Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Last Call to be featured in the UCR Black Alumni June Newsletter
Alumni , Faculty/Staff and students last call to be featured in the June newsletter saluting the 2009 Graduates and Entrepreneurs. email ucrblackalumni (at) gmail (dot) com
Friday, May 8, 2009
Desserts for Distinction Drive
The UCR Black Alumni Association would like to announce our first Desserts for Distinction Drive and we want the 2009 to celebrate the taste of accomplishment. Success is Sweet!
We are asking that each alumni, organizations & parents attending the UCR Black Graduation Ceremony to sponsor one sealed dessert to donate to the reception.
please respond by May 22nd or send an email to ucrblackalumni@gmail.com
Countdown to the UCR Black Graduation Ceremony.
The UCR Black Alumni Association is proud to announce we are hosting the post ceremony reception. Volunteers and Donations are needed please email ucrblackalumni@gmail.com
http://www.facebook.com/n/?event.php&eid=93039736512&mid=59b7efG657b03e5G2452G30
Please join us as we recognize the 2009 Graduating Alumni of UC Riverside and celebrate the next generation of leaders!
The Black Graduation Committee needs your Alumni Support!!!
As the budgets have been greatly reduced at all universities , the graduation committee has worked diligently to fund raise for the event and now needs your help to send off our graduates with a bang.
On behalf of the UCR Black Alumni Association we request the following in-kind donations and volunteers for the reception.The expected turn out is between 600-800 people.
Volunteers:
Ushers to hand out programs and assist with seating
Runners
Catering
Beverages
Ice
(Desserts)
Plates, Utensils,Napkins
Table Cloths
Balloons
If you are able to assist with any of the volunteer staffing or in-kind donations please email ucrblackalumni (at) gmail.com
2009 UCR Black Graduation Ceremony
http://www.facebook.com/n/?
| Host: | UCR Black Graduation Committee |
| Type: | |
| Network: | Global |
| Date: | Sunday, June 7, 2009 |
| Time: | 2:00pm - 5:00pm |
| Location: | UC Riverside Recreation Center |
| Phone: | 9518274576 |
| Email: |
Please join us as we recognize the 2009 Graduating Alumni of UC Riverside and celebrate the next generation of leaders!
The Black Graduation Committee needs your Alumni Support!!!
As the budgets have been greatly reduced at all universities , the graduation committee has worked diligently to fund raise for the event and now needs your help to send off our graduates with a bang.
On behalf of the UCR Black Alumni Association we request the following in-kind donations and volunteers for the reception.The expected turn out is between 600-800 people.
Volunteers:
Ushers to hand out programs and assist with seating
Runners
Catering
Beverages
Ice
(Desserts)
Plates, Utensils,Napkins
Table Cloths
Balloons
If you are able to assist with any of the volunteer staffing or in-kind donations please email ucrblackalumni (at) gmail.com
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
City of Riverside 9th Annual Juneteenth
City of Riverside 9th Annual Juneteenth June 6, 12-6pm Bordwell Park, 2008 Martin Luther King Riverside. For more information 877-752-1619
Basketball Success Builds Good Citizens
Case study of Philadelphia program by UCR researcher Scott Brooks offers insights into creating successful youth development programs.
(May 6, 2009)
NEWS MEDIA CONTACT
Name: Bettye MillerTel: (951) 827-7847
E-mail: bettye.miller@ucr.edu
In a study that appears today in Policy Matters, a quarterly journal published by UC Riverside, Scott Brooks, assistant professor of sociology at UCR, concludes that when cities invest in youth development programs, those programs “can have a positive effect on the lives of children and adults, and can help spur and shape its future growth and identity.”
The article is available at http://policymatters.ucr.edu.
Sports are the centerpiece of federal, state and local efforts in poor, inner-city poor communities to mitigate school truancy and dropouts, juvenile violence, delinquency, and gang participation. Sports participation is a socializing institution, and involvement leads to greater self-esteem, school engagement, and higher educational aspirations, Brooks says.
The success of sport-based social interventions depends on the strength of nonsport components, Brooks says, such as: the development and use of local resources to nurture cultural and social niches, the creation of synergies and status associated with the activity, and the engagement of residents from different generations.
“Customized youth development programs can indeed have noticeable impacts if they involve more than simply the primary activity,” he says.
Brooks coached youth basketball in Philadelphia for nearly a decade and has been an assistant basketball coach at a public high school in Riverside for two years. His report, “Making Basketball Work: Ensuring Success in Youth Development Programs,” is a case study of youth basketball in Philadelphia, where the sport is played from cradle to grave, and is taken seriously and played rigorously at all skill levels and arenas of competition.
“Philadelphia is a basketball city because of its storied past, its multiple and interconnected levels of basketball, and its socioeconomic structure and networks,” Brooks writes. “And these factors work together to create a local basketball world and culture, and influence how some people use the city’s resources and carve a social identity as basketball players.”
Programs like Midnight Basketball are an important part of legislative crime packages at the state and local level, he says. “The premise is that sport, and basketball in particular, helps to integrate youth, particularly young black males, in positive ways. This is problematic and misses the larger structural issues and conditions facing the inner-city poor.”
Most programs simply roll out balls and let kids play, he says. However, research shows that activities and organizations that influence behavior, identities and lives need some central components of institutionalization to be successful.
Brooks cites as an example a Philadelphia league that has the goal of making youths successful basketball players, on and off the court. Games are structured, recorded and regulated like college and professional basketball, and typically draw audiences of peers, community residents, and high school and college basketball coaches.
The league takes pride in helping young men to have more opportunities for success and to become good citizens, Brooks says. “Men in the league are seen as role models, and they often act as father figures.” Those men enforce broader social conventions regarding decorum and respect for authority and teamwork, and help combat the notion of black men as absent fathers and father figures, he says.
Although other cities may not share similar histories of cradle-to-grave basketball leagues that grow collegiate or NBA champions, every community has some sporting or other activity that can involve residents at different levels and in varied roles to build successful youth development programs, Brooks says.
The Philadelphia experience can be useful in modeling best practices for such programs, he says, such as:
- Resource and capital assessment. Determine what the community does well or could do well, and adopt a multifaceted approach that embraces girls and boys in sports and nonsports activities.
- Promote programs and participants, both locally and nationally. Such programs could increase tourism and employment, as well as attract new, productive citizens.
- Create and take advantage of synergies between cities and programs whenever possible. Visibility increases interest in an organization or institution. The need for job training to support youth development programs can help spur the development of courses and programs in local colleges and high schools.
- Support the right programs with resources. Successful programs must be rewarded. Be sure to address the needs of girls and women, who tend to participate in sports at lower rates. Programs that encourage their participation are necessary for women’s health, fitness, and social integration and empowerment.
Monday, May 4, 2009
The Henry Ramsey Jr. Emergency Loan Fund * Notable Alumni
Henry Ramsey
 |
Henry Ramsey Jr. |
“The beginning of the semester when you have to buy books and groceries, that is a hard moment,” says Ramsey. “In the words of the business community, ‘It’s a cash flow problem.’ You need a bridge to get over a temporary rough spot.”
The Gift
Set up a decade ago, The Henry Ramsey Jr. Emergency Loan Fund — a revolving, no interest, short-term loan fund of $30,000 — is open to undergraduate students who are in good academic standing and are qualified to receive need-based financial aid. Students can borrow up to $1,000, which must be paid back in 30 days.
Since 1999, the fund has made 223 loans totaling $125,706.14, helping students to pay for books and groceries, rent and car repairs.
The Inspiration
“I couldn’t have gotten my higher education without emergency help for little things,” notes Ramsey. “I thought there would be others who would be in the same spot and need this kind of assistance.”
Ramsey had a rewarding moment a few years back when he spoke at UCR. Students who were helped by the Ramsey fund stopped by to say thanks. “It was very satisfying,” says Ramsey.
Ramsey’s time at UCR and his groundbreaking career are detailed in his autobiography, “The Life Story of Henry Ramsey Jr.,” which was published in January
He graduated from UC Riverside in 1960 and went on to receive a law degree from UC Berkeley in 1963. Ramsey taught at Berkeley’s law school, Boalt Hall, from 1971 to 1980, during which he also served on the Berkeley City Council from 1973 to 1977. He went on to serve on the Superior Court of California from 1981 to 1991. Ramsey served as the dean of the Howard University School of Law from 1991 to 1996. He has been active on several committees and boards of the American Bar Association and in 2002 served as Chief of Party of the U.S. Agency for International Development-funded Nigeria Rule of Law Assistance Project. The project was designed to address elements of the Nigerian judicial system that Nigerian stakeholders identified as needing improvement and strengthening.
People You Should Know: Experts on Campus
Name: Karen Wilson * Notable Alumni
Category: Culture: African-American CultureTitle: Lecturer in the Department of History
Degree: MA and Ph.D. in history from UC Riverside, as well as from Teachers College, Columbia University.
Areas of Expertise: Karen Wilson is a singer-storyteller, scholar and teaching artist who was born in Harlem, New York. Karen sings music across the spectrum of the African Diaspora in the United States including spirituals, calls, hollers, jazz, blues and rhythm and blues. She collected and premiered "A Tribute To Blueswomen: Beauty and the Blues" with her group, Blue Wave — New York. With Blue Wave — West, she created and premiered, "The Cool Intellectuality of Wise Women's Blues: Ida Cox and Friends."
__________________________________________________________________
Name: Vorris Nunley
Category: Culture: African-American Culture
Title: Assistant Professor of English
Degree: Ph.D. Pennsylvania State University
Areas of Expertise: Coretta Scott King was and is important for women in general and specifically to African American women to understanding movements for civil and human rights. Dr. King described her as more than a
"supportive spouse," she was a partner. She even demanded the "obey"
element of the wedding vows be removed in a time when such things were very difficult. While valuing the struggle against racial oppression, she clearly understood how the gender oppression and the marginalization of women was central to any notion of African American or human uplift. A notion too often, in practice, overlooked by the men of the American Civil Rights and other emancipatory movements.
The very fact we know so little of her contribution to the rights of African Americans and to women in general is a tribute to her sacrifice to something larger than herself and a cautionary tale about how the contributions of women continues to be repressed in "official" histories around a variety of socially significant events.
___________________________________________________________________
Name: Yolanda T. Moses * Notable Alumni
Category: Culture: African-American Culture
Title: Special Assistant to the Chancellor for Excellence and Diversity/Vice Provost, Conflict Resolution; Professor of Anthropology
Degree: Ph.D. University of California, Riverside Areas of Expertise: Professor Moses' research focuses on the broad question of the origins of social inequality in complex societies through comparative ethnographic and survey methods. She has explored gender and class disparities in the Caribbean and East Africa. More recently her research has focused on issues of diversity and change in universities and colleges in the United States, India and South Africa.
As president of the American Anthropological Association in the mid-1990s she led the effort to develop a traveling exhibit and web site about race. The project - "RACE: Are We So Different?" - launched in January. Moses is the chair of the advisory board and one of eight curators of the project
UCR Announces Inland Empire Achievement Scholarship Program
New Scholarship Program at UCR Rewards Grades and Community Service
(April 28, 2009)
NEWS MEDIA CONTACT
Name: Kris LovekinTel: (951) 827-2495
E-mail: kris.lovekin@ucr.edu
The Inland Empire Achievement Scholarship Program will offer a $2,500 annual scholarship to two local high school students and two local community college students who have excelled academically at the same time as they have offered some kind of service to their communities. Applications have been received, but names of the recipients have not yet been announced.
“Our goal is to encourage outstanding students from the Inland Empire to remain in the area after they graduate,” said Timothy P. White, UCR chancellor. “I’m grateful to my predecessor, Robert Grey, for shepherding this effort to reward area students for their hard work.”
The chancellor said the idea for the scholarship stemmed from discussions with the Educational Leadership Federation (ELF) of Riverside & San Bernardino Counties, a partnership between UCR and education leaders in the surrounding area. He said he was still hopeful that more such pipelines would be built for young people in the area.
The scholarships will begin for Fall, 2009 and are renewable for up to four years for high school students and two years for transfer students. In order to be considered, applicants must be enrolled as a senior at a high school in Riverside or San Bernardino Counties and be admitted to UCR. Candidates must have a minimum grade point average of 3.65 in UC-required courses and demonstrated service to the local community. Recipients must achieve a 3.0 grade point average while enrolled at UCR to renew the scholarship for the remaining 3 years.
Community college applicants must be enrolled at a community college in Riverside or San Bernardino Counties and have a 3.3 grade point average, demonstrated community service, and an offer of admission from UCR. Recipients must achieve a 3.0 grade point average while enrolled at UCR to renew the scholarship for the second year.
Information about the scholarship program is available from Sheryl Hayes, director of the the UCR financial aide office. She can be reached at: sheryl.hayes@ucr.edu or (951) 827-3878.
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