Every year, NAME recognizes innovative, outstanding work that makes major contributions the field of multicultural education. Nominating nominated by the membership. The awardees were honored during the 2010 NAME Conference in Las Vegas on Friday, November 5th at the President’s Banquet.
Congratulations to the 2010 Award winners!
G. Pritchy Smith Multicultural Educator of the Year Award:
Martha Lue Stewart
University of Central Florida
Martha Lue Stewart has worked in the field of exceptional student education and urban and multicultural education for more than 25 years. She continues to contribute to research literature in both fields, is an inspiring professor, and author. She works diligently in the community to build cross-cultural connections.With the support of her public service organization, she helped to establish a mentoring program that services over 40 African American and Haitian American middle and high school males. She has created and directs the first graduate certificate program in Urban and Multicultural Education at University of Central Florida. As a professor, she has inspired hundreds of students over the years through challenging and engaging teaching that deal with “hot topic” issues in Urban and Multicultural Education, and provides meaningful service learning opportunities in the impoverished areas of the community that benefit both the students and organization.
Equity & Social Justice Advocacy Award:
Mary Hollowell
Clayton State University (GA)
Mary Hollowell has been advocating against the use of school solitary confinements cells since her discovery of this practice in 2004. Her descriptions of solitary confinement of students with disabilities (often termed “school seclusion”) are included in her award-winning book The Forgotten Room: Inside a Public Alternative School for AT-Risk Youth. Her book includes documentation in the form of photographs, with a particularly vivid picture of graffiti written in blood. This evidence, along with media coverage and her oral testimony before the State Advisory Panel for Special Education, has helped sway board members to ban school seclusion in Georgia. The only book documenting school seclusion in the nation, copies have also been distributed to federal legislators in Washington. Hollowell’s successful advocacy efforts against an egregious human rights violation include blogging against solitary confinement, organizing constituents to lobby legislators to support The Preventing Harmful Restraint and Seclusion in Schools Act, HR 4247. It passed the U.S. House of Representatives and is currently under consideration in the U.S. Senate as Senate Bill 2860. The bill is supported by the special education lobby and may soon be signed into federal law, The Preventing Harmful Restraint and Seclusion in Schools Act. The website at www.theforgottenroom.com continues the advocacy efforts against confinement.
Carl C. Grant Research Award
H. Richard Milner IV
Peabody College, Vanderbilt University
H. Richard Milner IV is currently an Associate Professor at Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, completed his PhD in 2001 at The Ohio State University. Milner has been a prolific researcher and writer who contributes significantly to the fields of multicultural teacher education and urban education. He writes from the point of view of an African American scholar who uses qualitative and narrative research methodologies, and whose theoretical framework is largely informed by, and synthesizes, culturally relevant pedagogy and critical race theory. Milner moves concepts that are central to multicultural education forward, often in collaboration with others. He is interested in exploring ways of diversifying the teaching force to reflect demographic shifts that are happening rapidly in schools. Milner teaches multicultural education coursework in teacher education. His articles address and refute challenges that are often raised today about why multicultural content should be a part of teacher education. He has written several pieces related to culture, identity and curriculum in order to deepen how educators think about and work with multicultural curriculum. His work links multicultural education with giftedness and with classroom management. Milner’s work applies culturally relevant pedagogy and critical race theory to examine multiple dimensions of teaching, directly linking his analyses to implications for multicultural education.
Multicultural Media Award
eXtension Diversity Equity & Inclusion
Community of Practice
West Lafayette IN
eXtension Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Community of Practice (CoP) is one of the preeminent virtual communities in its field that fosters intellectual thinking, discourse, and engagement through cutting-edge information, and educational resources. DEI is committed to sharing innovative ideas, developing valuable resources, and implementing practical solutions while building synergistic partnerships. Historically, Diversity Equity and Inclusion Community of Practice is one of the many CoPs that operates under the eXtension initiative. DEI Community of Practice was developed in October 2006 with the goal of providing research based information and resources for diverse audiences. The areas of focus: Civil Rights and Legal Issues, Organizational Development and Change, Professional Development, Reaching New Audiences, and Workforce Diversity. DEI provides information on hot topics related to diversity, student recruitment and student retention, employee recruitment, and employee retention, cultural awareness at institutions, cultural awareness and support of diversity issues, legal issues, workforce diversity analysis and optimization as well as many other related areas.DEI also provides information and links on Diversity related job postings, Diversity summer programs, Websites to Explore, Diversity related conference information and many other useful resources, Frequently Ask Questions, and Ask an Expert. Currently there are 129 members of the CoP from various land-grant universities as well as other organizations around the country.
Rose Duhon-Sells Multicultural Program Award
E3: Educational Excellence & Equity
San Rafael CA
E3–Educational Excellence & Equity strives for deep institutional-level change in Bay Area educational systems. E3 trains and supports Bay Area teachers, administrators and students in a “strength-based approach”, educational culture and curriculum that empower youth to use their personal experience to recognize that they already possess critical skills needed for success in the 21st century global market. Through this approach, students develop the following 5 essential 21st century skills: Critical Analysis: The ability to arrive at conclusions by analyzing various perspectives, observations, and evidence. Adaptability and Agility: effectively navigating a continually changing environment; Social Capital & Teamwork: to effectively influence and be influenced while successfully collaborating with others; Cross-Cultural Communication: to effectively communicate with individuals from different cultural backgrounds; and, Innovation and Imagination: to form multiple answers to a problem. E3 promotes this systems-level change through its Innovative student cohort–providing academic and leadership workshops to a cohort of students statistically least likely to graduate, empowering them to graduate. Training Teachers–utilizing the principles, experiences, and lessons from the successful student cohort initiative, E3 trains teachers to more effectively engage low-achieving youth and teach 21st century skills. A School Community Identification Assessment–Train school community to assess and identify student engagement and teacher effectiveness. Together, these strategies increase high school graduation and college retention rates among low-achieving youth, creating a successful strength-based educational model, and forging a paradigm shift in Bay Area educational systems.
Rose Duhon-Sells Local Multicultural Program Award
Center for Academic Enrichment & Outreach (CAEO)
University of Nevada-Las Vegas
William Sullivan, Director and Vice President for Retention & Outreach
This award recognizes an outstanding program in the NAME Conference host city. Under the direction of NAME member William Sullivan, the Center for Academic Enrichment and Outreach at UNLV is responsible for ensuring an academic culture that is amenable to students of diverse backgrounds or high-risk populations, as well as overseeing 13 TRIO and two GEAR-UP programs to support students’ academic and personal success.
Philip C. Chinn Multicultural Book Award
Muslim Voices in School: Narratives of Identity & Pluralism
Öslem Sensoy and Christopher Stonebanks, Editors
Sense Publishers, 2009
“Muslim Voices in School: Narratives of Identity and Pluralism” makes a key contribution to the literature in multicultural education, as well as to teachers’ and researchers’ knowledge about Muslim students’ experiences in the West. Drs. Sensoy and Stonebanks describe the book as “a collection of readable, accessible, compelling, varied, voiced, passionate, real, textured, multi-faceted, hybrid, fearless, fearful, cautious, bold, modest, and inspired accounts of living Islam in relation to mainstream schooling in the West. The book helps to make the diverse experiences of Muslim students (from elementary through university student through professor) both contextual and complex. The politics and education about Islam, Muslims, Arabs, Turks, Iranians and all that is associated with the West’s popular imagination of the monolithic “Middle-East” has long been framed within problematic. The goal of this book is to push back against the reductive mainstream narratives told about Muslim and Middle Eastern heritage students for generations if not centuries, in mainstream schools. The chapters are each authored by Muslim-acculturated scholars”.
NAME Presidential Chapter Award
Maryland Multicultural Coalition/
Maryland Chapter of NAME
The Maryland Multicultural Coalition/Chapter of NAME (MMC/NAME) promotes the philosophy of NAME and exemplifies NAME goals in its membership, programs and activities. MMC/NAME is the leading advocate for education that is multicultural as a means of achieving the full academic potential of every learner in the state of Maryland and has provided the community with information, expertise, support and resources in pursuit of those goals. MMC/NAME has maintained a core body of about 70 members for the past few years, and also maintains contact through the newsletter, Voices, with over 300 supporters who attend the annual state conference. Annual statewide conferences for the past 15 years have brought together individuals and groups from all levels of education, from different academic disciplines, and from a variety of educational and community institutions to: share information and resources, provide professional development and networking opportunities, showcase exemplary programs throughout the state, and recruit new members. Each conference is in collaboration with the Maryland county school system or institute of higher education, providing greater connections with the community and strengthening the bond of advocacy in our work.
Congratulations to this year’s recipients!
To find a complete listing of past NAME Award winners, visit the website:
www.nameorg.org/awards