Founded in 1780, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) is one of the nation’s most prestigious honorary societies. It has a membership of more than 4,000 scholars from a wide variety of academic disciplines including all the natural sciences. Its membership includes at least 200 Nobel Prize winners and more than 50 winners of a Pulitzer Prize. This year, 198 new fellows were elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Among the new fellows are three African American women with ties to academia.
• Paula T. Hammond is the David H. Koch Professor in Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
• Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot is the Emily Hargroves Fisher Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
• Natasha Trethewey is the Poet Laureate of the United States and the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of English and Creative Writing and holds the Phillis Wheatley Distinguished Chair in Poetry at Emory University in Atlanta.
article via jbhe.com
Posts tagged as “Massachusetts”
WATERTOWN, Mass. (AP) — A 19-year-old college student wanted in the Boston Marathon bombings was taken into custody Friday evening after a manhunt that left the city virtually paralyzed and his older brother and accomplice dead.
Police announced via Twitter that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was in custody. His brother, 26-year-old Tamerlan, was killed Friday in a furious attempt to escape police.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had been holed up in a boat in a Watertown neighborhood. The crowd gathered near the scene let out a cheer when spectators saw officers clapping.
“Everyone wants him alive,” said Kathleen Paolillo, a 27-year-old teacher who lives in Watertown.
Boston Mayor Tom Menino tweeted “We got him,” along with a photo of the police commissioner speaking to him.
As our hearts here at GBN continue to go out to all those affected by the recent Boston Marathon bombing, we find comfort and inspiration in President Barack Obama’s speech today at a church service titled “Healing Our City” at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston memorializing and honoring its victims and survivors. Here is the link to it at nytimes.com.
article by Lesa Lakin and Lori Lakin Hutcherson
Harvard University reports that it has accepted only 2,029 students for admission from an applicant pool of just over 35,000. Therefore, only 5.8 percent of all applicants to Harvard were accepted for admission.
Harvard chooses not to disclose how many Black students submitted applications for admission. But it does release data on admitted students. This year, 11.5 percent of all admitted students are African Americans.
Blacks were 9.4 percent of the entering class at Harvard in the fall of 2012.
article via jbhe.com
As with Black History Month, the focus on already well-known figures has been an ongoing criticism of Woman’s History Month. When it comes to black women, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells and Rosa Parks are on repeat. What makes these much-needed theme months thrive, however, is the spirit of discovery. It’s doubtful that the names Elizabeth “Mum Bett” Freeman, Callie House, Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin or Johnnie Tillmon even draw a glint of recognition but they should. In their own ways, each of these women made important contributions to the ongoing struggle for freedom and justice.
Even as a slave, Elizabeth Freeman, known as Mum Bett most of her life, had the audacity to sue for her freedom. Born into slavery in Claverack, New York around 1742, Freeman, at a reported six months old, was sold, along with her sister, to John Ashley of Sheffield, Massachusetts, a judge in the Massachusetts Court of Common Pleas. Enslaved to Ashley until she was almost 40, Freeman was spurred to action when the mistress of the house Hannah Ashley tried to hit her sister with a heated kitchen shovel. Freeman intervened and was hit instead, leaving the house, vowing to never come back.
OPRAH WINFREY, the first African-American woman to become a billionaire, has built an empire with her oratorical gifts and ability to engage with people of all ranks and backgrounds. Now she will share words of wisdom with the Class of 2013 and other Harvard graduates, their families, and alumni by serving as principal speaker at Harvard’s 362nd Commencement, the University announced today.
“I was taught to read at an early age,” Winfrey told the Academy of Achievement in 2011. “By the time I was three, I was reciting speeches in the church. They’d put me up on the program, and say, ‘Little Mistress Winfrey will render a recitation.’”
In what was called “a transformative moment for the television business” by The New York Times, Winfrey made history in May 2011 by ending the Emmy Award-winning Oprah Winfrey Show to start her own cable channel (OWN, short for the Oprah Winfrey Network)—the first time a talk-show host has created an entire channel. “I’m not going away, I’m just changing,” she said to the Times. “I’m just creating another platform for myself, which eventually will be wider and broader than what I have now.” In January 2013, for example, OWN received widespread attention when Lance Armstrong chose Winfrey as his confidant for a confessional interview about his long-denied use of performance-enhancing drugs. (Winfrey’s original, nationally syndicated show ran for 24 seasons, tackling topics such as divorce, sexual abuse, and philanthropic issues, and featuring exclusive interviews with celebrities and world leaders alike. It drew an audience of more than 40 million viewers a week in the United States and reached 150 countries around the world.)
“I was taught to read at an early age,” Winfrey told the Academy of Achievement in 2011. “By the time I was three, I was reciting speeches in the church. They’d put me up on the program, and say, ‘Little Mistress Winfrey will render a recitation.’”
In what was called “a transformative moment for the television business” by The New York Times, Winfrey made history in May 2011 by ending the Emmy Award-winning Oprah Winfrey Show to start her own cable channel (OWN, short for the Oprah Winfrey Network)—the first time a talk-show host has created an entire channel. “I’m not going away, I’m just changing,” she said to the Times. “I’m just creating another platform for myself, which eventually will be wider and broader than what I have now.” In January 2013, for example, OWN received widespread attention when Lance Armstrong chose Winfrey as his confidant for a confessional interview about his long-denied use of performance-enhancing drugs. (Winfrey’s original, nationally syndicated show ran for 24 seasons, tackling topics such as divorce, sexual abuse, and philanthropic issues, and featuring exclusive interviews with celebrities and world leaders alike. It drew an audience of more than 40 million viewers a week in the United States and reached 150 countries around the world.)
William ‘Mo’ Cowan, speaks to the media after begin named interim U.S. Senator January 30, 2013 at the Statehouse in Boston, Massachusetts. Cowan, a senior advisor to Governor Deval Patrick, will fill the position until a successor can be named for the departing John Kerry, who was recently named Secretary of State. (Photo by Darren McCollester/Getty Images)
Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick has appointed one of his senior advisers, Mo Cowan, as John Kerry’s interim replacement in the United States Senate, meaning that two African-Americans will serve in that chamber simultaneously for the first time ever.
Cowan is expected to serve in the Senate until June 25, when a special election will be held to replace Kerry, who was confirmed this week as secretary of state. The longtime Patrick adviser says he will not run for the seat himself, as Patrick had been looking to appoint a Democrat who would serve as a caretaker while others campaign to permanently replace Kerry.
To Randall Halstead and other minority officers in the Boston Police Department, the story of Sergeant Horatio J. Homer serves as a beacon of hope and of the power of perseverance.
Homer, who in 1878 became the department’s first African-American officer, ushered in a new era in the city over a 40-year career. In the decade after his appointment, the force hired as many as a half-dozen additional black officers, in large part on his recommendation.
Last week, the department unveiled a plaque honoring Homer at the Area B-2 police precinct in Roxbury, a neighborhood where he once resided. Halstead, a deputy superintendent, presided over the ceremony, which some of Homer’s descendants attended.
“This man set a precedent,” said Halstead. “To move forward, you have to know where you come from.”
The tribute is the latest honor bestowed upon Homer by the Police Department.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOLOLrUBRBY&w=560&h=315]
There are some pretty amazing kids out there doing the best they can with whatever circumstances were given to them. In areas of the world where little to no technological advancement has occurred, ideas are being born without any mentors, tools, and/or resources.
PRODIGIES is a bi-weekly series on YouTube that showcases the youngest and brightest as they challenge themselves to reach new heights and the stories behind them. Kelvin Doe is a 15-year-old Sierra Leone native who admittedly loves inventing. He’s taught himself how to make things like batteries, FM radio transmitter, and a generator out of need for these things in his community.
He said that his community doesn’t have much electricity. The lights come on at night in his area once per week and then they don’t have any lights for the rest of the month. That led to his battery invention, so that his neighbors and family could use the battery to light their homes.
He’s known as DJ Focus because of a valuable radio program that he broadcasts on FM radio. He was able to create his generator for his station by using scraps. He chose that name because he said:
“If you can focus you can do invention perfectly.”
He started the station to give “voice to the youth.”
Kelvin was discovered by fellow Sierra Leone native, David Sengeh, who is a Ph.D. student at MIT. Sengeh directs Summer Innovation Camp in Sierra Leone and that is where he discovered Kelvin and his talents. When he saw what Kelvin was able to create simply using spare parts from trash in his community, he knew he was someone special.
In 1988 the Packard Foundation established the Fellowships for Science and Engineering. The goal was to allow some of the nation’s most promising young scientists to pursue their work without the worry of financing their work.
Now each year 16 fellows are selected from 50 major research universities. Each fellow receives a total of $875,000 over the ensuing five years. To be eligible, faculty members must be in the first three years of their academic careers in the fields of physics, astronomy, chemistry, mathematics, biology, computer science, earth science, ocean science, or in any field of engineering. There are no restrictions on how the fellows use their funds to compliment their research. Since 1988, more than 400 faculty members have become Packard Fellows, receiving more than $230 million in grants.
Karine A. Gibbs, an assistant professor of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard University, is one of the 16 Packard Fellows this year. Her research focuses on identifying the mechanisms underlying self-recognition in the bacterium Proteus mirabilis.
A native of Jamaica, Dr. Gibbs was raised in Baltimore. She is a graduate of Harvard University and holds a Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology from Stanford University.
article via jbhe.com