecily Hardaway, Assistant Professor
Proposal for Advancing Research and Professional Development
Sharon Harley, Professor "Nannie H. Burroughs: Crusade for Justice"
George Kinitiba, Lecturer
"Young African Inventors in the 20th and 21st Century"
Ashley Newby, Lecturer and Director of Undergraduate Studies "And to be Conscious"
Shane Bolles Walsh, Lecturer
Research Trip to Yale University: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
A screening of
Periloux Peay's Brown Bag Lecture
Chinyere Osuji promoting her book, Boundaries of Love
Dr. Jenn Jackson's John B. Slaughter Endowment Lecture
Dr. Elizabeth Maurice Alexander's Brown Bag Lecture
AFAM and JAWC Faculty and Staff
Joseph Richardson's Life After the Gunshot
afam podcasts:
Chinyere Osuji: Dr. Chi's Sa-Lon
Anti-Blackness and Korean National Identity
SCOTUS on Affirmative Action with Stacy Hawkins
John Drabinski and Fatima Seck: Conversations in Atlantic Theory
Mark Deets on A Country of Defiance: Mapping the Casamance in Senegal
Drew Dalton on The Matter of Evil: From Speculative Realism to Ethical Pessimism
many voices, one goal
Can Trump Win Georgia After 2021?
Why Cable News is Run by Robots and Should the President be Crazy?
Jason Nichols and Vince Coglianese: Vince and Jason Save the Nation Education Equity Gun Control (Part I) Judge Alexander Williams, Jr: Perspectives on Justice
Student News
Joy Anyanwu
Black Women's Studies Minor
I am a current undergraduate senior with a major in Sociology and a minor in Black Women's Studies, hence my connection to AFAM. I have worked as a Research Assistant to Angel Dunbar within the Black Child and Family Lab from Fall 2021 to Spring 2022. In this lab, I worked on a project dealing with the racial socialization of Black elementary school-aged children within Prince George's County. My coursework within the Black Women's Studies program has included "Gender, Labor, and Racial Identities in Diaspora Communities" with Sharon Harley and "Race and Reproduction" with Sangeetha Madhavan. Additionally, I am a 3-time recipient of the John B. and Ida Slaughter
France Tomgambo-Kaye
University of Miami
UMD Summer Research Institute 2023
I am currently a senior at the University of Miami, majoring in Global Health Studies on the Pre-Medical track. This last summer, I had the honor of being a part of the 2023 BSOS Summer Research Initiative (SRI). I spent the summer working with Sangeetha Madhavan in AFAM and with Kirsten Stoebenau in the School of Public Health. I was able to join this team in their on-going research on Kinship, Nuptiality, and Child Health Outcomes based in Nairobi, Kenya. I had the opportunity to engage in both quantitative and qualitative research work surrounding childhood health. Part of my research included looking at vaccination data and rates and conducting a project and presentation on the relationships between vaccination, mother's attributes, and childhood health outcomes. I was also able to develop narrative summaries of the participants in this study and could also use those summaries to draw health conclusions in my presentation. This opportunity was amazing, as it exposed me to several skills, methods, and overall, taught me so much more about research than I had known before. I am also very grateful for all of the insightful people I was able to meet and work with in those eight weeks. I highly recommend this program for anyone interested in research and the behavioral sciences!
Student Highlight: Reginald Pulley
Reginald Pulley is a graduate student in GVPT at UMD. He began his PhD under Dr. Periloux C. Peay at Georgia State University and is continuing his work under Dr. Peay. Reginald and I met to discuss more about his work, his motivations, and what excites him about AFAM at UMD.
Research Interests:
Reginald's work is centered around race and ethnicity politics, with an emphasis on Black politics. Specifically, he is focused on answering questions like how do African Americans evaluate policy decisions? What are different factors in intergroup evaluations, and how do these affect their relationships with American democracy?
Affiliation with AFAM: Although he is a Political Science student, Reginald is completing his research with Dr. Peay as his advisor. He is currently working with Peay on a paper which reevaluates the framework of Frontlash, a nonprofit organization founded in 1968 to encourage young and minority voters to register, and applies it to state politics. Reginald is also in the process of recruiting for a mobile polling lab for students in the DC area in order to do data collection at protests. His research also involves coding speeches and social media responses to policy.
Motivations: Reginald explained his motivation in his research as "trying to give a voice to the voiceless in Black research." He sites his own lived experience as a Black man in America, particularly the differences in education that he and one of his cousins recieved at a young age due to their ZIP codes. The differences in the resources (and their resulting different life experiences) led Reginald to understand how education is a systemic act. He hopes to finish his dissertation and gain tenure track at an R-1 institution. Within the next year, he is looking forward to revising previous papers with a better sample set and attending a conference in Spring 2024. What excites you about AFAM? In addition to UMD's proximity to D.C. making the area a great place to study political science, Reginald highlighted the interdisciplinary nature of the department (especially compared to other academic spaces) as something exciting to him. The meetings and lectures offered by the department appealed to him as events that focus on lived experiences and shifting conversations from other disciplines into a political lens.
PHOTOS
Sangeetha Madhavan and colleagues from UMD and Kenya
Local talent in Nairobi, Kenya
Sharon Harley representing the department and the university at Howard University's investiture of Dr. Ben Vinson.
Dr. Mary Frances Berry giving a keynote address at BSOS's Feller Lecture Series.
France Tomgambo-Kaye's poster from the 2023 SRI.
Staff News
Natalie Rivera joined AFAM as Program Management Specialist in June 2023, having worked previously at George Mason University. She has quickly and effectively assumed the responsibilities of her position, which includes website/social media updates, weekly announcements, guest and event travel, inventory tracking, and support for class and related functions. She contributes extensively to the smooth operation of AFAM. In her first six months in AFAM, Natalie launched the AFAM Undergraduate blog, updated weekly, with colleague Marshal Washington. Natalie is a Terp and a BSOS alumna. She graduated from UMD in 2022 with a BA in sociology and a minor in public leadership. She enjoys ceramic handbuilding, sewing, painting, digital art, and reading in her free time.
Sharon Hodgson is the Director of Administrative Services, overseeing AFAM’s financial and business operations, and working collaboratively with the Chair to provide stewardship of the department’s resources. In 2023, Sharon reached 25 years with the University of Maryland and began her 7th year with AFAM. Sharon has a positive outlook and is committed to serving faculty, student, and staff colleagues in AFAM and throughout BSOS. In her free time, Sharon enjoys knitting, spoiling her two retired racing greyhounds, and volunteering with Greyhound Welfare, Inc.
Emma Gruesbeck joined AFAM as the Communications Graduate Assistant for the department this Fall. Her role is centered around developing content, writing, and producing the annual news magazine, Crossroads. She works collaborately with Natalie Rivera to keep the website up to date and manage social media. Emma began the Dual Masters Program in Applied Anthropology and Historic Preservation this Fall. She is originally from Louisiana; she received her Honors BA in English from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Emma enjoys going to concerts, reading, thrifting, and making art in her free time.
Staff News
Marshal Washington was promoted to Assistant Program Director for AFAM in 2022. He has been with the department since 2012, serving as a Faculty Assistant, Undergraduate Academic Advisor and Faculty Advisor for the Society of African American Studies, the custodian for the department’s library (Harriet Tubman-Frederick Douglas Reading Room), and has supported research, teaching, and other student services. Mr. Washington is himself an alumnus of UMD, with a degree in African American Studies, concentrating in Cultural and Social Analysis. He is a native of Prince George's County, and a reliable resource for both students and his fellow faculty members.
Rachel Shupbach serves as AFAM's Business Manager. She is in charge of the daily operation of the department through payroll, procurement/purchasing, facilities management, and space management. Ms. Shupbach is a resource for benefits, open enrollment, on-boarding, and other HR-related information. She completed both undergraduate and graduate school at the University of Maryland, and has worked for the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences for over 9 years. Rachel’s work ethic and commitment to service are exemplary, plus her sense of humor is a bright spot for her colleagues.
Alumni News
Alexis Ojeda-Brown
Class of 2018, African American Studies Certificate
Alexis Ojeda-Brown is a class of 2018 Alum who received her degree in English and History, with a certificate in African American Studies. Not only was she a part of the certificate program, but she was also a federal work-study student for AFAM for 2 years.
Since graduating, Alexis has worked with various Baltimore museums and cultural institutions and her time with the African American Studies Department heavily influences the work she does as a Museum Professional. Formerly the Program and Education Coordinator for Morgan State University’s Lillie Carroll Jackson Civil Rights Museum, Alexis developed a Baltimore Civil Rights History Curriculum for Baltimore City Public Middle School and High Schools. She also developed a curriculum for the Pennsylvania Avenue Black Arts District’s Historical Photography Project that encouraged students to explore and analyze local primary source images and record oral histories to preserve Baltimore’s Cultural memory.
Alexis is the Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion and Marketing Specialist at the Baltimore Museum of Industry (BMI) where she develops tours that explore the intersections between Labor and Civil Rights movements in Baltimore. In addition to working at the BMI, Alexis is now back at UMD working as the DEI Coordinator for the Philip Merrill College of Journalism, where she is supporting the next generation of Journalists.
Alumni Highlight: Rick Tamno
Rick Tamno is a Program Assistant at Lurtheran Immigration and Refugee Service, a non-profit organization in Baltimore, Maryland. He is also an alumni of the University of Maryland's Class of 2017 and AFAM. I met with Rick to discuss his research interests, motivations, time in the department and how its influenced him and his career trajectory, 6 years after graduating.
Degree: African American Studies with a concentration in Public Policy. Rick was a Rhonda M. Williams fellow, allowing him to complete a 4+1 degree plan in the School of Public Policy. His Master's degree is in Public Policy. While at UMD, Rick completed research focused on connections between incarceration and slavery in the United states. In 2015, he presented at UMD's Research Day on mass incarceration.
Motivations: Rick explained his motivation in his degree and in his work as changing policy through policy research.
Research: In his current role as a Program Assistant at the largest faith-based nonprofit for immigrants, refugees, and US asylum-seekers, Rick completes monthly presentations for his collegues focused on policy research related to immigration laws. Some of the research Rick has conducted and presented on covers the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPA), the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection, and the Public Charge Rule.
How did AFAM Prepare You for Your Career After Graduation?: As a researcher, Rick told me that AFAM taught him how to conduct research and how policies affect the daily lives of people. Through the Judge Alexander Williams Center, he was able to complete an internship, where he served as a Research Assistant. Furthermore, while completing his undergraduate degree in African American Studies, Rick worked for the department as a student worker. He said that this experience helped him to develop professionally.
2023 Department Lectures
Brown Bag Lectures
February 17: Research Team Meeting: Early Childhood Development in Adverse Environments: New Evidence from Nairobi, Kenya with Dr. Patricia Wekulo
March 15: Care as Praxis in Digital Black Feminism with Dr. Catherine Knight Steele
April 12: “The Comrades Gave Me Money to Buy Things to Eat”: The Scottsboro Boys, Their Mothers, and the Crisis of Economy in the 1930s with Dr. Quincy Mills
October 11: Racial Riptides: How Racialized Policies Spread Through American States with Dr. Periloux Peay
November 8: Erotic Data Measures with Dr. Elizabeth Maurice Alexander
John B. Slaughter Endowment Lecture Series
February 23: Making Black History Tangible: The Value of Material Culture and Museums with Mr. Gene Peters and Dr. Izetta Mobley
March 9: America, Goddam: Violence, Black Women & The Struggle for Justice with Drs. Treva Lindsey and Bettina Love
April 6: Gender, Race and Drugs in South Africa: From Beer to Heroin and Xanax with Dr. Mark Hunter
April 19: Young African Inventors in the 20th and 21st Century with Dr. Odette Sangupamba Mwilu
November 15: To be a Radical: How Intersectional Politics Made a Movement with Dr. Jenn M. Jackson
Judge Alexander Williams, Jr. Center
On November 16, 2023, the Judge Alexander Williams Center Jr. Center for Education, Justice and Ethics hosted its 5th Annual Lecture titled, "Increasing Access, Success and Present Day Challenges for Institutions of Higher Education." University leaders from across the state of Maryland shared their perspectives and insight on the challenges and successes present in the field of higher education. This year's honorees are:
Stella's Girls Inc. In pursuit of gender and educational equity, Stella's Girls Inc. improves the rights for women, children and minorities through STEM programming, mentorship, and community building. Founded in Charles County, Stella's Girls uplifts youth lives and fosters leadership skills and youth empowerment to encourage children to be changemakers in their communities.
Excellence in Education Foundation The Excellence in Education Foundation is a non-profit organization that uses business expertise to improve the care and quality of education for students and families in Prince George's County. Through their service, they raise funding for lunch programs, provide scholarship opportunities, and lead academic programming that builds a better future for PGCPS children.
Latino Education Advancement Fund The Latino Education Advancement Fund, also known as LEAF, empowers Latino families with resources to improve learning and success for students in the Baltimore region. Since their inaugural programming in 2017, LEAF has served over 1600 Spanish-speaking Latino students and families through academic workshops, conferences, coaching, and advocacy. Through their service, they support parent education in improving educational quality, access, and success for their children.
This year’s event was moderated by Dr. Dana Williams. The 5th Annual Lecture speakers were: Dr. Darryll J. Pines, President of Univ. of MD, College Park, Dr. Mark R. Ginsberg, President of Towson University, Dr. Valerie Sheares Ashby, President of Univ. of MD, Baltimore County , and Dr. Aminta H. Breaux, President of Bowie State University.
BSOS/AFAM Engagement
In April, Dr. Mary Frances Berry was invited by BSOS to deliver a keynote as part of their Feller Lecture Series. Feller Lectures bring together students, faculty, staff, and esteemed speakers for discussions about timely sociopolitical issues. Dr. Berry founded AFAM at UMD and became the head of BSOS in 1976. She is also a noted civil rights leader who served as Assistant Secretary of the US Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1977 and Chairwoman of the US Civil Rights Committee beginning in 1980. Dr. Berry discussed her experiences in leadership and participated in a Q&A Session afterwards.
In May, BSOS held a Resilience Research Showcase to highlight interdisciplinary projects related to the school's Resilience Research Hub. There were over 300 participants in the event, which featured 40 posters and video presentations. Themes discussed included environmental, economic, health, and democratic resilence. Sangeetha Madhavan and Cecily Hardaway both presented research at the showcase. Joseph Richardson and Jason Nichols were featured in a video presentation, and Cheryl Laird, affiliate AFAM faculty, also showcased her work at the event.
In October, UMD launched PROGRESS, Prevent Gun Violence: Research, Empowerment, Strategies, and Solutions. The initiative is being co-led by Joseph Richardson, who is nationally recognized for his research on gun violence. It seeks to reduce community-based firearm-related violence through research, education, scholarship, and prevention solutions. The launch event for PROGRESS featured remarks from Joseph Richardson and his Co-Leader Woodie Kessel, as well as a Q&A session.
