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Michelle Garfield Cook has been named the next vice president for student affairs at the University of Georgia. She has been serving as senior vice provost, where she oversaw strategic initiatives and programs spanning the University of Georgia while also leading the Office of Institutional Diversity.
Dr. Cook joined the staff at the university in 1998. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University, a master’s degree from Yale University, and a Ph.D. from Duke University.
Tasha A. Carson has been appointed assistant vice president for first-year students in the Division of Enrollment Management at Tennessee State University. She was the executive director of new student programs and retention at the university. She joined the staff at Tennessee State in 2018.
Dr. Carson holds bachelor’s degrees in political science and human science and a master’s degree in counselor education from North Carolina Central University. She earned a Ph.D. in higher education administration from Jackson State University in Mississippi.
Anthony D. Henderson, Sr. was appointed director of athletics at Hampton University in Virginia, effective February 27. Henderson comes to Hampton from Yale University where he served as deputy director of athletics. Earlier, he was the senior associate athletics director and executive director of athletics advancement at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.
Henderson is a graduate of Hampton University, where he majored in marketing and played football. He holds a master’s degree in sports leadership from Virginia Commonwealth University.
Brenda Tindal is the first chief campus curator for Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. She has been serving as the executive director of Harvard Museums of Science and Culture. Earlier, she was the founding director of education and engagement for the International African American Museum in Charleston, South Carolina.
Tindal earned a bachelor’s degree in history and Africana studies from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She holds a master’s degree in American Studies from Emory University in Atlanta.
Anna Ponder was appointed vice president for alumni, development, and communications at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. Dr. Ponder was vice chancellor for advancement at the University of South Carolina Beaufort.
Dr. Ponder earned a bachelor’s degree in French language and European history from Spelman College in Atlanta. She holds a master’s degree in international economics and African studies from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, and a Ph.D. in political science from Yale University.
The Tennessee State University Aristocrat of Bands made history recently when it became the first collegiate band in the history of the Grammy Awards to receive a nomination for their 10-track album The Urban Hymnal in the Best Roots Gospel Album category. They made further history by winning the award, beating out Willie Nelson and three other nominees.
Professor Larry Jenkins, assistant band director for the Aristocrat of Bands, said that this accomplishment will change the trajectory of Nashville’s Music City reputation. “You have an HBCU band doing an album, which is something that has never been done to this capacity,” Jenkins said, noting that this opportunity was a cultural shift. “I hope this sparks another resurgence of the impact and importance of music. Not just Nashville, but north Nashville and Jefferson Street and how legendary this air is here.”
Reginald McDonald, the director of the Aristocrat of Bands and a co-executive producer for the album, added that “there is more to the city of Nashville and the state of Tennessee than country music. For Tennessee State University’s AOB to have produced an album to tie together two of the biggest music genres within the African American community, (gospel and HBCU marching bands) is extremely significant.”
In 2021, a joint committee of the Tennessee State Legislature found that historically Black Tennessee State University had been shortchanged on budget allocations dating back to the 1950s. In 1913, the legislature stipulated that Tennessee State should receive 25 percent of the federal land grant funds allocated to the state. But from 1957 to 2007, the historically Black university did not receive land grant allocations. The legislative committee said that Tennessee State was entitled to between $150 million and $544 million.
An agreement was reached to grant the university $250 million. The university recently announced what it plans to do with the money.
The funds will be used for capital improvement projects for six structures on campus. Many of the campus structures have gone without improvements for decades. The funds will provide for building renovations and upgrades to electrical and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems.
State Rep. Harold Love, Jr. was instrumental in securing funds that had been withheld for decades. Love, who is also a university alumnus, believes the enhancements will play a greater role in attracting world-class students and faculty.
“This is a start of a multi-year project to make sure we invest in facilities at Tennessee State University. If we are providing a high-quality education, we must provide the facilities that are state of the art,” Love said. “These upgrades and improvements will help to sure that all of our students are equipped with all they need to be able to be great scholars and our faculty to be able to be great instructors.”
Dr. Learotha Williams, noted historian and TSU history professor, says President Glenda Glover and state lawmakers are to be commended for working together to right a wrong. He contends, most importantly, the funds are available now instead of being embroiled in a lengthy legal battle like in Mississippi and Maryland with its HBCUs. “While I believe there are several factors that led to the state reaching an understanding and common ground with TSU, the efforts of President Glover and Rep. Love as the drum majors of justice to make this happen, can’t be underscored, said Dr. Williams.
Here is this week’s news of grants or gifts to historically Black colleges and universities or for programs of particular interest to African Americans in higher education.
Historically Black Tennessee State University has received a grant of nearly $5 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for sustainable hemp fiber research that will promote market development of industrial hemp supply as a climate-smart commodity through incentives to underserved Tennessee growers enrolled in the program. The funds will be used to provide support and incentives to historically underserved farmers owning up to 500 acres to grow fiber hemp. The fiber hemp will then be processed and supplied to the motor vehicle industry as raw materials for manufacturing critical motor vehicle parts such as fabrics and bioplastics The project is being led by Emmanuel Omondi, assistant professor of agronomy at Tennessee State. Dr. Omondi is a graduate of the University of Nairobi in Kenya. He holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in agronomy from the University of Wyoming.
African Americans are more likely to be living with HIV than other racial and ethnic groups. One of the significant factors related to HIV disease management is smoking status, as smoking negatively impacts HIV treatment, and people with HIV are more likely to smoke relative to the general population. The University of Houston received a $1.3 million grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse for the development of a mobile intervention for Black American smokers who are infected with HIV.
The Quantum Biology Laboratory at historically Black Howard University in Washington, D.C., received a $1 million grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Researchers in the lab will use the funding to build upon its previous work in modeling and measuring how quantum optical effects in cytoskeletal networks enable living matter to process information in ultrafast communication channels. The lab seeks answers to questions such as: How do living systems arise from nonliving matter? How does life organize from biomolecular building blocks? What is the role that light plays in the origins of life itself? The lab is under the direction of Philip Kurian, who holds a Ph.D.from Howard University.
Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, has received a $399,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support a three-year applied learning research curricular project on voting rights. Bard College is collaborating on the project with three historically Black universities — North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Tuskegee University, and Prairie View A&M University – and the Andrew Goodman Foundation. The crux of the project will study how the 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18 and outlawed age-based voter discrimination, impacted voter disenfranchisement while also focusing on the role of college communities in the fight for voting rights.
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