Recognition

CONGRATULATIONS TO DR. TIFFANI WILLIAMS WHO RECEIVED THE 2011 DENICE DENTON EMERGING LEADER AWARD AT THE 2011 GRACE HOPPER CELEBRATION OF WOMEN IN COMPUTING.
The award will be presented each year to a junior tenure-track (non-tenured) faculty member (under the age of 40) at an academic or research institution, who is pursuing high-quality research in any field of engineering or physical sciences, while demonstrating a significant leadership capability and contributing significantly to promote diversity in his/her environment.
http://anitaborg.org/initiatives/awards/denice-denton-award/

Rebecca Hankins, an Associate Professor, certified archivist/librarian, has been selected to attend the Archives Leadership Institute, to be presented by the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Library and Information Studies. Rebecca’s previous experience includes 12 years as senior archivist at The Amistad Research Center at Tulane University in New Orleans, the premier research repository on Africana historical documentation. Her expertise includes building collections and scholarly resources for the study of the African Diaspora, Race & Ethnic Studies, and Arabic Language and Culture.  She has published in library, archival, and other peer-reviewed journals and her latest publication is on Islamic science fiction and fantasy in the international journal Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction.

Carmelita Pickett, Assistant Professor and Head of Collection Development Operations & Acquisition Services at TAMU Libraries, has been accepted into the Big 12 Faculty Fellowship Program. The program offers faculty the opportunity to travel to member institutions to exchange ideas regarding teaching, service, and research.

The  program prepares mid-career librarians from traditionally underrepresented groups to take on leadership roles in ARL libraries. LaVerne is in a class with 18 other librarians from ARL libraries.  As a fellow, LaVerne will attend three institutes, produce an original research project, and work with a career coach who serves as a dean or high-level administrator in an ARL Library.  It is a great honor for Texas A&M Libraries to have a librarian selected as a participant in this prestigious program. 

In her book, Brown employs the figure of the revolutionary diva as both a moniker for women such as Toni Cade Bambara, Jayne Cortez, Angela Davis, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker, as well as a trope for revolutionary and feminist agency. Brown argues that the majority of contemporary African American women write with a revolutionary imperative to decolonize their black reading constituency.

Kimberly Nichele Brown is an associate professor of English and the director of the Africana Studies Program. She specializes in contemporary African American literature, black film, and black feminist theory. The focal threads that weave continuity into Brown’s research agenda are issues regarding race and representation (i.e., black agency and self actualization, black subjectivity, the black body, as well as questions of audience and spectatorship. Her publications include “Useful Anger: Confrontation and Challenge in the Teaching of Gender, Race, and Violence” (in Women Faculty of Color in the White College Classroom. Peter Lang Publishing, 2002) and “Of Poststructuralist Fallout, Scarification and Blood Poems: The Revolutionary Ideology behind the Poetry of Jayne Cortez” (in U.S. Women Writers of Color and Literary Theory, University of Illinois Press, 1998).

Dr. Alain Lawo-Sukam is an Assistant Professor of Hispanic and Africana Studies. He holds a Ph.D. in Spanish from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His area of concentration is Latin American Literature and Culture with special interest in Afro-Latinamerican & Hispano-African Literatures and Cultures, Afro-French Literature and Culture, Post-Colonial, Cultural Studies and Ecocriticism. He is the author of the book ” Hacia una po�tica afrocolombiana: El caso del Pac�fico and a poetry book Cantos a Africa.” [Toward an Afro- Colombian Poetic: The Case of The Pacific]. He has published several articles in peer reviewed journals such as Revista Iberoamericana, Revista Hisp�nica de Literatura y Cultura, Revista de Literatura Hisp�nica, Revista de Estudios Colomb�anos, Hipertexto, The Latin Americanist and The Afro-Latin American Research Journal among other journals. He has also published Book Reviews and collection of Poetry in the Afro-Hispanic Review and Collar de la Paloma. He is a soccer coach for U 11 and U 12 in Bryan and College Station.

Dr. Karen Butler-Purry, who has held increasingly key faculty and administrative positions at Texas A&M since 1994, has been named the university’s associate vice president for graduate studies, heading the office that serves more than 9,000 students at the master’s and doctoral levels and involves more than 2,000 graduate faculty. Her appointment is effective July 12. She formerly served as assistant dean for graduate programs in the Dwight Look College of Engineering and is currently associate department head and professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Butler-Purry earned her bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Southern University at Baton Rouge, her master’s degree in electrical engineering from The University of Texas at Austin, and her doctorate in electrical engineering from Howard University in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Reuben A. Buford May, associate professor in the Sociology Department, has been selected as a fellow at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research for the fall semester 2009. This is a competitive and prestigious award. Previous Fellows include notable scholars Cornell West and Claude Steele.

The W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, at Harvard University, is the nation’s oldest research center dedicated to the study of the history, culture, and social institutions of Africans and African Americans. The Institute awards up to twenty fellowships annually to scholars at various stages in their careers in the fields of African and African American studies, broadly defined to cover the expanse of the African diaspora. The Du Bois Institute’s Fellows Program forms the vital nucleus around which a stimulating array of lecture series, readings, colloquia, conferences, and forums, as well as research, archival, and publication projects revolve.

Dr. May will work on his project “Race, Class, Culture and Urban Social Space”.

LIVING THROUGH THE HOOP
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkcnI7AYGbA

Dr. Valerie E. Taylor, the Royce E. Wisenbaker Professor I in Engineering and head of the Department of Computer Science at Texas A&M University, has been elected to serve a three-year term on the Computing Research Association (CRA) board of directors.
This peer-approved appointment represents a significant acknowledgment of Taylor’s leadership skills and her colleagues’ respect for her work in research and education in the fields of computer science and engineering.

Taylor earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Purdue University, and her Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests are in the area of high-performance computing, with particular emphasis on the performance analysis and modeling of parallel and distributed application.

CRA “is an association of more than 200 North American academic departments of computer science, computer engineering, and related fields; laboratories and centers in industry, government, and academia engaging in basic computing research; and affiliated professional societies.” CRA seeks to strengthen research and advanced education in computing and allied fields by working to influence policy that affects computing research; encouraging the development of human resources; contributing to the cohesiveness of the professional community; and collecting and disseminating information about the importance and the state of computing research.

Gwen Webb-Johnson, assistant professor of K-12 administration, was awarded the 2008 Bush Excellence Award for Faculty in Public Service. She is the first College of Education and Human Development faculty member to receive this prestigious award.

“I believe it takes an entire village to make each of us better servants. The very nature of this university leads the momentum necessary to better serve our culturally and linguistically diverse communities,” Webb-Johnson said. “I am proud to be a servant, and I hope that my continued commitment will say to others we can and we must work collaboratively to be vibrant members of our communities.”

As part of her outreach efforts, Webb-Johnson speaks to parent groups, school boards, teachers, and most importantly, K-16 students about a variety of topics focused on empowerment in schools and a commitment to social justice in a culturally and linguistically diverse society.

Each year, in celebration of African-American History month, she travels across the nation giving presentations. This past year, she traveled to several places throughout Texas as well as to Illinois, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Indiana, The US Virgin Islands and Florida.

“Gwen gives an incredible amount of service to schools, community groups and churches that support African-American students and their families,” Jim Scheurich, head of the Department of Educational Administration and Human Resource Development, said.

Webb-Johnson also provides programming that celebrates the contributions of Latino Americans. In addition, she had the honor of accompanying a group of undergraduate students on a weeklong service trip to the children’s hospital in Memphis, Tenn. She is also a court appointed special advocate.

Since first being awarded in 2002, the Bush Excellence Awards recognize faculty who have made outstanding international contributions in the areas of research, teaching and public service. The awards are given annually each spring by the Bush Presidential Library Foundation.