ATLANTA — The SREB-State Doctoral Scholars Program has been selected to receive the prestigious John Hope Franklin Award for 2010 from Diverse: Issues in Higher Education magazine. The SREB program joins an exclusive list of past recipients including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, poet Maya Angelou, and Johnnetta Cole, president emeritus of Spelman College, among others.
Led by founding Director Ansley Abraham, the SREB program is recognized nationwide for helping minority doctoral students complete their Ph.D.s and pursue careers as college faculty members. "You really have to credit participating SREB states for their commitment to this program. None of this would be possible without their support," said Abraham. Many of the program’s nearly 500 graduates are now college faculty members or work in education in the SREB region.
"About one-fourth of U.S. college students are people of color," Abraham noted, but at predominantly white colleges and universities, "only about one in 30 faculty members is a minority member." The numbers improve only slightly when historically black institutions are included, "and we are working hard to change that," he noted.
SREB’s Doctoral Scholars program provides multiple layers of support for Ph.D. students, including financial stipends, professional development, mentoring, networking and other services. Students must gain admission to doctoral programs on their own merits to be eligible for the highly successful program.
"I am extremely grateful that since we began in 1984 as Black Issues in Higher Education, we have been able to document SREB’s amazing commitment and leadership in increasing the number of under-represented doctoral scholars in the academy," said Diverse co-founder Frank L. Matthews in the award letter.
The award will be presented on March 26 in Atlanta at the annual meeting of the American Association of Blacks in Higher Education.
For more information about the program and the minority faculty shortage, contact SREB Communications.
The Southern Regional Education Board, or SREB, based in Atlanta, was created in 1948 by Southern governors and legislatures to help leaders in education and government work cooperatively to advance education and improve the social and economic life of the region. SREB has 16 member states: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia. More information is available online at www.sreb.org.
