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Voters outside the Alameda County Courthouse casting their ballots in the 2020 election in Oakland, Calif.
The University of California System has announced application totals from California students for its nine undergraduate campuses for the class that will enter this coming fall. Systemwide 132,226 students from California applied to at least one of the nine campuses. Of these, 8,519 students were African Americans, making up 6 percent of all applicants.
The total number of applicants to the university system was down slightly from a year ago. That year Blacks were 7 percent of all applicants.
African Americans made up 6 percent of the applicants at the flagship Berkeley campus but the total number of Black applicants to Berkeley was down slightly from a year ago.
At the University of California at Los Angeles, Blacks made up 7 percent of all applicants, the highest level of any of the nine undergraduate campuses. But again the number of Black applicants to UCLA was down slightly from a year ago.
At all other undergraduate campuses, Blacks were either 5 or 6 percent of total applicants.
By state law, public universities in California at not permitted to consider race in admissions decisions.
The Dan David Prize is awarded by the Dan David Foundation at Tel Aviv University in Israel to up to nine early and mid-career scholars and practitioners in the historical disciplines. The honor comes with a $300,000 prize. The prize was established in 2001 by Dan David, who lived through Nazi and Communist persecution in his native Romania before becoming a global business leader and philanthropist. The prize has the goal of rewarding and encouraging innovative and interdisciplinary research that cuts across traditional boundaries and paradigms. The prize is given in recognition of the winners’ contribution to the study of the past and to support their future endeavors.
Of this year’s nine winners, two are Black scholars with university affiliations in the United States.
Saheed Aderinto is a professor of history and African and African diaspora studies at Florida International University. Professor Aderinto describes himself as a serial methodologist and decompartmentalizing historian who adopts multiple disciplinary tools in understanding the past while blending different genres of history to reveal the complexities of people and events that came before us.
Dr. Aderinto has written a number of books, including When Sex Threatened the State: Illicit Sexuality, Nationalism, and Politics in Colonial Nigeria, 1900-1958 (University of Illinois Press, 2014), Guns and Society in Colonial Nigeria: Firearms, Culture, and Public Order (Indiana University Press, January 2018), and Animality and Colonial Subjecthood in Africa: The Human and Nonhuman Creatures of Nigeria (Ohio University Press, 2022). He is currently writing a book and making a documentary about the history of Fuji music in Nigeria.
Professor Aderinto is a graduate of the University of Ibadan in Nigeria. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin.
Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers is the Chancellor’s Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. She is a historian who explores women’s social, economic, and legal relationships to enslaved people and to the slave trade in the trans-Atlantic world. Dr. Jones-Rogers’ research has been primarily concerned with women and slavery, but her work also explores the evolution and development of early systems of law, especially as they pertain to women, bondage, and the slave trade.
Dr. Jones-Rogers is the author of They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South (Yale University Press, 2019), which draws on the testimonies of enslaved and formerly enslaved individuals, legal, financial, and military records as well as an array of other narrative sources to show how White married women – a group historically seen as legally disempowered and economically dispossessed – exercised extraordinary power in and over enslaved African-Americans’ lives.
Dr. Jones-Rogers earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology, a master’s degree in American history, and a Ph.D. in history all from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Altheia Richardson has been named the inaugural chief diversity officer and vice president for diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging at Newberry College in South Carolina. She currently is associate vice president for strategic diversity leadership at Clemson University in South Carolina.
Dr. Richardson is a graduate of the University of South Carolina. She holds an MBA and a doctorate in educational leadership from Clemson University.
D’Angelo Taylor has been named vice president for hope, unity, and belonging at Belmont University in Nashville. As part of this work, Dr. Taylor will lead the university’s diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging initiatives. He has been serving as vice president for student affairs at Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio. Earlier, Dr. Taylor was the associate director of the Multicultural Center at the University of Southern Indiana.
Dr. Taylor holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in political science from Western Illinois University. He earned a doctorate in educational leadership from the University of New England.
Monae Roberts is the inaugural chief diversity officer for the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of California, Davis. Roberts previously served as director of the LGBTQIA Resource Center and as a program coordinator at the Cross Cultural Center at the university.
Davis is a graduate of Pennsylvania State University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. Davis holds a master’s degree in health and physical education from East Stroudsburg University in Pennsylvania and a master’s degree in African American studies from Temple University in Philadelphia.
Johnny M. Smith was appointed associate vice chancellor for external affairs at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina. He was vice president for strategic initiatives and community engagement and vice president of student development services at Pitt Community College in Winterville, North Carolina.
Dr. Smith earned a bachelor’s degree in human services from Carson Newman University in Jefferson City, Tennessee. He completed a master’s degree in higher education administration and a doctorate in educational leadership at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina.
Kori Harris is the new Title IX coordinator at Hampton University in Virginia. Before joining the staff at the university last July, Harris was a victim advocate in the Office of the Norfolk Commonwealth’s Attorney.
Harris received a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from Hampton University. She holds a master’s degree in law and criminal justice from Regent University in Virginia Beach.
Kimberly Woods was promoted to manager of alumni affairs at Rust College in Holly Springs, Mississippi. She joined the staff at the college in 2014 and has served as an administrative assistant for the Office of Alumni Development/ Public Relations and most recently as gifts coordinator.
Woods is a graduate of Rust College, where she majored in communication and broadcast journalism. She holds an MBA from Strayer University.
Jamar Jones is the new chief information officer at Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina. He was the director of information technology at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill School of Government.
Jones holds a bachelor’s degree in computer information systems from St. Augustine’s University in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Annya Lott was appointed associate vice chancellor for development for the University of California, Riverside. She most recently was senior director of philanthropy for Pitzer College in Claremont, California.
Lott received a bachelor’s degree in English from Spelman College in Atlanta. She holds a master’s degree in journalism from Boston University.
Douglas LaVergne will be the next dean of the College of Agriculture, Environmental and Human Sciences at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri. He is currently serving as associate dean of the College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources at Texas A&M University-Commerce. Dr. LaVerge will begin his new duties on April 1.
Dr. LaVergne grew up in southeast Texas and southwest Louisiana snd spent his summers working in his father’s rice fields. He holds a bachelor’s degree in secondary education from Southern University A&M College in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and a master’s degree in agricultural and extension education from the University of Arkansas. In 2008. Dr. LaVerge received his Ph.D. in agricultural education from Texas A&M University in College Station.
Alma Littles has been named interim dean of the Florida State University College of Medicine, effective February 1. She has been serving as the senior associate dean for medical education and academic affairs. Earlier, Dr. Littles was the founding chair of the department of family medicine and rural health at the College of Medicine.
Dr. Littles is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She earned a medical doctorate at the University of Florida.
Dorothy E. Mosby will serve as the dean of the faculty and vice president for academic affairs at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, effective June 1. She most recently completed a two-year term as interim dean of faculty and vice president for academic affairs at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, where she has been a faculty member since 2003 in the department of Spanish. She is the author of Quince Duncan. Writing Afro-Costa Rican and Caribbean Identity (University of Alabama Press, 2014).
Dr. Mosby is a graduate of Hood College in Frederick, Maryland. She earned a master’s degree in Spanish and a doctoral degree in romance languages from the University of Missouri-Columbia.
Michael Bradford was appointed vice provost and dean for undergraduate education at the University of California, Davis, effective February 21. Since 2020, he has been serving as the vice provost for faculty, staff, and student development at the University of Connecticut. Prior to his current position, Bradford was head of the department of dramatic arts at the university from 2017 to 2020 and director of the university’s theatre studies program from 2010 to 2016. Bradford joined the faculty at the university in 2000 as an assistant professor of dramatic arts.
Bradford earned a bachelor’s degree in general studies with an emphasis in English literature from the University of Connecticut. He holds a master of fine arts degree in playwriting from Brooklyn College of the City University of New York.
Fannie Gaston-Johansson, a long-time faculty member of the School of Nursing at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, died at her home in Baltimore on January 7. She was 84 years old.
Dr. Gaston-Johansson grew up in Hickory, North Carolina, and was valedictorian of her high school class. She earned a bachelor’s degree in nursing from nearby Winston-Salem State University. Dr. Gaston-Johansson continued her studies at the University of California, San Francisco, where she received a master’s degree in medical, surgical, and psychiatric nursing. She traveled to Sweden as an exchange student where she met her husband, Dr. Sonny Johansson and raised a family. While raising her four children and working full-time, she earned a Ph.D. in 1985 at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.
Dr. Gaston-Johansson was a member of the University of Nebraska Medical Center faculty from 1985 to 1993 where she served as an associate professor and the director of nursing research and quality improvement. She joined the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing in 1993 as an associate professor and held the Elsie M. Lawler Endowed Chair throughout her tenure. In 1998, Professor Gaston-Johansson became the first Black woman to become a tenured professor at Johns Hopkins University. For a time, she held joint appointments at Johns Hopkins and the University of Gothenburg.
Her work and research focused on symptom and pain management, quality of life, breast cancer, cardiovascular disease, and racial and ethnic health disparities. A scientist who authored upwards of 100 scientific articles, Professor Gaston-Johansson was also an inventor, holding U.S. and international patents on the Pain-O-Meter, an assessment tool that provides a standardized way to measure pain. It has been used by hospitals in the United States and overseas.
In 2007, Gaston-Johansson was named the inaugural chair of the department of acute and chronic care at John Hopkins Nursing, as the school’s faculty was organized in academic departments for the first time. She also served as director of the school’s Center on Health Disparities Research. She was named professor emerita upon her retirement in 2014.
In May 2022, Johns Hopkins University renamed the Target Opportunity Program, the Fannie Gaston-Johansson Faculty of Excellence Program. Since 2015 this program has played a key role in increasing faculty diversity at Johns Hopkins University.
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