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Posts published in “Education”

T.I. Donates $35,000 to Education & Entrepreneurship Programs Benefitting Minority Youth

By goodblacknews on July 28, 2016
T.I. (PHOTO CREDIT: NICHOLAS HUNT/GETTY IMAGES)

article by Rachaell Davis via essence.com

T.I.’s TIDAL x Money Talk & Education Challenge has paid off in a huge and inspiring way for youth across the globe.

The initiative, which was first announced in May, encouraged young people to submit proposals detailing their plans to promote educational awareness within their communities through on and offline education-based fundraising efforts. The contest ran from May 4 through June 15.
According to a press release from TIDAL, 86 participants got involved for their chance to win the challenge and T.I. will now keep his promise by matching the $35,000 in funds raised by the six finalists selected. T.I.’s $35K combined with the $46K+ that was raised by all 86 challenge participants brings the total amount donated through the TIDAL x Money Talk Education Challenge to more than $81,000.
Details on the six finalists’ organizations are as follows:
Fate Loves The Fearless – Education and mentorship program to help Detroit youth excel in school; funds raised will go towards the renovation of a new facility.
Shaw Inspires “Teen-Preneurs”– In-school, after school, weekend and summer mentoring and leadership program for youth ages 11-25; funds raised will help the program expand to Baltimore and Charleston.
The Musicianship’s 2016 Summer Camp – Summer camp that provides music lessons for young people; funds will be used to buy instruments, supplies, support music instructors, and provide a college scholarship.
Generation You Employed –  Program that helps the unemployed youth with skills and job readiness in five countries (Kenya, India, Spain, Mexico and the United States); they plan to train one million unemployed young people and place them in jobs by 2020; funds raised will go towards expanding into Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City.
To read full article, go to: http://www.essence.com/2016/07/28/ti-donates-35k-to-education-entrepreneurship-programs

Dr. Robert J. Jones Hired as New Chancellor for University of Illinois' Flagship Campus

By goodblacknews on July 24, 2016

University at Albany Chancellor Dr. Robert Jones (photo via www.albany.edu)
University of Illinois Chancellor Dr. Robert Jones (photo via www.albany.edu)

article by David Mercer via abcnews.go.com
The University of Illinois has hired a top administrator from a State University of New York campus who has a background in agricultural research to be the new chancellor at the Urbana-Champaign campus.
State University of New York at Albany President Robert J. Jones was named chancellor on Tuesday, pending formal approval by the University of Illinois board of trustees on Thursday. He will take over the university’s flagship campus after a period of turmoil that saw the last permanent chancellor resign under pressure and alleged mistreatment of players by a football coach.
Jones took over at Albany-SUNY after a period of turnover and low morale, which faculty leaders there say he handled well.
Jones is the first black chancellor of the Urbana-Champaign campus and called his new role his “dream job.”
“I have the land-grant mission in my blood. I am a product of it. It is what brought me into higher education, from a sharecropping family in Georgia,” the 65-year-old said in the release.
University of Illinois President Timothy Killeen, who came to the university from SUNY and says he knew Jones well, praised his work since taking over at Albany-SUNY in 2013 in developing the campus and linking it to the community around it.
“It comes down to, Robert checks so many of the boxes,” Killeen said in an interview. “His background in academia, in the Big Ten, agronomy. … His leadership building out a research university in Albany.”
Jones, who spent 34 years at the University of Minnesota, will be paid $649,000 a year but with no package of potential bonuses, according to university spokesman Tom Hardy. The last permanent chancellor, Phyllis Wise, was paid $550,000 plus a $100,000 retention bonus that she eventually agreed not to take after her resignation.
Jones will lead a campus with about 46,000 students, 11,400 employees and an annual operating budget of $2 billion. He also will be the vice president of the University of Illinois system, which also includes campuses in Chicago and Springfield and a total of more than 80,000 students.
Jones earned a bachelor’s degree in agronomy from Fort Valley State College, a master’s degree in crop physiology from the University of Georgia and a doctorate in crop physiology from the University of Missouri-Columbia.
To read full article, go to: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/chancellor-university-illinois-flagship-campus-40698680

"Bad Feminist" Author Roxane Gay Becomes 1st Black Woman to Ever Write Marvel Comic Book

By goodblacknews on July 23, 2016
Zenzi, in green, a revolutionary in Wakanda, the home of the Black Panther. (Photo via Marvel Entertainment)
Zenzi, in green, a revolutionary in Wakanda, the home of the Black Panther. (Photo via Marvel Entertainment)

article via theroot.com

Roxane Gay is set to write a new Marvel comic book in the World of Wakanda, which delves into the lives of the women of the Black Panther comic book series universe. It will be released in November, the New York Times reports.

The Purdue College professor and “Bad Feminist” scribe will team up with writer Ta-Nehisi Coates who has written his Black Panther series set in the fictional African nation.
Complex reports that the new series will involve several black women as writers and illustrators in addition to Gay. Alitha Martinez is the illustrator, and Yona Harvey and Afua Richardson will co-write and illustrate, respectively, a special “backup” story that will appear in the series’ debut issue.
Gay’s story will feature two members of Black Panther’s all-female security team—Ayo and Aneka—who fall in love. Harvey’s first story will revolve around Zenzi, a female revolutionary introduced in the first issue of Coates’ Black Panther series.  “It’s the most bizarre thing I’ve ever done, and I mean that in the best possible way,” said Gay to the Times.
Coates recruited both writers because he thought it important to have a woman’s perspective. “The women in Black Panther’s life are very, very important,” he said.
Read more in the New York Times and Complex.

Thirty NFL Players Complete an Executive MBA Program at the University of Miami 

By goodblacknews on July 21, 2016


The first cohort of graduates have received their degrees from the Executive MBA for Artists and Athletes program at the University of Miami in Florida.  Some 30 current or former players in the National Football League, most of them African Americans, were among the program’s first graduating class.
Source: Thirty NFL Players Complete an Executive MBA Program at the University of Miami : The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education

New "Musical Passage" Website via Duke University Explores Origins of African American Music

By goodblacknews on July 21, 2016

(Image via musicalpassage.org)
(Image via musicalpassage.org)

article via jbhe.com
Scholars at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, have debuted an interactive website that chronicles what is believed to be among the earliest examples of the music of the African diaspora. The website Musical Passage tells the story of an important, but little known record of early African diasporic music.
The project focuses on two pages of sheet music from Hans Sloane’s 1707 Voyage to the Islands of Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica It is believed to be the first transcription of African music in the Caribbean, and possibly, in the Americas.
The project was created by Mary Caton Lingold, a doctoral candidate in English at Duke, Laurent Dubois, a professor of Romance studies and history at Duke, and David K. Garner, a composer with Ph.D. from Duke who has been hired as an assistant professor of music at the University of South Carolina.
Lingold says that “you’d be hard pressed to name a living genre of music that enslaved musicians didn’t help to create or transform. Jazz, country, rock, blues, reggae and the list goes on. Turn on the radio and you are hearing these musicians’ story. But we don’t know a lot about their early music because it was not preserved in conventional ways. And that is why a little artifact like this is so important, because it helps us to know more about what their performances may have sounded like.”

Fred Barley, 19, Bikes 6 Hours to Get to College, Sleeps in Tent Until Helped by Police and Community

By goodblacknews on July 17, 2016

Fred Barley (photo via wsbtv.com)
Fred Barley (photo via wsbtv.com)

article by Hope Jensen via wsbtv.com
At just 19 years old, Fred Barley has proven he knows what he wants out of life and he’ll do anything to make it happen.  Officers found the teen sleeping in a tent over the weekend outside Gordon State College in Barnesville, GA. Instead of giving him a ticket for trespassing, the officers listened to his story – and that’s where this amazing story begins.
Barley, a homeless college student, told the officers he had ridden his little brother’s bike six hours from Conyers to Barnesville to register for classes for his second semester of college. He had two duffel bags carrying all he owned and 2 gallons of water as he rode through the heat of a Georgia summer.
Problem is, the Gordon State College campus dorms don’t open until August, so Barley pitched a tent in some bushes on campus and prepared to spend the next few weeks there, with nothing more than a box of cereal to eat.
Barley spent the day job-searching and had just returned to his tent Saturday night when officers responded to a  report of someone sleeping in a tent on campus. They told Barley to come out with his hands up, but the officers quickly realized that something wasn’t right. They sat down with Barley, who told them his story.
The biology major, who dreams of going to medical school one day, told the officers he thought the bushes on campus would be a much safer place for him to sleep than staying in his tent in Conyers. “We can’t allow you to stay here, but I have somewhere you can stay.”
“He was so understanding and he said, ‘I definitely I applaud you for doing this. We can’t allow you to stay here, but I have somewhere you can stay,’” Barley told Channel 2 Action News.
Without a second thought, the officers took him to a local motel and paid for his next two nights.  “The stuff that’s happening with police officers, I am black and he didn’t care what color I was. He just helped me, and that meant a lot,” Barley said.
That could be the end of this story, but it was only just the beginning.

HBCU Stillman College Designated As Historic District in Alabama

By goodblacknews on July 16, 2016

Founded in 1876, Stillman College is a liberal arts institution with a covenantal relationship with the Presbyterian Church, USA. Stillman is committed to fostering academic excellence and to providing high quality educational opportunities for all students. With emphasis on three Centers of Excellence: Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM), Education, and Religion; Stillman has a proud and evolving tradition of preparing students for leadership and service in society.
To read full article, go to: http://hbcubuzz.com/2016/07/stillman-college-designated-historic-district/

Yale Drops Case Against Corey Menafee, Worker Who Smashed Window Depicting Slaves

By goodblacknews on July 13, 2016
Corey Menafee, right, who broke a window depicting slaves at Yale’s Calhoun College, with his lawyer Patricia Kane, second from left. (Credit: Peter Hvizdak/New Haven Register, via Associated Press)

article by Zoe Greenburg via nytimes.com

As Yale University continues to debate the legacy of John C. Calhoun, an alumnus and leading 19th–century politician and slaveholder for whom one of its residential colleges is named, the university said on Tuesday that it would not press charges in the case of a black dining hall worker who smashed a stained-glass panel depicting slaves carrying cotton.

The Yale police initially arrested the worker, Corey Menafee, 38, after he climbed on top of a table in the Calhoun College dining hall and smashed the window, one of several related to Calhoun and to slavery, with a broom handle.

Issa Rae's GoFundMe for Alton Sterling's Children Reaches Over $660,000

By goodblacknews on July 9, 2016

Issa Rae (photo via Facebook.com))
Issa Rae (photo via Facebook.com)

article by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)
According to theurbandaily.com, Issa Rae, star and creator of The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl and the upcoming HBO series Insecure, in an effort to take positive action after the police shooting of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana earlier this week, started a scholarship fund for his children.  t not only exceeded its $200,000 goal within hours, it is currently at over three times that amount, at $664,986.
“Can we get a scholarship fund going 4 #AltonSterling’s son/kids?” she tweeted Wednesday (July 6). “Some of us feel helpless when these things happen, but that’s a small step.”

Sterling, a 37-year-old father of five, was fatally shot by police outside of a Louisiana convenience store on Tuesday. A graphic video of the altercation shows Sterling being held on the ground before being shot multiple times in the chest and back. The incident has sparked national protest, and a civil rights investigation has been opened by the Justice Department, the New York Times reports.
If you would still like to donate, go to: https://www.gofundme.com/2d3eze7g

UCLA and UC Berkeley Boost Admissions of Californians, Including Blacks and Latinos

By goodblacknews on July 6, 2016
(Photo via dailybruin.com)
(Photo via dailybruin.com)

article by Teresa Watanabe via latimes.com

The University of California’s flagship campuses have significantly boosted admissions offers to state residents — including the most African Americans and Latinos since voters banned affirmative action two decades ago — officials announced Wednesday.

UCLA and UC Berkeley each admitted an additional 1,000 California freshman for fall 2016, increasing students from all ethnicities for an overall boost of more than 11%.
Both also made striking gains in increasing the number of underrepresented minorities, progress that is likely to ease pressure from state legislators to boost diversity at UC’s most elite campuses.

UCLA, for instance, led the 10-campus system in admissions offers to African Americans as a percentage of all students. The Westwood campus offered seats to 624 African Americans, or 6% of all students, representing a 24% increase over last year.