Black scholars’ meeting stretches minds

NORFOLK, Va. – They discoursed on U.S. economic sanctions and “mesoscale convective… NORFOLK, Va. – They discoursed on U.S. economic sanctions and “mesoscale convective complexes.” They mastered trivia questions on Shakespeare lines and black inventors.

More than 350 young scholars, mostly from black colleges, gathered Thursday to energize their intellects at the annual meeting of the National Association of African American Honors Programs.

“Sometimes our schools are looked at as being less-than,” said Makena Hammond, a Virginia State University junior from Newport News, Va., who discussed her research on diabetes Saturday. “It’s important for people to know that we’re excelling in academia and making strides.”

A half-dozen students from Norfolk State University led sessions Thursday afternoon ranging from protests in the 1960s to education in 2004.

Five students – juniors Shannon Hunt and Tyra Vaughn and seniors Madia Brown, Risi Green and Melencia Johnson – recalled the contributions black students made to the civil rights movement – from lunch counter sit-ins to fiery columns in praise of the Afro.

In 1963, a group of NSU students marched to City Hall with a petition demanding an end to discrimination in employment, schools and museums, said Green, a 20-year-old from Chesapeake. The group’s vow: “The fight has yet to begin.”

Brown, a 21-year-old journalism major from South Carolina, said, “I don’t think we are as unified a generation as we were back in the civil rights era. But there are still people out there who have opinions and are voicing them.”

At the Sheraton Norfolk Waterside Hotel, senior LaKeisha Sanderlin ticked off the dangers the No Child Left Behind education law poses for blacks. The law’s demands could scare people from teaching, she said. Its encouragement of charter schools and student transfers could cause dislocation.

“You no longer develop that sense of community that you get at a neighborhood school,” said Sanderlin, a senior from Norfolk studying journalism. “There is a sense of disconnection.”

Next came the Quiz Bowl, pitting Norfolk State against Hampton University in the first round.

Hampton senior Curtis Duncan, a 21-year-old from Atlanta who is studying marketing, answered some toughies: The largest lake in the world is the Caspian Sea.

But Norfolk State overwhelmed Hampton, 110-25, powered by two voices of experience – Sanderlin, who is 30, and Sheldon Collins, a 51-year-old senior from Chesapeake who is majoring in history. Sanderlin knew the study of ancient life forms using fossils is called paleontology. Collins knew that “Alas, poor Yorick” came from “Hamlet.”

No one knew that Jesse Jackson’s 1970s organization Operation PUSH stood for People United to Save Humanity.

The National Association of African American Honors Programs was founded in 1990 to nurture honors programs at black colleges and promote scholarly pursuits. NSU’s program has 175 students, said its director, Page R. Laws.

In addition to honors classes, students present papers at conferences and attend cultural events, such as plays and operas. “It’s really very good practice for students who may enter scholarly professions because they’re basically the same kind of conferences you do if you go into the academic world,” Laws said.

Some students at the three-day conference are planning just that. Others don’t foresee graduate school. But all seem to be aiming high. Green, a psychology major, wants to be a psychologist helping patients cope with serious diseases. Tiara White, a Hampton senior from Toano, Va., who led a session Saturday promoting diversity, already has an offer as an accountant for PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Hammond, the Virginia State student, is going into medicine. Her talk will focus on her research last summer on “diabetic retinopathy” – the degenerative effect of diabetes on vision.

Other sessions will cover black poets, cloning, outsourcing of jobs and the role of the black barbershop.

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(c) 2004, The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, Va.).

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