Lecture features NAACP award winner

The second Tilford Lecture Series of the Pittsburg State University fall 2007 season will feature an award-winning speaker whose work is opening the doors of higher education for underserved students.

Dr. Jeffrey R. Williams, Director of Access and Urban Outreach at the University of Missouri-Columbia and the Columbia branch recipient of the 2006 NAACP Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Award, will present his lecture at 2 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 15, at the Kansas Technology Center, Room S103. Lectures are presented through the series every month.

Williams’ presentation, “Recruitment and Retention of Domestic Minorities,” focuses on developing initiatives that target such students and broaden their access to selective universities. He has been published in ATQ (19th century American Literature and Culture), in Twayne Literary Voices: American Literature in Historical Context, 1870-1920, and in The Green Encyclopedia of African American Literature. His recent article on Benjamin Brawley (known as the “Negro Genius”) will appear in Race Struggles, an edited collection published by the University of Illinois.

The series is part of the Dr. Michael Tilford Group, which formed after Tilford, who served as dean of the Graduate College at Wichita State University, passed away in the mid-90s. The Tilford Conference is held there each year, and universities throughout the state now host lectures as a way to promote diversity and multiculturalism across universities and communities.

For more information on the series, contact Mark Johnson at 620-235-4628.

---Pitt State---