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Posts tagged as “Vassar College”

Mariah Jones, 18, Goes from Women’s Shelter in Pittsburgh to Full Ride Scholarship for Astrophysics at Vassar

Mariah Jones, 18, Goes from Women’s Shelter in Pittsburgh to Full Ride Scholarship for Astrophysics at Vassar

By goodblacknews on May 22, 2021

According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, high school senior Mariah Jones, who once lived with her mother and her older sisters at the Women’s Center & Shelter of Greater Pittsburgh, is now on her way to Vassar College in NY this fall on a full scholarship.

Jones, 18, is currently working with an astrophysicist at the University of Pittsburgh as a part of a project that endeavors to estimate the distance to other galaxies, an opportunity that came about when she cold-called Brett Andrews, a research assistant professor at Pitt.

To quote the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

“She had reached out to me and a bunch of other professors at Pitt,” Andrew said. “Her curiosity and her drive make her unique. She’s taken the initiative and reached out to people she doesn’t know to make an opportunity for herself.”

That opportunity culminated in a prestigious QuestBridge scholarship to Vassar. QuestBridge is a national nonprofit based in CA that connects exceptional, low-income youth with leading colleges and opportunities.

“I’ve always been a very aggressive, very strong-willed person and I’m very open to taking challenges head-on. I don’t let anything stop me.”

To see Jones talk about her interests and journey, click below:

Read more: https://www.post-gazette.com/news/19-neighbors/2021/02/27/19-Neighbors-Mariah-Jones-Baldwin-High-School-COVID-19/stories/202102260171

Texas A&M University Project Will Document Post-Civil War “Freedom Colonies” that Existed Throughout Texas

By goodblacknews on October 25, 2018
(image via texasfreedomcoloniesproject.com)

via jbhe.com

Andrea Roberts, assistant professor of urban planning in the College of Architecture at Texas A&M University, has started a project to provide comprehensive documentation of the so-called “Freedom Colonies” in Texas. Freedom colonies were self-sufficient, all-Black settlements that former slaves established after they were freed at the end of the Civil War.

“Africans became hash marks on census reports when they reached America and were enslaved, leaving them, ultimately, without an understanding of their heritage or connection to their homeland,” Dr. Roberts said. “These self-sufficient freedom colonies were established under the most difficult of circumstances by industrious, intelligent and organized people acting much like current-day city planners — and some of their descendants are performing the work of preservationists today.”

Andrea Roberts (photo via researchgate.net)

Dr. Roberts has identified more than 550 freedom colonies established by the almost 200,000 newly freed African-Americans living in Texas just after the abolition of slavery. Today, some of these freedom colonies still exist as communities and host festivals and celebrations while maintaining connections with the past. However, little evidence remains that some of these colonies ever existed. The project, The Texas Freedom Colonies Project, aims to help African-American Texans reclaim their unrecognized and unrecorded heritage and empower city planners to plan and preserve communities.

“This [project] is about changing the dynamics so that we’re focusing on accountability, and helping people define and reclaim their communities,” Dr. Roberts said. “It’s also about realizing that African-Americans built their own communities, and they should see themselves as part of urban planning, an important field where they are more commonly considered the subject.”

More: https://www.jbhe.com/2018/10/texas-am-university-project-will-document-freedom-colonies-throughout-texas/