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Posts published in “Education”

Towson University Debate Team Becomes 1st Black Female Pair to win CEDA National Championship

By goodblacknews on April 7, 2014

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CEDA National Debate Champions holding championship cup Ameena Ruffin and Korey Johnson with Towson University debate team coaches Ignacio Evans, left and Amber Kelsie, right.

Towson University Debate Team members Ameena Ruffin ‘15 and Korey Johnson ’16 made history at the Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA) National Championship in late March.
“Ruffin and Johnson are the first African-American women’s team to win a national tournament,” said Mike Davis, president of the Cross Examination Debate Association. In a sense, it’s a double record. “No [individual] African-American woman has ever won our tournament before,” Davis confirmed.
The Towson team beat Oklahoma in the final round to claim the national title. The competition featured teams from elite schools including Harvard, Trinity, Michigan, Minnesota, Texas, Wayne State, Cal State Fullerton, Florida, Bard College, Pepperdine, Sacramento State, Vanderbilt, NYU and others.
Ruffin and Johnson also earned a first-round bid to the 2014 National Debate Tournament, an invitation-only national championship for collegiate policy debate in the United States. The distinction designated them as one of the top 16 teams in the country.
“We are thrilled and very proud of Ameena and Korey on this amazing accomplishment,” said Towson Universeity College of Fine Arts and Communication Dean Susan Picinich.  “Their historic success is exemplified by their passion, dedication and commitment to the art of debate, and the leadership of Towson University’s debate coaching staff, Amber Kelsie and Ignacio Evans.”

74 Years Ago Today: Booker T. Washington Becomes 1st African-American Honored on a U.S. Stamp

By goodblacknews on April 7, 2014
Booker T. Washington stamp

The U.S. Postal Service regularly honors African-Americans on stamps in the present day, but Booker T. Washington was the first Black person to be honored in this way on April 7, 1940.

Washington was part of the U.S. Postal Service’s Famous Americans Series. The stamp was issued at a cost of 10 cents.
Washington was a prominent educator, having founded Alabama’s Tuskegee Normal Industrial School, which was renamed Tuskegee Institute in 1937. He was born enslaved on April 5, 1856, in Hale’s Ford, Virginia.  He died in Tuskegee, Alabama on Nov. 14, 1915.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt urged that Washington have his own stamp, after numerous petitions from African-American supporters. A ceremony was eventually held for the stamp’s revealing at the Tuskegee Institute.
article by Natelege Whaley via bet.com

National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis Completes $27.5 Million Renovation, Reopens Today

By goodblacknews on April 5, 2014

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MEMPHIS, Tenn. – The Lorraine Motel in Memphis holds a historic place in world history.  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated there on the hotel balcony near his room on April 4, 1968.  The site is now home to the National Civil Rights Museum and today, Saturday April 5, the museum will re-open to the public after $27.5 million of renovations.
“This museum after 22 years needed to be updated,” said Faith Morris, the museum’s director of marketing, governmental and community affairs. “[It] needed more technology, needed to be more engaging to a younger generation so that folks could really be a part of what the movement was about.”
The museum officially opened in 1991 and incorporates not only the historic motel, but the building across the street where James Earl Ray is alleged to have fired the fatal shot.
One new exhibit chronicles the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the economics of slavery in America from 1619-1861.  There is an entire exhibit space dedicated to the ‘Black Power’ movement and its influence on policy and culture.  Old exhibits have been enhanced with more audio/visual aids, touch screens and films touching on the different eras of the Civil Rights Movement.
Museum leadership said the renovations and fundraising efforts were critical to keep pace with the “2014 museum consumer.” The campaign to raise funds started in 2008 but because of the economic collapse, organizers regrouped in 2010 when conditions improved.
“People no longer want to walk through museums and experience a book on a wall,” said Beverly Robertson, the museum’s president. “When we opened in 1991, that was OK – because that was the museum experience. But times change. Technology changes.”
Robertson said it took “countless miracles” to raise the money and convince the museum’s board that the technological overhaul was necessary for the NCRM to thrive for many years to come. She said she is pleased with how well design teams, scholars, researchers and her staff adapted to the changing times.
“It’s a transformative experience,” Robertson said. “It’s an experience [visitors] won’t get anywhere else because it talks about the seminal events of the movement and it does it in ways that allows this history to resonate with those who are 8 years old or 80.”
article by Todd Johnson via thegrio.com

Wiley College ‘Great Debaters’ Win National Debate Championship

By goodblacknews on April 1, 2014

The Melvin B. Tolson/Denzel Washington Forensics Society of Wiley College has added another historic feat to its list of accomplishments by winning the Overall Sweepstakes Championship of the 2014 Pi Kappa Delta National Comprehensive Tournament. Wiley is the first historically black college to earn this national award.Wiley College Debaters
Wiley’s win comes during a record-making year for Pi Kappa Delta’s prestigious annual tournament – the 2014 event saw 80 schools (with 2,000 entries) competing to prove they have the best forensicators (speech and debate) in the country.
“We earn victories at Pi Kappa Delta each year, but this year’s overall championship victory is especially meaningful to Wiley,” said Haywood L. Strickland, Wiley’s President and CEO. “We are pleased that our students performed so well against all these strong teams. Their accomplishment is a clear reflection of the legacy of excellence at Wiley,” he said.  “We are grateful to Professor Melvin B. Tolson, Denzel Washington, and all who paved the way for this victory to occur.”
Forensic speech and debate is woven into the fabric of Wiley College. Notably, the College’s 1935 debate team, led by Professor Melvin B. Tolson, defeated the then reigning national forensics champion, University of Southern California.
The 2007 movieThe Great Debaters tells the story of this competition, and the movie’s star and director, Denzel Washington, donated the funding that helped relaunch the College’s debate team in 2008.
Wiley’s 23-member Forensics Team is coached by Chris Medina. The team will next travel to Tempe, Arizona, to compete in the American Forensics Association Nationals – a tournament of champions for selective student who qualify through earlier high tournament rankings. On the heels of that event, two members of the team will travel to Ypisilanti, Michigan, to compete in the National Forensics Association Nationals.

Here Comes Another One! New York Teen Kwasi Enin Accepted to All 8 Ivy League Colleges

By goodblacknews on April 1, 2014

Kwasi Enin
Three days ago, Good Black News shared an article about Washington D.C. wunderkind Avery Coffey, who was accepted to five Ivy League colleges.  Today, 17-year-old New Yorker, violist and aspiring physician Kwasi Enin went one better – make that three better – and earned acceptance to all EIGHT Ivys!
According to usatoday.com, the acceptances began rolling in over the past few months, and by late last week when he opened an e-mail from Harvard, Enin found he’d been accepted to every one. School district officials provided scanned copies of acceptance letters from all eight on Monday. Yale confirmed that it was holding a spot for Enin.
The feat is extremely rare, say college counselors — few students even apply to all eight, because each seeks different qualities in their freshman class. Almost none are invited to attend them all. The Ivy League colleges are among the nation’s most elite.
“My heart skipped a beat when he told me he was applying to all eight,” says Nancy Winkler, a guidance counselor at William Floyd High School, where Enin attends class. In 29 years as a counselor, she says, she’s never seen anything like this. “It’s a big deal when we have students apply to one or two Ivies. To get into one or two is huge. It was extraordinary.”
For most of the eight schools, acceptance comes rarely, even among the USA’s top students. At the top end, Cornell University admitted only 14% of applicants. Harvard accepted just 5.9%.

Five Ivy League Colleges Vie for DC Student Avery Coffey

By goodblacknews on March 29, 2014

Avery Coffey
WASHINGTON – This is the college acceptance season — frequently a nervous time for high school seniors. But D.C.’s Avery Coffey can relax. He applied to five Ivy League universities and all five accepted him.
Coffey attends Benjamin Banneker Academic High School, a D.C. public school with strict rules. None of the 439 students at Banneker is allowed to bring a cell phone into the building. They are also not allowed to go to their lockers during the school day. (That has spawned the peculiar tradition of piling up textbooks at the base of lockers, so kids can switch books between classes without violating the locker rule.)
The strict rules at Banneker have fostered a rather serious academic environment. Principal Anita Berger says year after year after year, 100 percent of Banneker graduates are accepted into post-secondary institutions.  Among these brainy and motivated public school students is 17-year-old Coffey who, like a lot of kids, enjoys sports. What does he play?
“Baseball, basketball, tennis, soccer,” Coffey told us.
He also enjoys academics, and he has a 4.3 high school report card average, adjusted for the demanding International Baccalaureate courses he takes. Coffey scored very high on standardized tests also. He calls himself a “determined” student.
Coffey applied to five Ivy League universities, and, amazingly, has been accepted at all of them: Harvard, Princeton, Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, and Brown.  And four of the five universities have already offered very generous financial aid packages. (Harvard is still formulating its offer.)

Joanne Berger-Sweeney Appointed Trinity College President, 1st Female and African-American to Hold Post

By goodblacknews on March 28, 2014

New Trinity College President Joanne Berger-Sweeney
New Trinity College President Joanne Berger-Sweeney

HARTFORD — Several hundred Trinity College students, faculty and alumni greeted Joanne Berger-Sweeney, named Thursday as the college’s first African-American and first woman president, with enthusiastic whoops and applause.  “How could you have a warmer welcome for someone?” said Berger-Sweeney, a dean at Tufts University in Medford, Mass. “It’s not very often that I get to walk into a room and there’s a standing ovation.”  But then, she noted, to a roar of laughter, there were no seats in the room.
Berger-Sweeney, 55, a neuroscientist who was accompanied at Thursday’s announcement by her husband and two children, told the crowd she fell in love with Trinity the moment she first set foot on campus — shortly before New Year’s.  “We came through the arch … I looked to the left and saw the chapel, I looked to the right and saw this beautiful long walk, and I thought: I think I could be here,” Berger-Sweeney said. “… Some people may want to be on small bucolic campuses in Maine, but not me. I want to be right here.”
After that visit Berger-Sweeney decided to apply and emerged as the winner when the Trinity board of trustees Tuesday voted unanimously for her. She will be the college’s 22nd president.  Berger-Sweeney will take the helm at Trinity as it continues to grapple with financial challenges, a reputation as a party school, security concerns, campus climate and conflict with fraternities and sororities over policy changes.
“Trinity is a forward-looking institution that excels in liberal arts and sciences, and both are areas of excellence for Dr. Berger-Sweeney, who rose to the top of our highly competitive candidate pool,” said Cornelia Parsons Thornburgh, who led the search committee and will become chairwoman of Trinity’s board of trustees on July 1. “She impressed us with her strong academic credentials, curricular innovations, collaborative nature and enthusiasm for the Hartford community.
“I strongly believe that her vision of Trinity College as an elite liberal arts college with an urban pulse is one that will guide us, inspire us and lead us on a path to distinction and greatness,” Thornburgh said.  James F. Jones Jr., who has been Trinity’s president for a decade and will retire June 30, called the moment historic and said that Berger-Sweeney’s appointment brought him “an enormous sigh of relief” to know that his “successor is going to be a star.”
Berger-Sweeney, who has been dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Tufts since 2010, brings with her experience that is relevant to Trinity, Thornburgh said. “At Tufts, she has proven herself in areas that coincide closely with, and are important to, Trinity: proximity to a city, a strong athletic tradition, budget and program coordination, an historical Greek tradition, and a deep appreciation for a liberal arts education.”

Florida High School Teen Chad Thomas Offered 150 College Scholarships

By goodblacknews on March 24, 2014
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Chad Thomas (FACEBOOK)
It’s good to have options.  And if you’re Chad Thomas, a senior at Booker T. Washington Senior High in Miami, you have a ton of options.  Thomas, 18, has received 150 scholarship offers for his football skills and his abilities as a nine-instrument musician, 10 News Tampa Bay reports.
Thomas, who helped the Booker T. Tornadoes win back-to-back state championships and also a national title this season, told the news station that he has chosen to attend the University of Miami and will play football but will also work on his music at the university’s Frost School of Music.
It was Thomas’s late grandmother who inspired his love for music. As a young boy, he would listen to his grandmother’s gospel CDs. Then she bought him a guitar and signed him up for piano lessons. By the time he was 5, Thomas was performing, 10 News reports.
Thomas plays the piano, trombone, euphonium (a small tuba), bass guitar, regular guitar, snare, tuba, trumpet and drums, and he has no plans of abandoning music even if someday the NFL comes calling.  “So if I make it to the NFL, that would be a blessing for me,” said Thomas. But his love for music remains a passion. “I have love for music and took it upon myself to learn and play the instruments I hear in the songs.”
And if he had to choose between the NFL and music?  “It would probably be music,” said Thomas.
Read more at 10 News Tampa Bay.
article by Stephen A. Crockett Jr. via theroot.com

Honda Campus All-Star Challenge for HBCU Students Celebrates its 25th Anniversary

By goodblacknews on March 23, 2014
Morgan State University Students
Morgan State University, back-to-back national champions, look to three-peat at the 2014 25th anniversary Honda Campus All-Star Challenge

Brainpower from America’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) will be on display at the 25th annual Honda Campus All-Star Challenge (HCASC) National Championship Tournament. Hundreds of HBCU students have spent the past year diligently preparing to compete in the final round of this unique academic tournament, April 12-16, 2014, on the campus of American Honda Motor Co., Inc., in Torrance, California.

This year’s road to the championship began in the fall of 2013, with 76 HBCUs vying for the final 48 slots. Through countless hours of study, drills and practice, elite teams emerged, knowledgeable and ready to take on the competition. Their goal is to beat Morgan State University, the reigning national champions with two consecutive titles, while Morgan State will be seeking a threepeat.
The competitors will be split into eight divisions and will compete in a modified round-robin format. The top two teams from each division will advance to the “Sweet 16” and will compete in a single elimination playoff. The final two teams that emerge from the playoffs will compete for the title of National Champions and the grand prize of $50,000. The grand prize, along with the other institutional grants, will support academic activities at the participating HBCUs.

92 Year-Old Memphian Dorothy Owens Finally Gets High School Diploma

By goodblacknews on March 23, 2014

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MEMPHIS, TN – (WMC-TV) – You’re never too old to graduate high school and 92-year-old Memphis native Dorothy Owens is proving that.
Owens’ father died and because of a leg injury, she was forced to drop out of high school. She started working to help support her family. However, Owens has always encouraged her children and grandchildren to pursue education.  Her granddaughter made it her goal to grant the one wish her grandma has ever requested. Owens’ granddaughters wrote a letter to her high school, Booker T. Washington, asking for an honorary diploma.
This February, on her 92nd birthday, she received an honorary diploma from Booker T. Washington High School. Owens was overjoyed with the Certificate of Attendance.  To watch video of this story, click here.
Copyright 2014 WMC-TV. All rights reserved.