PATRONS

BIO

B.S., Northeastern University (with High Honors)

M.A. (English), Northeastern University

Ed.D., Boston University

Joyce Hope Scott teaches American Popular Culture, Race in America, Senior Seminar in American Studies, African-American, Caribbean Literature and History, African American Theatre, Media and Race and an international service learning/travel course to West Africa.

She has received two senior Fulbright Lecturing & Research Scholarships in American Studies, a Fulbright-Hayes Award, Wheelock's Gordon Marshall Fellowship and Cynthia Longfellow Excellence in Teaching Award, and an award from the Gilder Lehrman Institute. Hope Scott is a former scholar of the Oxford Round Table (England), and her long-term commitment to internationalization of the American educational experience as well as her general interest in the "multi-voiced narrative" of US history has led her to lecturing and research opportunities across the USA and in many countries around the world.  

BIO

   The Honorable Bill Owens was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1972 and to the Massachusetts Senate in 1974.  He was elected to the Senate after serving only one term in the House of Representatives.   

   He held a number of leadership positions, one of which gave him responsibility for oversight of a $7 billion budget as Chairman of the Committee on Human Services and Elderly Affairs.   

   He took the lead in the Senate to secure $30 million to build Roxbury Community College and $19 million to build the Reggie Lewis Athletic Center adjacent to the College.  Owens legislatively created the State Office of Minority and Women Business Assistance (SOMBA) to promote business development and ownership by people of color and women. He also created the Urban Initiative Fund, Roxbury Trust, China Town Trust and The Minority Health Commission and many more initiatives Including filing the first legislation to call for Reparations since reconstruction. Currently he is a patron and chair board of trustee African Heritage Women in Education and Empowerment.    

BIO

  PhD    Columbia University
MA      Columbia University   

 Dr. Umeh received her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she was a graduate fellow in the Department of African Languages and Literatures, specializing in African women writers in the second half of the twentieth century. The former Chair of the Department of English at Anambra State College of Education (Awka, Nigeria), Dr. Umeh has received PSC-CUNY awards and a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Award in Feminist Theory and Literary Criticism. At John Jay, she has taught Literatures of the African World, Research Methods, Writing Composition, Western Literatures and Modern Literature. She has authored critical and theoretical essays that appear in journals and books throughout Africa, Europe and North America. She is also the editor of two anthologies, Emerging Perspectives on Buchi Emechta (1996) and Emerging Perspectives on Flora Nwapa (1998), published by Africa World Press; she is contributing editor to Who's Who in Contemporary Women's Writing (Routledge 2001).