Equity Award Recipients
Equity Awards recognize and publicize individuals and institutions that have achieved excellence in recruiting and retaining underrepresented racial and ethnic groups into the historic profession. Two equity awards are given annually: one for individuals and another for academic units. The award can be conferred for new initiatives or for sustained efforts. These equity awards are meant to recognize and publicize individuals and institutions that have achieved excellence in recruiting and retaining underrepresented racial and ethnic groups into the historic profession. While the awards are honorary and have no monetary component, winners receive a certificate of recognition that specially honors their efforts to secure and sustain diversity in the profession.
2021
Individual: Crystal Sanders, Penn State Univ.
Institutional: Northeastern State Univ., Dept. of History
2020
Institutional: Univ. of Nevada, Las Vegas, Dept. of History
2019
Individual: Calvin White Jr., Univ. of Arkansas
Institutional: Howard Univ., Dept. of History
2018
Individual: Tiffany Packer, Florida A&M Univ.
2017
Individual: Lorena Oropeza, Univ. of California, Davis
2016
Individual: Albert Camarillo, Stanford Univ.
Institutional: Univ. of Texas, El Paso, Dept. of History
2015
Individual: Victor Macias-Gonzalez, Univ. of Wisconsin-La Crosse
Institutional: Duke Univ., Graduate School (Jacqueline Looney, sr. assoc. dean for graduate programs and assoc. vice provost for academic diversity)
2014
Individual: Ernesto Chavez, Univ. of Texas, El Paso
Institutional: North Carolina Central Univ., Dept. of History (Jim C. Harper II, chair)
2013
Individual: David Jackson, Jr., Florida A&M Univ.
Institutional: Univ. of California, Irvine, ADVANCE Program for Equity and Diversity
2012
Individual: Herman Bennett, Graduate Center, CUNY
Institutional: Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst, W.E.B. Du Bois Dept. of Afro-American Studies
2011
Individual: Andres Tijerina, Austin Comm. Coll.
Institutional: Univ. of Arizona, Dept. of History
2010
Individual: George Sanchez, Univ. of Southern California
Institutional: Baruch Coll., CUNY, Dept. of History
2021 Equity Awards
Individual Award: Crystal Sanders, Penn State University
The AHA Committee on Minority Historians is pleased to award the 2021 Individual Equity Award to Crystal R. Sanders, associate professor of history at Penn State University. While an assistant professor in 2016, Sanders created, supervised, and recruited for the Emerging Scholars Program, a summer program for undergraduate students from historically underrepresented backgrounds to demystify graduate school and promote the profession through workshops and simulated doctoral seminars. As of the summer of 2020, at least nine former African American and Latinx program participants are in graduate school. From 2018 to 2020, Sanders served as director of Penn State’s Africana Research Center, where she oversaw a successful postdoctoral program that prepared recent PhD graduates for future faculty positions. While both programs were active, she created and ran the Midcareer Faculty Advancement Program, a resource to assist underrepresented associate professors in advancing to full professorships. These programs represent only a glimpse into Sanders’s sustained efforts in diversifying the profession and the academy.
Institutional Award: Northeastern State University, Department of History
The AHA Committee on Minority Historians is pleased to award the 2021 Institutional Equity Award to the Department of History at Northeastern State University, located in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, the seat of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians. Northeastern State’s history department actively recruits and supports Indigenous students, creating a sustained pipeline for Indigenous students to enter the profession as social studies teachers, public historians, and graduate students who are welcomed back to campus as internship supervisors, History Day judges, and guest speakers. With a full third of recent history and social studies education graduates identifying as Indigenous, the department’s faculty have demonstrated a sustained commitment to secure and sustain diversity in the discipline.