May 2012

DSU Donates Strength/Condition Equipment to Five High Schools

Description: 

(L-r) Trae Anderson, DSU project manager; Jeremy Jeanne, Glasgow H.S. athletics director; Marques Brown, Christiana H.S. assistant football coach;and Andrew Mears, Smyrna H.S. athletics coach, at the former Wellness Center to select the available donated equipment..

Body: 
Delaware State University is literally helping to strengthen the athletics programs of five Delaware high schools through its donation of used strength and conditioning equipment. University officials are donating a variety of fitness machines and equipment to the following high schools – Brandywine, Christiana, Glasgow, Brandywine, Mount Pleasant, and Smyrna. Since the 2009 completed construction and opening of the DSU Wellness and Recreation Center, the previously used Wellness Center – a 3,000-square-foot module building next to the Village Cafeteria – has remained idle. Because only new strength and conditioning equipment was installed in the new facility, the equipment formerly used in the old Wellness Center remained in that building. With plans in place to move the module building to another part of the campus to make room for a planned Optics Center on that site, University officials decided to offer the equipment to five high schools on a first-come, first-serve basis. After DSU contacted the state concerning the availability of the equipment, the Delaware Interscholastic Athletic Association sent a notice to all the high schools in the First State. The abovementioned high schools were the first five to respond. Athletics representatives from the high schools visited DSU last week to select the equipment – which included a variety of Tuffstuff strength machines, Trotter treadmills, stationary bikes, and other equipment.  

United Baptist Convention of Del. Establishes Book Scholarship

Description: 

Dr. Lonnie E. Rector, president of the United Baptist Convention of Del., and its representatives Rev. Herbert  J. Owens Sr., Mildred F. Mosley, Rev. Gilbert S. Hamm Sr., Rev. Beryl S. Yancey, and Dr. Samuel Richardson III, join DSU President Harry L. Williams in celebrating the establishment of the Rev. Tommie Lee Brown Memorial Book Scholarship.

Body: 
A Baptist organization has joined Delaware State University in its effort to keep education affordable. The United Baptist Convention of Delaware (UBCD) has established a $16,410 Rev. Tommie Lee Brown Memorial Book Scholarship endowment to help Delaware State University students who are part of the organization’s member Baptist churches. Dr. Lonnie E. Rector, president of the UBCD and pastor of Pilgrim Baptist Church in Newark, along with a delegation from the Baptist organization paid a visit to DSU President Harry L. Williams at his office to celebrate the endowment. The UBCD president said it is appropriate for the Baptist church organization in Delaware to support DSU. “When I was in South Carolina, I was accustomed to working with black colleges there,” Dr. Rector said. “When I arrived to Delaware, I noticed that we weren’t supporting our (HBCU) college here in Delaware as we should.” He added that a book scholarship is much needed as it is a big challenge for students to cover the cost of expensive college textbooks. “Making a financial contribution to DSU helps students to focus on the intended purpose of higher education, which is to achieve academically rather than having to constantly worry about how they can afford to stay in college,” Dr. Rector said. “Together, we can make this happen.” The late Rev. Tommie Lee Brown, the namesake of the scholarship, was pastor of New Hope Baptist Church and served two tenures as president of the UBCD, the last of which ended with his passing in 2002. UBCD officials note that Rev. Brown had a passion for learning, and therefore the scholarship was a good way to memorialize his leadership.

DSU Shines at Small Business Administration Awards Gala

Description: 

(L-r) Lillie Crawford, director of the DSU Center for Enterprise Development; Dr. Shelton Rhodes, dean of the DSU College of Business; and Nick Callazzo, DSU adjunct instructor, hold the awards they were presented by the Delaware District of the Small Business Administration.

Body: 
Two Delaware State University faculty members and a dean were honored by the Delaware District of the Small Business Administration (DSBA) during its 2012 Small Business Week Awards Gala. Tony Leta, Delaware SBA director, presents Outstanding Advocacy Award to Dr. Shelton Rhodes, dean of the DSU College of Business. The DSBA presented awards to DSU’s Dr. Shelton Rhodes, Lillie Crawford, and Nick Callazzo during a May 14 event held at the Executive Banquet and Conference Center near Newark, Del. Dr. Shelton Rhodes, dean of the College of Business, was presented the DSBA Outstanding Advocacy of Small Business Award. Dr. Rhodes was recognized for DSU’s creation of a College of Business Advisory Board that seeks input on how the University can better meet the needs of the Delaware business community; for reaching out to the DSBA, AstraZeneca, DuPont, and veterans’ business organizations to partner on veterans’ business initiatives; and other endeavors, said Tony Leta, DSBA director, who presented the award. “His community outreach has raised the profile of Delaware State in the small business community and positioned it as a leading player in Delaware’s economic growth,” Mr. Leta said. “Under his leadership, Delaware State is walking the walk for small business.” Lillie Crawford, director of the DSU Center for Enterprise Development, received the DSBA Minority Small Business Champion of the Year Award for the state and the region. She was honored for her leadership of the center, along with the numerous outreach efforts and partnerships that have resulted under her watch. Nick Callazzo, adjunct instructor in the College of Business, was honored with the DSBA Veteran Small Business Champion of the Year Award for his renowned support of the small businesses throughout the region over the years.  

DSU Honored by Capital School District

Description: 

Representing their DSU areas in receiving the Capital School District Community Partner Awards: (l-r) Alex Meredith, Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources; Christopher McGuire, DSU Administration Bldg. staff and participating Greek organizations; Dr. Robin Roberts, Office of Student Leadership and Activities; Eric Hart; Department of Athletics; along with Dr. Michael Thomas, superintendent of the district.

Body: 
The Capital School District honored several DSU entities with Community Partner Awards during its May 30 Awards Ceremony. Honored from DSU were: DSU Staff and Administration – For its annual Christmas season work in collecting gifts and donations for the district’s Adopt-a-Family Program. The DSU Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources – For its work in donating plants to district schools throughout the year, as well as assisting in the development of a garden at Fairview Elementary School. The DSU Department of Athletics – For the community service of its students-athletes in participating in the Read-Aloud Program, and also for working with children at Fairview Elementary School. The DSU Office of Student Leadership and Activities – For providing gathering space for the district’s mentoring training, and for its Career Services in allowing the district to participate in the annual Job Fair on campus.

DSU Faculty and Administrators Selected for AACU Summer Institute

Description: 

The AACU's Summer Institute is designed to help faculty and administrators to develop plans to integrate major programs with general education and to assess broad  student learning outcomes within individual departments and majors.

Body: 
Seven faculty members and administrators from Delaware State University have been selected to take part in the American Colleges and Universities’ “Summer Institute on Integrative Learning and the Departments” from July 11-15 in Burlington, Vt. Among the DSU contingent attending the Summer Institute are: Genevieve Tighe, assistant vice president for Academic Affairs/Institutional Effectiveness; Phyllis Brooks-Collins, director of Academic Enrichment; Dr. Rebecca Fox-Lykens, director of the DSU Center for Teaching and Learning; Dr. Joe Amoako, interim chair of the Department of English and Foreign Languages; Dr. Andrew Lloyd, associate professor of biological sciences; Dr. Aristides Marcano, associate research professor of physics; and Dr. Niklas Robinson, assistant professor of history and political science. This Summer Institute is designed for colleges and universities interested in building faculty and departmental leadership for essential 21st century learning – knowledge of multiple disciplines, inquiry and critical thinking, personal and social responsibility, and particularly, integrative learning. The institute helps institutions develop plans to integrate major programs with general education, and to assess broad student learning outcomes within individual departments and majors. Among the 18 institutions of higher education with teams in attendance, DSU will be joined by several other Historically Black Colleges & Universities. AAC&U is the leading national association concerned with the quality, vitality and public standing of undergraduate liberal education. Its members are committed to extending the advantages of a liberal education to all students, regardless of academic specialization or intended career. Founded in 1915, AAC&U now comprises more than 1,250 member institutions—including accredited public and private colleges, community colleges, and universities of every type and size. AAC&U functions as a catalyst and facilitator, forging links among presidents, administrators and faculty members who are engaged in institutional and curricular planning. Its mission is to reinforce the collective commitment to liberal education at both the national and local levels and to help individual institutions keep the quality of student learning at the core of their work as they evolve to meet new economic and social challenges.

DSU Names Tamika Louis as Women's Head Basketball Coach

Description: 

DSU President Harry L. Williams presents Tamika Louis, the new Lady Hornet basketball head coach, with a DSU jacket and hat.

Body: 
A new Delaware State University women’s basketball coaching era has begun, as DSU President Harry L. Williams today introduced Tamika L. Louis, a former championship junior college head coach and Division I assistant coach, as the new Lady Hornets head coach. Head Coach Tamika Louis said she expects to establish a winning culture among the Lady Hornets basketball team. In introducing the new head coach at a May 31 media event, Dr. Williams said that he is “very happy” that Coach Louis has decided to become a member of the One Hornet Nation Family. “I expect that she will bring a high-level energy and excitement to our Lady Hornets’ basketball program,” the DSU president said.  Coach Louis arrives at DSU with 14 years of coaching and recruiting experience. Most recently, she served as an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator during the 2011-2012 season at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. From 2009-2011, Coach Louis was an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator for St. John’s University. In addition to organizing all recruiting initiatives, game scouting, overseeing player academic progress and off-court mentoring, she was responsible for the development of St. John guards, including 2nd Team All-Big East and Freshman All-American Shennieka Smith. She served as an assistant coach and a recruiting coordinator for the University of Illinois from 2007-2009. Coach Louis was instrumental in signing the No. 2 and No. 3 ranked 2009 class in the country (according to ESPN Hoop Girl and Blue Star rankings), which included All-Americans Destiny Williams and Karisma Penn. From 2002-2005, she was head women’s basketball coach at Mott Community College in Flint, Mich., where the team’s record was 58-33 over those three seasons. The highlight of her MCC coaching tenure was the 2004-2005 season in which the team boasted a 16-0 conference record (27-7 overall), was the champion of Region XII of the National Junior College Athletic Association and earned a bid in the NJCAA Tournament. During that stellar season, Coach Louis received the Michigan Community College Athletic Association and the Region XII Coach of the Year awards.  From 1998 to 2002, she also had stints as an assistant and associate basketball coach at Central High School in Fresno, Calif., Rhodes High School in Cleveland, Ohio, and Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland, Ohio. After playing her freshman year (1993-1994) at West Virginia University, she transferred to Fresno State where she was the starting point guard and captain from 1995-1998. It was also at Fresno State where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree and a Master of Arts degree, both in communications. In addition to her career progression in athletics, Coach Louis also worked for General Motors in management, product development, sales and marketing from 1999 to 2007, during which time she received the Corporate Woman of the Year Award in 2003. Coach Louis said that as the Lady Hornets’ head coach, she will be a servant-leader and hopes her energy, dedication and work ethic will be infectious to the young women she will coach and mentor. “We will establish a winning culture here with an expectation to excel in the classroom and on the court resulting in MEAC championships,” Coach Louis said. “Just as important, we will develop future leaders who, upon graduation, will make an immediate impact in our global society and positively represent DSU.” Interim AD Eric Hart join Coach Tamika Louis along with her mother Joyce Louis and Faye Sterling, her aunt, after the media event. The decision to hire Coach Louis culminated a two-month search process that began in late March. Serving on the Search Committee for the head coaching post were Dr. Gwendolyn Scott-Jones (committee chair), chair of the Department of Psychology; Dr. Jan Blade, faculty athletics representative; Candy Young, interim senior associate athletics director and senior woman administrator; Dr. Joe Amoako, professor of English and member of the Athletics Council; Dr. Josette McCollough, DSU alumna and former Lady Hornet student-athlete; Dr. Sonja McCoy, associate director of Mentoring and Advising; Dr. Bradley Skelcher, associate provost; and Kianna D’Oliveira, current Lady Hornet student-athlete. Eric Hart, interim DSU athletics director, praised the search committee for its hard work and expressed great hopes for the Lady Hornets basketball program under Coach Louis. “We are starting a new chapter in women’s basketball and I am confident that Coach Louis will be able to build upon a strong basketball legacy here at Delaware State University,” Mr. Hart said. “Coach Louis has built a reputation on the Division I landscape as being a fierce recruiter and has built top tier programs at Illinois and St. John’s, and was on her way to building a strong class at George Washington University.” Coach Louis succeeds former Head Coach Ed Davis, who retired in March after leading the program for 12 years.  

DSU's Dr. Myna German Presents Symposium in Portugal

Description: 

Dr. Myna German, chair of the DSU Department of Mass Communications, poses with some of the students who attended the symposium she presented in Portugal on May 3.

Body: 
Dr. Myna German, chair of the Department of Mass Communication at Delaware State University, has recently returned from Portugal, where she presented a symposium on topics relating to her co-published book Migration, Technology and Transculturation. Dr. German presented the symposium at the Polytechnic Institute of Porto, Portugal, made possible by a grant from the Instituto de Contabilidade e Administracao do Porto. The grant was secured by Dr. Clara Sarmento, director of the Centre, who wanted to do outreach to Delaware State University in conjunction with future research collaboratives. A delegation from the University of Bourgogne in Dijun also was present at the two-day symposium. Dr. German spoke to faculty and students about DSU, the research centers involved in funding Migration, Technology and Transculturation (co-edited with Dr. Padmini Banerjee of the DSU Department of Psychology), and future areas of possible joint research. The second part of the seminar was on the content of her research on the history of globalization and mass communication, migration studies, the conceptualization of the field and where it is going.

DSU's Dr. D. Finger Wright Teaches Afghanistan Women About Addictions

Description: 

Dr. Dolores Finger Wright, DSU association professor of social work, was part of a team of substance abuse experts that taught women from Afghanistan about addiction and treatment as it relates to women.

Body: 
Dr. Dolores Finger Wright, DSU associate professor of social work, has recently returned from Sicily, where she joined a team of instructors who trained a group of professional women from Afghanistan in addiction issues as they pertain to women. Dr. Finger Wright was a part of the group Guiding the Recovery of Women (GROW), one of 15 instructors with expertise in addiction issues, especially as they relate to women. The instructors represent a wide variety of social service agencies, treatment facilities and academia. Thirty-three professional Afghanistan women – doctors, social workers, therapists and director of substance abuse treatment programs – attended the GROW training program. “That’s why it was a sobering experience, because it provided training to professional women who provide direct services to other women in a war zone,” Dr. Finger Wright said. The GROW training program is designed for addiction specialists, focusing on effective gender-responsive treatment interventions for women substance abusers. The training introduces the principles and values of key experts in the field, and identifies promising practices for treating substance abusing women. The three-week training program in Sicily (an autonomous region of Italy) included topics that explored the relations between substance abuse/treatment and adolescent females, lesbian issues, sexual abuse, domestic violence, detoxification and pregnancy, in addition to other areas. Dr. Finger Wright – who was in Sicily from April 13 to 21 – taught the basic introductory GROW curriculum.

DSU's Planned Early College HS Approved by State Board

Description: 

The state's first Early College High School will be located on the campus of Delaware State University.

Body: 
The Delaware State Board of Education has notified Delaware State University that it can go ahead with its plans to establish an Early College High School on the campus of DSU. The state Board of Education approved DSU’s application for the charter school during its May 17 meeting. The planned charter high school will be the state’s first Early College High School, which will be designed specifically to serve first generation college-bound students. The Early College High School is a nationally recognized school design brought to Delaware through a partnership between Innovative Schools, a Delaware-based non-profit public school support organization, and EdWorks, DSU and Innovative Schools submitted the charter school application to the Delaware Department of Education in December 2011. After several meetings with the DOE’s Charter School Accountability Committee and a May 8 public hearing, the committee recommended the approval of the application. The State Board followed that recommendation and approved the charter school.  “We are excited about the opportunity to provide an exceptional secondary/post-secondary educational experience to Delawareans,” said Dr. Alton Thompson, DSU provost and vice president of Academic Affairs. “As the first early college high school in the state, we are partnering with the DOE to implement a rigorous curriculum and other support services to ensure our students are competitive on an international level.” The University has included the Early College High School as part of its development of a new Facilities Master Plan, which is expected to be finalized by the fall of 2012. The location of the charter school will be determined by the master plan. Dr. Thompson said the University plans to enroll students in the school by the 2013-2014 school year.  In the Early College model, high school and college combine to form a coherent educational program in which students work toward a high school diploma and up to two years of college credits in four years of high school.  Located on a college campus, the model directly challenges the belief system of under-prepared poor and minority students about their ability to do college level work and get a postsecondary degree.  Housing a high school on the DSU campus is not unprecedented in the University’s history.  In the 1893-94 school year, the then-State College for Colored Students established a two-year preparatory school to help students get ready for a college education. In 1917, a Model Grade School was established by DSU, which granted a high school diploma to graduates.  Capital improvement donations by philanthropist Pierre du Pont in the 1920s included funding to construct a new school building named the Du Pont Building. That building served as the only high school facility for African Americans in Kent County until 1952. “Adding an Early College High School on DSU’s campus is consistent with the University’s historic mission and would strengthen the University’s ability to serve first generation college-bound students and underrepresented minorities from the greater Dover area,” said Dr. Thompson. Students participating in the Early College High School model launched by EdWorks in Ohio have an average graduation rate of 91% and outperform state averages in high stakes graduation tests for reading, writing, and mathematics.  At the completion of four years of high school, 100% of students attending Early College High Schools have earned a minimum of 30 hours of college credit, and as many as 60% of students earn an associate’s degree, or the equivalent of 45-60 college credits.  The University intends to blend the Early College Charter High School with its existing STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) Initiative.  “The Early College High School at DSU will be an innovative learning environment designed to inspire students who have the potential and motivation to be the first in their families to graduate from college,” said Dr. Thompson. “We are committed to making this school a good fit for our community.”

Dr. Robin Williams Hosts 2nd Annual First Lady's Tea for Senior Ladies

Description: 

Dr. Robin Williams and the graduating senior women who attended her 2nd annual First Lady's Tea take a parting shot moment at the end of the May 18 event.

Body: 
Dr. Robin Williams held her 2nd annual First Lady’s Tea on May 18 for the graduating senior ladies in the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Center. The event featured the hat-making skills of the senior ladies, as well as food, gifts, as well as some useful etiquette and interviewing wisdom. See the below photo slideshow for images from the event:  

Pages