
In addition to being the founder of Brown Girls Lead, a seven-month leadership initiative for girls at Howard University, Stephanie Brown James also led President Obama’s outreach efforts to African Americans as the National African American Vote Director for the 2012 Obama for America Campaign.
Leading up to President Obama’s successful re-election bid in 2012, African Americans were not particularly pleased with this country’s first black commander-in-chief. Some felt he hadn’t done enough to specifically address the needs and concerns of African Americans, his most supportive constituency.
James, who previously worked as the National Field Director for the NAACP, knew she had her work cut out for her. But through her efforts, Blacks turned out in greater numbers than the 2008 election, especially in the key battleground states.
“At the end of the day, you have a choice… black people were energized because they knew how important voting was to their lives and that it made a difference,” she told the Amsterdam News.
The floating-camera dolly shot and super-saturated color palette that are trademarks of Spike Lee’s work are the best known among several innovations that Howard-trained cinematographers have contributed to the films they’ve worked on. Early in his career, Lee developed these techniques in close collaboration with a Howard graduate, Ernest Dickerson.




Composer and educator Adolphus Hailstork has established an endowed scholarship fund at historically Black Norfolk State University in Virginia. The fund will support undergraduate music students at the university, where Hailstork taught from 1977 to 2000.
Edison O. Jackson is the sixth president of Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach, Florida. He has been serving as interim president since May 2012. He has agreed to serve as president until July 2016. The board of trustees stated that it would begin a search for his successor in January 2015.
Craig E. Cameron was named to the Eberly Family Chair in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Pennsylvania State University. Professor Cameron joined the Penn State faculty in 1997. His research focuses on the development of strategies to treat or to prevent infections by RNA viruses.
