Au Courant

University Highlights

Xavier University of Louisiana raised $1,022,614 during its annual online, social-media driven fundraising event – Give. Love. Xavier Day – held in April 2021. This year’s theme was “For the Love of Xavier.” The Office of Alumni Relations launched the Give Love Xavier initiative nine years ago to strengthen alumni engagement. “Need based financial aid is a core necessity for the majority of our students and will continue to be the lifeline for students to remain part of the Xavier academic community,” said President Dr. Reynold Verret. “The success of this year’s Give Love Xavier fundraising event shows that we are united in our shared mission to follow in the footsteps of our founder St. Katharine Drexel and ensure that our students get the education they deserve.”

Xavier has received a historic $20 million-dollar donation – the University’s largest private gift to date from an individual. Xavier was among nearly 120 organizations to benefit from a cumulative $1.7 billion contribution by MacKenzie Scott centered on combating racial and gender inequality. The gift has provided Xavier with a unique opportunity to expand its scholarship endowment and make other much needed investments to sustain its mission.

Xavier was one of 10 institutions awarded a $5 million grant from Google, designed to help create pathways and opportunities for increased diverse representation in the STEM industry. The one-time unrestricted grant will provide the University with financial support for scholarships, technological infrastructure support, career readiness, and curriculum development.

Ochsner and Xavier have partnered to develop two new graduate degree programs in genetic counseling and health informatics. The academic programs will include classroom instruction at Xavier and clinical rotations at Ochsner Health facilities. Xavier is the first university in Louisiana to offer a genetic counseling training program and provides the only such program based at an HBCU. Genetic counselors advise individuals and families affected by or at risk for genetic disorders and support them in making informed healthcare decisions. Health informatics professionals identify, capture, organize and interpret health data to develop effective healthcare processes and solutions, subsequently improving the delivery of healthcare services.

Xavier now offers a master’s degree option in public health, successfully making the University the first HBCU in the state to offer the program. The first eight graduates of the program received their master’s degrees during the 2020 commencement ceremony. The MPH program, launched in 2018 as part of a strategy to provide students with another option in the health sciences, exposes enrollees to advanced public health policy, advanced epidemiology, and a host of other health promotion and behavioral sciences framed around the advancement of health equity.

Xavier and the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston have partnered to

establish an initiative that will allow qualified students to participate in a collaborative Medical Track Program that facilitates assured acceptance into the School of Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. The Xavier-Baylor partnership was established to build on the inclusive environment at Baylor and provide students, including historically underrepresented minorities, with a smooth transition from undergraduate programs to more advanced graduate programs.

Xavier has entered into a new partnership with the Duquesne University School of Law to offer graduates a clear pathway to further their education and pursue careers in the legal field. The partnership positions both universities to continue their traditions and commitments to academic excellence, diversity, equity, and inclusion in education. Duquesne’s Bar Preparation program is ranked No. 9 in the country by National Jurist.

Lehigh University’s College of Business and Xavier have partnered for a unique “4+1” joint program which will enable Liberal Arts or STEM field majors to enter Lehigh’s MS in Management program, enabling students to earn a master’s degree in just 10 months. The combination of Liberal Arts or STEM with business training will further enhance each graduate’s workplace readiness as they enter various industries. Accepted XULA students will be guaranteed generous scholarships in support of their graduate educational endeavors.

Students now have another option in the College of Arts and Sciences with the institution’s launch of a Digital Humanities minor, which is designed to teach students the skills of the humanities: critical thinking, persuasive communication, and engagement with humanist subject matter and digital platforms prevalent in humanist institutions such as museums, social justice nonprofits, and arts and cultural foundations. The 18-credit hour minor is grounded in data science and social justice.

Xavier was awarded a $250,000 grant from Diageo North America to create a permanent endowment fund and provide financial aid grants to talented students across different disciplines and majors. African American students from the New Orleans area will be prioritized to receive scholarship funds through this endowment, which is focused on building opportunities to develop future leaders and help shape a more equitable society. Diageo NA will also provide internship opportunities.

Xavier was been named a Fulbright Historically Black College and University Institutional Leader by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs in recognition of its noteworthy participation in a wide range of Fulbright Program activities that benefit their faculty, students, and administrators. This includes advising their U.S. students, welcoming foreign students, scholars, and Foreign Language Teaching Assistants, and building connections through International Education Administrators seminars.

Xavier was among 17 HBCUs chosen to participate in the NBCU Academy, a new and innovative multiplatform journalism training and development program for minority students created by the NBCUniversal News Group. The initiative, supported by a $500,000 grant for 2021, includes a curated onsite curriculum for a hands-on learning experience with world-class NBCU News Group journalists and funding for accredited journalism programs and scholarships.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Foundation and

Xavier entered into a cooperative agreement providing $420,000 to develop mitigation strategies to reduce and prevent the disproportionate COVID-19 transmission among African Americans in the New Orleans metropolitan area. The New Orleans area experienced one of the highest rates of mortality from COVID-19 in the state of Louisiana and the nation.

The Center for Equity, Justice and the Human Spirit was awarded a $500,000

grant from Gilead Sciences to establish the Gilead Sciences Social Justice Scholars Program as part of its $10 million Racial Equity Community Impact Fund designed to support high-impact organizations working to tackle racial inequalities and training the next generation of leaders.

TikTok awarded $1 million in funding to Xavier as a part of its ongoing commitment to healthcare workers and academic institutions that serve underrepresented students with programs focused on public health professions in the medical and healthcare fields. The social media platform donated a total of $10 million to 10 academic institutions that serve minority students in support of undergraduate and graduate scholarships for students pursuing medical careers or other healthrelated fields, helping to ensure the success of future Black, Latinx, and Indigenous health heroes.

Xavier partnered with Hope Enterprise Corporation to launch the

Deep South Economic Mobility Collaborative (DSEMC) along with six other cities and eight other HBCUs. This new partnership includes a commitment from Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses of up to $130 million to stabilize and strengthen underserved and under-resourced businesses and communities devastated by the economic crisis.

The annual U.S. News College Guide once again recognized Xavier as one of the nation’s top HBCUs, ranking it No.3 in its 2021 edition. Spelman College and Howard University held the top two spots. Among all U.S. colleges and universities, the Guide ranked Xavier 16th out of 92 schools in its grouping of the 12-state “Best Regional Universities – South,” one spot up from last year’s ranking. Schools are considered regional universities if they offer a full range of undergraduate programs and some master’s programs, but few doctoral programs.

Dr. Charity Clay, an assistant Sociology professor in the Division of Social & Behavioral Sciences, was named a William T. Grant Foundation Scholar for her designation as a promising early-career researcher. She was one of six educators selected to receive up to $350,000 distributed over five years for their research. Her grant-winning research analyzes the impacts of what she has conceptualized as “Systemic Police Terrorism” and seeks to expand our understanding of police brutality beyond individual acts to understand the systems and mechanisms that enable police terrorism.

Xavier maintained its ranking as Louisiana’s top institution in regard to college graduates who successfully enter the job market after commencement, according to the career experts at Zippia.com. Zippia is an online platform geared towards empowering recent grads and job seekers with knowledge about their potential career paths and how those various paths will impact their professional lives. Zippia’s career experts pulled the data for this report using the U.S. Department of Education’s “College Scorecard” from 2018-2019 to check employment rate data for all higher education institutions from coast to coast. They then identified the institutions with the highest placement rate in each state. Dr. Charity Clay

Xavier was recognized as one of the nation’s top HBCUs as well as among the top “Best Value” colleges and universities in Louisiana in the recently released “2021 Best Colleges” guide by Niche.com.

Dr. Elizabeth Yost Hammer, the director of Xavier’s

Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Faculty Development (CAT+FD) and a Kellogg Professor in Teaching in the Psychology Department, was a recipient of the American Psychology Association’s (APA) Charles F. Brewer Distinguished Teaching Award. The award recognizes a psychologist with a career of significant contributions who has proven to be an exceptional teacher of psychology.

Xavier partnered with LCMC Health, the New Orleans Health Department, and Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center to launch the first mobile community testing site in a city-wide initiative designed to bring COVID-19 testing to individuals and families who live in medically vulnerable communities. The Xavier site targeted the Gert Town, Hollygrove and Dixon areas of New Orleans.

Xavier’s Marketing Team, headed by Ashley Irvin, Director of Marketing and Communications, received multiple awards in various categories for their implementation of the digital One Safe XULA campaign as well as other materials they created throughout 2020 from the 2021 Audio-Visual Arts Digital Awards (AVA), an international marketing and communications competition sponsored and judged by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals (AMCP). The Team was also recognized by the Public Relations Society (PRSA) of New Orleans, earning ten 2020 NOLA Fleurish Awards of Excellence and two Awards of Merit.

Dr. Anderson Sunda-Meya, a professor of physics and the Associate Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences, was awarded the American Physical Society’s 2021 Excellence in Physics Education honor on behalf of the American Physical Society. The award recognizes a team or group of individuals or, exceptionally, a single individual who has exhibited a sustained commitment to excellence in physics education.

Xavier was awarded $50,000 in scholarship funds from Curology, the leader in customized subscription skincare, to support aspiring dermatologists. The funding coincided with the company’s “In Support of Black Joy” campaign celebrating Black History Month, which highlighted Black creators sharing stories of finding and creating joy. Dr. Elizabeth Yost Hammer

Dr. Anderson Sunda-Meya

Ayodele Theard-Lewis

Christina Pearce, ‘21

Niya Jeter

Student Highlights

Ayodele Theard-Lewis, a sociology major and French minor, was selected as a 2021 Frederick Douglass Global Fellow, an honor awarding her a full scholarship to represent Xavier in a summer study abroad program focused on leadership, intercultural communication, and social justice in Dublin, Ireland.

Three Division of Business students – Jean Claude Biayi, Wacuka Gitahi and Kaelyn Hinton – took second place and a $10,000 prize during the 2020 National Black MBA Association Undergraduate Business Case Competition. Students were tasked with creating a business strategy for the well-known streaming brand Netflix during the all-virtual event to showcase their business skills.

Christina Pearce, ‘21 (biology), was selected as a 2020 United Negro College Fund (UNCF) Scholarship recipient, an award provided by the nation’s largest private scholarship provider to minority group members. UNCF distributes more than $100 million in scholarships as well as provides students with internships and fellowships. She has since been accepted into the Oral Biology master’s degree program at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA).

Niya Jeter, a pharmacy senior from Maryland, has been selected for the Senior Commissioned Officer Student Training and Extern Program with the U.S. Public Health Services (USPHS). The program provides an opportunity for students entering their final year of graduate school or professional training to get paid an officer’s salary while in school, in exchange for a two-year commitment as a USPHS Commissioned Officer upon graduation. As part of the program, Jeter will begin her career in pharmacy immediately after graduation by serving in a Native American hospital as a pharmacist for the Indian Health Service. XG