As part of its Black History Month celebration, North Carolina Central University will celebrate the roles and contributions of African-American women in the making of America. The labor, leadership, intellect and artistic expression of African-American women is the focus of a variety of lectures, seminars and discussions planned throughout February. Dr. Kennetta Hammond Perry, assistant professor of history at East Carolina University, will serve as the keynote speaker. She will speak on Wednesday, Feb. 22, at 6 p.m. in the Hubbard–Totton Building auditorium.
Perry is an alumna of North Carolina Central University, earning her undergraduate degree in history and political science. She completed her doctorate at Michigan State University in comparative black history. Published in several journals, Perry is completing a book on Caribbean migration and transnational race politics in postwar Britain.
On Wednesday, Feb. 1, a photo exhibit, “Soaring on the Legacy,” will open in the Fine Arts Building, Room 106. The exhibit includes sepia-tone photos of NCCU administrators, professors and graduates notable for their contributions to the community and beyond. The exhibit will be open daily from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. all month.
Entrepreneur Hezekiah Griggs III will speak from the topic “Realize Your Potential” on Tuesday, Feb. 7, at 7 p.m. in the Miller–Morgan Building Auditorium. Born into poverty in northern New Jersey, Griggs started his first business at the age of seven. Today at just 22 his company HG3 Media manages 20 different corporate operations and 45 collective media properties. He also serves as a consulting marketing strategist, leveraging his experience and success in youth marketing to help other organizations.
Griggs’ business and philanthropic initiatives have been recognized by public figures including former President Bill Clinton and U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. He has received more than 300 awards.
Filled with the spectacle of music and dance, the theater production of “Black Mama Monologues” will open on Friday, Feb. 10, at 8 p.m. in the University Theater. The production celebrates the cultural and historical presence of the African-American matriarch and the amazing spirit of motherhood.
Other highlights include:
Guest lecture, “James Edward Shepard: Our Founder,” with Dr. Henry Suggs, emeritus professor of American History at Clemson University, on Feb. 1 at 1 p.m. in the Edmonds Classroom Building, Room 201.
Presentation by university archivist Andre Vann, “The Three Bs of Higher Education: Brown, Bethune and Burrows,” on Feb. 9 at 11:35 a.m. in the James E. Shepard Library, Room 140.
A documentary and discussion of “Brother Outsider: the Life of Bayard Rustin,” on Feb. 16 at 7 p.m. in the Miller–Morgan Building Auditorium. This event examines the involvement of openly gay individuals in the civil rights movement. NCCU faculty, staff and students who participated in the 1963 March on Washington will be recognized.
Faculty recital, “Not Voice as Usual,” by visiting instructor Lenora Zenzalai Helm on Feb. 21 at 7 p.m. in the B.N. Duke Auditorium. Helm will perform original compositions and arrangements by music professor and saxophonist Brian Horton.
A worship service at White Rock Baptist Church featuring the University Choir on Sunday, Feb. 26, at 9 a.m.
More than 20 lectures and presentations by university faculty and students.
For the full schedule of Black History Month events, click here to download.
To those who might hope for someone with Martin Luther King Jr.’s stature and charisma to come along and lead the fight for justice, equality and economic fairness, Charlie Nelms offers this urgent advice: Stop waiting and get to work.
“All of us must take personal responsibility to fight for human rights and human survival,” the North Carolina Central University chancellor said, speaking at the university’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day Convocation on Thursday. “We cannot wait for someone else to take the lead.”
In his address to a standing-room audience in NCCU’s B.N. Duke Auditorium, Nelms urged students, faculty, staff and other members of the community “to reflect on how Dr. King and his work remain relevant in 2012.” And then he added, “Unfortunately, it’s not hard to do.”
Nelms repeatedly drew parallels between the challenges faced by King in the 1950s and 1960s and those of the present day.
“Instead of poll taxes or showing proof of property ownership to vote, we have new photo-ID requirements in 15 states and the list is growing,” he said. Such laws disproportionately affect the poor and the elderly, he noted, because many of them lack the most common form of photo ID, a driver’s license. And although many politicians claim that photo ID laws are needed to combat voter fraud, “No state has been able to document any significant evidence of voter fraud — and if there was any, they would have found it.”
The civil rights movement focused on equality of opportunity and equality under the law, Nelms said, but once the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 had become law, King didn’t stop. “He moved beyond the lunch counter to address workers’ rights, unemployment, education, economic opportunity, healthcare and, especially, poverty.” His assassination in April 1968 occurred as he was organizing a new march on Washington for what he called the Poor People’s Campaign.
“Notice it was called the ‘Poor People’s Campaign’ — not the ‘Poor Black People’s Campaign,’ Nelms said. “This was what was so radical and dangerous. Thousands of poor black and white people were scheduled to march together to demand jobs, unemployment insurance, a fair minimum wage and education. Does this sound familiar to you? It should.”
Nelms exhorted the audience to become agents of change and emphasized the civil rights leaders’ persistence above all else. “In their pursuit of justice, King and the civil rights marchers did not let police dogs, nightsticks, fire hoses nor the fear of jail deter them in their march for justice. They persisted even in the face of death.”
“Finally,” he said, “never lose hope. Never, never, ever give up.”
Hezekiah Griggs III, self-made multimillionaire at age 22, will present “Realize your Potential” on Feb. 7, at 7 p.m., Miller-Morgan Auditorium. Click here to learn more.
The North Carolina Central University Art Museum is once again showcasing the work of Durham’s best and brightest young artists. “Durham’s Finest,” an annual exhibit of art created by Durham Public Schools students, will open on Sunday, Jan. 22, at 2 p.m.
“Durham’s Finest” comprises works by 220 students in kindergarten through 12th grade. “This unique show is the school system’s only district-wide art exhibit,” said Mary Casey, director of K-12 arts education for the school district. “It shows the progression and artistic development of the students.”
At a reception on Sunday, Casey and Kenneth Rodgers, director of the art museum, will present awards to several student artists. “Hosting the exhibit allows the museum to give students the rare opportunity to see their artwork in a real museum setting,” said Rodgers. A string quartet from Jordan High School, under the direction of Wendy Davidson, will perform. The exhibit will run until Feb. 10.
The NCCU Art Museum is open Tuesday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and Sundays from 2 to 4 p.m. For more information, call the NCCU Art Museum at 530-6211. Admission is free.
Image #1: “Ascending to Heaven” by Brandon James
Southern High School, Grade 12
A section of the F.W. Woolworth & Co. lunch counter at which sit-in protests took place in Durham in 1960 will be rededicated in a ceremony at North Carolina Central University on Sunday, Feb. 5, in one of a series of Black History Month observances at the university.
The anti-segregation sit-ins in downtown Durham began Feb. 8, 1960, following by one week the similar protests in Greensboro. The Durham campaign was organized by the NAACP chapter at North Carolina College (now NCCU), led by students Lacy Streeter, Callis Brown, Robert Kornegay. Also taking part were students from the Bull City Barber College, DeShazor’s Beauty College and Hillside High School.
The protests caught the attention of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Rev. David Abernathy. At the request of the Rev. Douglas Moore, a local civil rights leader, the two national leaders came to Durham and visited the Woolworth’s lunch counter on Feb. 16. The store closed the counter after the sit-in demonstrations, and the students continued the protests at other stores.
On the evening of Feb. 16, Dr. King drew a standing-room crowd at White Rock Baptist Church, where he delivered his famous “Fill up the jails” speech, in which he advocated nonviolent confrontation with segregation for the first time in the South.
The Woolworth store closed in 1994, but the lunch counter was saved from salvage collectors by John Friedrick, then executive director of the N. C. School of Science and Mathematics. A portion of the counter was donated to NCCU in June 1999. Last fall it was moved from its previous location in the William Jones Building to the James E. Shepard Memorial Library, where it will be the centerpiece of a permanent civil rights movement exhibit.
The rededication event on Feb. 5 will be at the Shepard Library starting at 3 p.m. It will begin with a panel discussion, “Looking Back While Moving Forward,” moderated by Dr. Freddie Parker, professor of history at NCCU and chair of the N.C. African-American Historical Commission.
The discussion panelists will be Dr. Courtney S. Ferguson, a retired NCCU business professor; Vivian McCoy, a civil rights and community activist; Virginia Williams, who as a teenager participated in the Royal Ice Cream Parlor sit-in in Durham in 1957, one of the first such civil rights protests; and NCCU student leader Cassandra S. Stokes. The dedication ceremony and a reception will follow.
North Carolina Central University received final approval today from the University of North Carolina Board of Governors to introduce a doctor of philosophy (Ph.D.) program in integrated biosciences. The university will now begin recruiting students to enter the program in fall 2012, and would award its degrees four years later. They would be the first Ph.D.s awarded by the university in more than 50 years.
The interdisciplinary doctorate will be offered on two tracks, biomedical sciences and pharmaceutical sciences. The program will be housed in the College of Science and Technology, but will draw also on the resources of NCCU’s Julius L. Chambers Biomedical/Biotechnology Research Institute (JLC–BBRI), the Biomanufacturing Research Institute and Technology Enterprise (BRITE) and the School of Library and Information Sciences. The curriculum will include offerings from the life sciences, physical sciences, computation and information sciences, pharmaceutical sciences and mathematics.
“Our Ph.D. in integrated biosciences is consistent with the UNC Tomorrow initiative, our own mission, and our strengths in health disparities research and biotechnology,” said NCCU Chancellor Charlie Nelms. “All 32 faculty engaged in the program have earned terminal degrees from some of the best research universities in the nation, and we have constructed nearly 150,000 square feet of state-of-the-art science space in the last 12 years.”
Research involving health disparities — the gaps between the health status of the nation’s racial and ethnic minorities compared with the population as a whole — has been explicitly part of the mission of BBRI since it opened in 1999, and a key focus of other NCCU science and public health programs for decades.
Shepherding the program to fruition was the NCCU dean of graduate studies, Dr. Chanta Haywood. “There is a diverse population of extremely bright students who want to be leaders in health disparities research,” Haywood said. “As graduate dean, I’m confident that we’ll attract them to our program.”
NCCU expects the program to reach an enrollment of about 20 full-time students in its fourth year of operation, and to graduate about five per year. An additional aim of the program is to expand the number of minority scientists, particularly African-Americans, in biomedical research. A recent report by the National Science Foundation noted that African-Americans make up about 12 percent of the U.S. population, but account for only 3 percent of the work force of scientists and engineers.
NCCU had a doctoral program in the mid-20th century that was short-lived but historically significant. From 1955 to 1964, five people earned the Ph.D. from the institution then known as North Carolina College at Durham, all in the field of education. The degree received in 1955 by Walter M. Brown, a future dean of the NCCU School of Education, was the first Ph.D. awarded by a historically black college or university in the United States.
D. Keith Pigues, a business executive, author and teacher, has been named dean of the School of Business at North Carolina Central University.
Pigues comes to NCCU from PlyGem Industries, a privately held building products company based in Cary, N.C., where he was senior vice president and chief marketing officer and member of the company’s executive committee. He previously held executive positions at CEMEX, RR Donnelley, ADP and Honeywell International. He also has been an adjunct professor at Kenan-Flagler Business School at UNC–Chapel Hill, where he taught courses in leadership and served as an executive coach for the Leadership Immersion, a course on corporate leadership development.
“Our long-term goal is for the business school at NCCU is to be one of the best in the country,” Chancellor Charlie Nelms said. “Achieving that goal requires the expertise of a visionary leader who can establish strategic partnerships with the business community. I am confident that Keith Pigues has the passion and expertise needed to do just that.”
The author of Winning with Customers: A Playbook for B2B (Wiley & Sons, 2010), Pigues is past chairman of the Business Marketing Association’s board of directors and a member of the Executive Leadership Council. He began his career in sales and marketing with IBM and Hewlett–Packard, and has more than 25 years of experience in marketing, strategic planning and sales leadership.
“We’re poised for transformative change and innovation,” NCCU Provost Debbie Thomas said. “With Pigues’ appointment, we’re shifting away from traditional leadership to one characterized by strong ties to both the corporate and educational sectors.”
Black Enterprise Magazine named Pigues one of its top executives in marketing and advertising for 2011. B2B Magazine recognized him as a leading senior marketing practitioner and a member of “Who’s Who in B-to-B” in 2007 and 2010. He received the Frost & Sullivan Marketing Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007.
“I look forward to partnering with the business community to increase awareness of the NCCU School of Business and position it as a leading global business school,” Pigues said. “This will be exciting.”
Pigues received a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering in 1984 from Christian Brothers University in Memphis, Tenn., and an MBA from UNC’s Kenan–Flagler in 1993.
Dr. Betty Pierce Dennis, who chaired the Nursing Department at North Carolina Central University from 1999 to 2004, has returned to chair the department once again as it heads into a period of significant expansion in its new, state-of-the-art teaching facility.
Before her return to NCCU, Dennis was a professor of nursing and dean of the Division of Nursing at Dillard University in New Orleans. She was also the director and a professor at the Minority Health and Health Disparities Center, a collaboration between Dillard and Louisiana State University funded by the National Institutes of Health.
Dennis assumed leadership of the department at NCCU as it has moved this month into its new building. The $25 million, 69,000-square-foot facility includes classrooms, a 200-seat auditorium, skill labs with advanced simulation technology and facilities for expanded student services.
Although the new building is welcome, Dennis said, she plans to focus on motivating faculty and students. “Good facilities are great — they make your life easier,” she said, “but the real challenge is working with people.” The new building will pave the way for enrollment growth in the nursing program, she said, with a goal of elevating the status of the department to a School of Nursing. Such a step requires the approval of the UNC Board of Governors, and the pace of growth will depend on faculty and clinical resources and budgetary considerations, she said.
Dennis earned a Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree from N.C. A&T State University, a Master of Science in medical–surgical administration from Emory University and a Doctor of Public Health from UNC–Chapel Hill. Before she led the NCCU nursing program from 1999 to 2004, she held associate professorships at both NCCU and UNC – Charlotte. She is an Army veteran, having served in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps, where she attained the rank of captain. She also has extensive international experience, as a teacher in Moshi, Tanzania, at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre School of Nursing, and as a consultant and staff member at the Ithusheng Community Health Centre in Tzaneen, South Africa. Working with the International Council of Nurses, she contributed to the development of a nursing documentation tool for international use.
She has written extensively for academic publications. Her research interests are primarily in community-based interventions supported by participatory models, global health issues affected by nursing education and nursing care, and the ethics of health care and health care delivery.
North Carolina Central University alumnus Henry M. “Mickey” Michaux Jr. has been selected for induction into the National Black College Alumni Hall of Fame.
Michaux is a Durham lawyer and businessman and a longtime influential member of the North Carolina legislature. He earned both his undergraduate and law degrees from NCCU. He was elected to the State House of Representatives from a Durham district three times in the 1970s. In 1977, he was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to be U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of North Carolina. He returned to the legislature in 1984 and has been reelected ever since. He has been a staunch advocate of higher education, and has fought for adequate funding for NCCU and other minority universities.
He served three terms as the national president of the NCCU Alumni Association as well as terms as a member of the Board of Trustees and of the Board of Directors of the NCCU Foundation. In 2007, NCCU named its School of Education in his honor. Last year, during the university’s Centennial celebration, Michaux was one of six inaugural recipients of the Shepard Medallion, recognizing a lifetime of service to the university and society. The medallion bears the name of NCCU founder Dr. James E. Shepard.
The announcement from the National Black College Alumni Hall of Fame Foundation said Michaux is being recognized for his extraordinary contributions in community service and governmental relations. The induction will take place in a ceremony Sept. 23 in Atlanta.
As part of its Black History Month celebration, North Carolina Central University will celebrate the roles and contributions of African-American women in the making of America. The labor, leadership, intellect and artistic expression of African-American women is the focus of a variety of lectures, seminars and discussions planned throughout February. Dr. Kennetta Hammond Perry, assistant professor of history at East Carolina University, will serve as the keynote speaker. She will speak on Wednesday, Feb. 22, at 6 p.m. in the Hubbard–Totton Building auditorium.
Entrepreneur Hezekiah Griggs III will speak from the topic “Realize Your Potential” on Tuesday, Feb. 7, at 7 p.m. in the Miller–Morgan Building Auditorium. Born into poverty in northern New Jersey, Griggs started his first business at the age of seven. Today at just 22 his company HG3 Media manages 20 different corporate operations and 45 collective media properties. He also serves as a consulting marketing strategist, leveraging his experience and success in youth marketing to help other organizations.
To those who might hope for someone with Martin Luther King Jr.’s stature and charisma to come along and lead the fight for justice, equality and economic fairness, Charlie Nelms offers this urgent advice: Stop waiting and get to work.
The North Carolina Central University Art Museum is once again showcasing the work of Durham’s best and brightest young artists. “Durham’s Finest,” an annual exhibit of art created by Durham Public Schools students, will open on Sunday, Jan. 22, at 2 p.m.
education for the school district. “It shows the progression and artistic development of the students.”
Image #2: “City Girl” by Autumn Mullin
North Carolina Central University received final approval today from the University of North Carolina Board of Governors to introduce a doctor of philosophy (Ph.D.) program in integrated biosciences. The university will now begin recruiting students to enter the program in fall 2012, and would award its degrees four years later. They would be the first Ph.D.s awarded by the university in more than 50 years.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
D. Keith Pigues, a business executive, author and teacher, has been named dean of the School of Business at North Carolina Central University.
Dr. Betty Pierce Dennis, who chaired the Nursing Department at North Carolina Central University from 1999 to 2004, has returned to chair the department once again as it heads into a period of significant expansion in its new, state-of-the-art teaching facility.
