In the book, Warren shows that some of the first people to name and challenge the school-to-prison pipeline (STPP) in a way that created a movement for change were Black and Brown parents and students of color in places like the Mississippi Delta. The movement they created played a pivotal role in placing the STPP on the agenda of educators and policymakers and led directly to the adoption by the Department of ����ֱ�� of federal guidelines warning against racially discriminatory school discipline policies. Where grassroots organizing has been strong and persistent, policymakers have ended zero-tolerance discipline policies and moved toward��restorative alternatives, leading to important declines in exclusionary discipline, as well as more��recent reforms to eliminate policing practices in schools.

“Change efforts in schools often focus on educators and school leaders, but usually fall short when it comes to addressing deep-seated systems that perpetuate inequity,” said��Grawemeyer Award for ����ֱ�� Director��and University of Louisville Professor of ����ֱ��al Psychology Jeff Valentine. “As ‘Willful Defiance’��powerfully demonstrates, the voices, experiences, and leadership of those most affected by these issues must be central to any meaningful process of change.”

The Grawemeyer Award for ����ֱ�� has been given annually since 1989. Notable winners whose scholarship has influenced Warren include Howard Gardner, Linda Darling-Hammond, James Comer, Carol Gilligan, and Diane Ravitch.

Warren will accept his award at a ceremony in Louisville on April 10.

“I’m honored to receive this award, and particularly gratified to see community-engaged scholarship recognized with the highest merit,” said Warren. “I thank my community partners, Black and Brown parents, students, and community organizers, who worked with me to produce this book as part of a movement for educational justice.”��

About the Grawemeyer Awards

Each year the Grawemeyer Awards honor the power of creative ideas to improve our culture via music composition, education, religion, psychology, and world order. Business executive and family man H. Charles Grawemeyer established the awards in 1984 at the University of Louisville in collaboration with Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Academics and community members choose among nominees from around the world to ensure that each winning idea is relevant to society at large. The University of Louisville announces the winners in December and presents the awards at a ceremony the following April. Each award winner receives $100,000, which they may use, if they choose, to develop and accelerate the spread of their powerful ideas. Learn more at .

The program is a nine-month training course where students gain hands-on experience creating and testing their ideas in the real world. The curriculum includes opportunities to prototype new designs while participating in workshops and lectures led by faculty at the UofL School of Medicine, College of Business and J.B. Speed School of Engineering.��

“This is about training the next generation of innovators in health care and medicine,” said In Kim, a professor of pediatric medicine and program lead. “With Bluegrass Biodesign, we hope to equip UofL students with the tools they need to launch technologies that can save lives.”��

Students complete the program in multidisciplinary teams, each blending undergraduate and graduate students in medicine and engineering. The idea is that they each bring insights from their own area of expertise that could help them solve problems and innovate.

“What we find is that innovation is a team sport,” said Beth Spurlin, an associate professor and co-director of the program. “The best solutions come from different people with different perspectives working together. With Bluegrass Biodesign, we give students the opportunity to experience that before they even leave campus.”

Eight teams — a total of 58 students —participated in the 2024-2025 cohort.��Logan Davis, an M.D./MBA student, said the experience taught him just how much work goes into developing the innovations his patients will one day rely on. His team worked on a device to help patients who struggle with both urinary control and motor tremor and/or dexterity. The solution for the former is to self-catheterize, which can be difficult without full control of your hands or arms.��

“We wanted to target this set of problems to give back some comfort and autonomy to these patients,” said Davis, who also was co-president for the 2023-2024 cohort. “This is a process I am so thankful to have been a part of, and I plan on using the biodesign process Bluegrass BioDesign is based on for the rest of my career to design/improve care for all of my patients.”

The student teams also complete business training via , the office’s accelerated entrepreneurial bootcamp that is part of UofL’s National Science Foundation program, housed in the . In the 2024 cycle, all eight teams received $3,000 in funding, along with mentorship and training, via the I-Corps program.

“We are thrilled to formalize the collaboration between Bluegrass Biodesign and UofL’s I-Corps program,” said Jessica Sharon, senior director of innovation programs and new ventures, who leads I-Corps and LaunchIt. “We are proud of these students’ hard work in the program to identify and validate market needs they are working to solve!”

Applications for the next cycle of Bluegrass Biodesign will be open for submission at the beginning of the spring 2025 semester. Learn more and apply .

Every child can rise

As president of ​ (HCZ), a world-renowned education and poverty-fighting organization based in New York City, Canada has made it his life’s work to help young people from under-resourced communities succeed. , HCZ now serves more than 34,000 students and families living in a 97-block area of Central Harlem in New York City.

Growing up in an impoverished south Bronx neighborhood, Canada said he has seen firsthand the result of young people not receiving quality education.

“It’s life and death,” he said. “My mother had four sons, but only three made it. At 72-years-old, not one of my friends I grew up with is alive today,” said Canada. “It means the ability to take care of your family or fall into a black hole that sucks you in and destroys lives.”

Canada’s keynote speech was a commentary on the state-of-affairs in education and a rally cry to educators to change their perspective on what it means to stand up for every child.

Aftermath of COVID-19

Today’s educators, schools and students face daunting challenges, many exacerbated by the upheaval and trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Learning loss is real, and many kids have not caught up academically and never will unless we do something,” said Canada. “We may think things have returned to normal, but our children have not recovered. What we are doing is passing along a whole generation of kids who don’t have the ability to be college ready.”

Canada said that makes it more important than ever to offer programs like UofL’s newly launched , which reaches out to youth in middle and high school to equip and nurture them with essential skills, mentoring, supports and networks they need to be ready for the higher education experience and success in life.

“We need to give these young people just a sniff of the American dream so they can believe there is a way for them to make it,” he said.

Through his hard work with the Harlem Children’s Zone, Canada’s efforts have resulted in placement of nearly 1,000 kids in college – kids who never thought college could be part of their future. Canada said changing expectations is key to shifting that culture from believing college is not for them to believing college is definitely for them.

“When 1,000 kids come home in the summer from college, they see people they know and start to think, ‘If he can go to college, I could go to college.’ It becomes normal,” Canada explained.

Thinking creatively ��

Although Canada attended one of the worst schools in the nation as a child, he said unfortunately not much has changed.

“If you go in those schools today, they start and end at the same time, and kids are taught the same way, even though we know that for 60 years, it hasn’t worked,” he said. “We must do different things.”

In an effort to lead change, Canada created a charter school in Harlem where there are after-school supports until 7 p.m. Saturday school also is available throughout the year for struggling kids. These efforts, he said, have yielded considerable progress in closing achievement gaps in math and reading.

“Why do we think we can teach the same way to everyone? What are the diverse ways we can save these young people? We can save some kids through academics, or athletics, or art, or mental health or physical health, or parents, grandparents or siblings,” he said.

For university educators, Canada believes they, too, need to continue figuring out what is working and what is not, especially for young people with little exposure to college.

“These are complicated times, but our mission cannot change, and we cannot sit on the sidelines,” said Canada. “We have to take a stand.”

Two University of California sociologists exploring that question are cowinners of the 2024 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award in ����ֱ�� for their ideas in “Broke: The Racial Consequences of Underfunding Public Universities.” University of Chicago Press published the in 2021.

In the work, and argue that decades of cuts in public funding for public universities have eroded schools’ abilities to deliver a quality education to racially and economically marginalized students.

For years, public universities operated mainly with government funds, which have been tapering off since the 1980s.�� Most schools have had to trim costs and raise tuition. Many have turned to philanthropy, investments and other sources of private income to stay afloat, a trend that has penalized schools with the highest number of marginalized students, Hamilton and Nielsen found.

“Public universities have faced decades of austerity and were hit hard by COVID-19, but those primarily serving marginalized students are being literally starved for resources,” Hamilton said.

In a study focusing on UC’s system of nine schools, Hamilton and Nielsen found the two campuses with the highest number of such students, Merced and Riverside, received fewer system resources. Some underfunded universities struggle to provide basic services to students, who may wait a month or more for mental health appointments and compete with hundreds of their peers to schedule sessions with academic advisers.

“This pattern is not just restricted to the UC system,” Hamilton said. “University wealth is nationally concentrated at schools that serve very few marginalized students.”

Hamilton and Nielsen make a compelling case for rethinking the way we fund public universities, said education award director Jeff Valentine. “Their work raises important ethical and philosophical questions about what higher education is, what it should be and how a more equitable funding method can benefit everyone in our society.”

Recipients of next year’s are being named this week pending formal trustee approval. The annual, $100,000 prizes also honor seminal ideas in music, world order, psychology and religion. Winners will visit Louisville in the spring to accept their awards and give free talks on their winning ideas.

Jennifer Morton, an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, earned the prize for her ideas in “Moving Up without Losing Your Way: The Ethical Costs of Upward Mobility.” Princeton University Press published the in 2019.

The dream of achieving success by attending college is deeply flawed for some, says Morton, a first-generation college student who left Peru to attend Princeton. Drawing on her own experience, philosophical and social science research and interviews with first-generation, low-income and immigrant students, she found that the college experience often forces students to turn away from family and friends to achieve academic success.

For example, one student caring for an ill sister told Morton she had missed so many classes and assignment due dates she wasn’t sure she could catch up. Another student said he had cut ties with his community to be able to manage college.

“First-generation students are often putting their relationships with friends, family and their communities on the line,” Morton said. “We need to recognize their sacrifices and focus on the social, emotional and ethical aspects of their college experience, not simply on grade-point averages and graduation rates.”

, who also is a senior fellow at the University of Wisconsin’s Center for Ethics and ����ֱ��, has worked at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, City College of New York and Swarthmore College. She has a doctor of philosophy degree from Stanford University and has received several awards, including the American Philosophical Association’s Scheffler Prize.

“By focusing on the dilemmas first-generation and low-income students can face when pursuing a degree, Morton shed light on an important but often neglected issue,” said Jeff Valentine, education award director. “She also offers strategies that colleges, faculty and students themselves can use to navigate these challenges.”

Recipients of next year’s are being named Dec. 5-9 pending formal approval by trustees. The annual, $100,000 prizes also honor seminal ideas in music, world order, psychology and religion. Winners will visit Louisville in the spring to accept their awards and give free talks on their winning ideas.

Her passion for helping others led her to UofL, where she became a first-generation student, Woodford R. Porter scholar, Multicultural Teacher Recruitment Program scholar and president of the Kentucky ����ֱ�� Association’s student program on campus, among several other accomplishments. Now, all of Hunter’s hard work has paid off and she’s earned her degree in early education with a track in learning and behavior disorders.

However, Hunter strayed from the path to becoming an educator before finally discovering her calling. She came into college undecided of her major and focused on taking general education courses to explore her options and find her purpose. She tried out nursing, but quickly realized that was not the career for her.

“I met with my advisor and got into the lower division of nursing and everything,” she said. “Everyone was so helpful, but in that first week of nursing classes, I figured out that was not for me. I don’t like blood.”

She ultimately switched to education and never looked back.

“I think I always knew I wanted to be a teacher, but I had those thoughts running through my head, like, ‘Oh, they have to deal with this and that and they don’t get paid enough,’” she said. “But once I let all of that go and went toward what I love to do, which is being with kids and helping them out, I really found my true passion in teaching.”

While in high school, Hunter participated in a buddy program where she helped students in a moderate to severe disability classroom. Her experience sparked her interest in helping those with learning and behavior disorders. ��

“For one period of the day, I would help students with life skills and go on field trips to learn skills like counting money or how to pick out hygiene products,” she said. “We were trying to get those students ready for transitioning in their lives. We helped prepare them for what life after high school would look like and made sure they had the skills they need to transition successfully.”

Hunter, who hails from Shelbyville, knew then she had a passion for helping people. And when it came time for her to decide on a college, an on-campus tour of UofL’s campus and a scholarship opportunity helped make the decision an easy one.

“I toured around the university with my cousin who was a student and I just loved it. I saw so many diverse groups of people, which was so different for me, especially coming from a small town,” she said. “It was very different for me, but an exciting type of different, so I applied for and got the Woodford Porter scholarship, which really swayed me to attend here.”

Being a Porter scholar provided Hunter with a community that helped her discover more about herself and build relationships that have helped her succeed in education.

“I’ve been a Porter since my freshman year and that has allowed me to make so many connections with not just other Black students, but Black educators. That’s something I’ve not seen a lot of, so those opportunities to connect and network with other Black educators has been really great,” she said. “It’s also allowed me to learn a lot more about myself and connect with my dad’s side of the family, which is my Black side.”

Hunter credits her parents for helping her not only become a first-generation student, but to achieve everything she’s accomplished over the last four years.

“My mom and dad cared so much and wanted to make it different for me, so they learned along with me and helped me through it all,” she said. “It feels really good to graduate first-gen. Especially since I had no idea at first going through the process of learning all the things that come with college and now I know and can help others and my future children one day.”

In addition to her multiple scholarships, Hunter also serves as a peer buddy for the Best Buddies program, is a member of the Black Student Union, Baptist Campus Ministry, Kentucky Association of Professional African American Women and works as a student success ambassador on campus.

“I have mentees that are also first-gen students and helping them find resources and support from the Student Success Center has also provided so much help for me too,” she said. “Seeing the impact I’ve made on my mentees’ lives has been so rewarding.”

Hunter’s professors and mentors have inspired her to make an impact on others.

“I’ve seen the passion all my professors have and being able to help other educators like they’ve helped me is what I want to do. Especially in education, you always need a mentor and someone to help you. I want to be that person to give that back to new teachers or college students or kids.”

For her next move, Hunter is going to attend grad school at UofL to pursue her master’s in teacher leadership with an ESL endorsement this fall.

One of Hunter’s fondest memories from her time in undergrad is helping a student learn to write his name during her student teaching.

“It’s incredible what you can do just by showing a student they are loved.”

He took time to talk with UofL News about recent career accomplishments, Black Studies and Black ����ֱ��al Theory as areas of research, as well as the interdisciplinary nature of his work.

UofL News: It seems your career has expanded over the past year, including tenure, a dual-appointment, high productivity in publications – what is the force behind this success?

Washington: The dual-appointment with Pan-African Studies has allowed me to revisit both my academic work and the person I was when I entered my doctoral program. So, I tell a lot of folks that this dual appointment is really me being my most honest and congruent professional self. I went into my doctoral program deeply immersed in Black psychology and Black educational practice literature. I felt alienated because it sometimes seemed there wasn’t anyone in my department that tapped into that work and made the connection back to counseling. It feels rejuvenating to be back to where I started thinking about these issues whether they be counseling or education through the lens of Black peoples’ experiences. That’s what I am most excited about.

UofL News: Hip-hop doesn’t always seem like the most common area of research. Talk a bit about that passion and translating it into your academic work.

Washington: I went into my doctoral program already in love and infatuated with hip-hop studies and hip-hop culture. It never occurred to me during my matriculation that it could be an area of research. For me, part of being the researcher and academic I am today is an effort to ultimately develop a presence in counselor education that lives and breathes hip-hop and recognizes its inherent therapeutic value.

In terms of translating this work to practice – I knew hip-hop was therapeutic from the moment that I met it. It’s an epiphany to white school educators – like ‘wow, hip-hop is amazing and can be therapeutic.’ My question is, when has Black cultural production not been therapeutic? The frustrating part of this is having to convince folks of hip-hop as a discipline. The things that Black and Brown folks have been saying for ages is meaningful to their existence – we are just coming around to treating it as a discipline? It can be frustrating. I’m not doing anything innovative, this work has been going on since the 80s. But it is still difficult to find an accredited program with references to hip-hop culture.

UofL News: While the dual appointment is relatively new, how has it informed your work in the College of ����ֱ�� and Human Development and vice versa? How has it informed your teaching?

Washington: Pan-African Studies has so many ethical responses to the questions that are assumed to be asked in other disciplines. Critical race theory – the conversation that folks in education seem to have only just now showed up to – constitutes the core of what Black studies has been since its inception.

Take the Socratic method, for example. It is inherently problematic to associate the ability to do this pedagogical intervention to a man named Socrates, when there were folks doing it before he even existed. You can’t talk about the Socratic method and say you don’t engage in forms of white supremacy. So, this field is about creating basic and foundational courses that raise consciousness. There are things we do as teachers that we proclaim we would not do, but we do them because they are woven into the way we are taught to be teachers.

UofL News: Talk a bit about your work in schools throughout Jefferson County.

Washington: Most of my work has occurred at Central High School and the Academy at Shawnee. At Central, my work is with the Muhammad Ali Institute and the Muhammad Ali Scholars program. That program seeks to create a pipeline to our undergraduate programs.

I also co-developed and co-taught a course there called Hip-Hop Culture in American History. That was a rigorous and intense elective course. They were working through the same textbook that we would use for college students, and the course was the last period of the day. We had students signing up for that class even after the semester had begun. So, in terms of evidence of investment and engagement, that is meaningful.��

UofL News: How do you see that developing in the future?

Washington: I have never relinquished the aspiration and the desire to contribute to the creation of a school counseling program that has hip-hop culture and pop culture as a core foundational ingredient. I think that’s meaningful and important, and it doesn’t exist in school counseling. There are programs and certificates that are related to hip-hop studies that show promise, so there are examples to prove that it’s viable.

UofL News: What makes the work we do at UofL distinct or unique from other schools across the country?

Washington: UofL’s Department of Pan-African Studies is one of the first in the region and the only degree-granting department in Kentucky. That’s impactful. Thinking about that and the possibility of contributing to that revitalization and history is something that makes our work unique.

Washington recently published a co-authored chapter in the book by Cheryl Holcomb McCoy, released November 2021. His chapter entitled, “Decolonizing the Counseling Canon” was written alongside Janice A. Byrd, Pennsylvania State University and Joseph M. Williams, University of Virginia.��

Rucker Johnson, a University of California-Berkeley public policy professor specializing in education economics, received the prize for ideas set forth in “Children of the Dream: Why School Integration Works,” his 2019 book written with Alexander Nazaryan and co-published by Basic Books and the Russell Sage Foundation.

studied the progress of more than 15,000 schoolchildren through adulthood. He found those who attended integrated schools experienced greater educational attainment, earned more income, faced less poverty, enjoyed better health and were not as likely to go to prison as adults than those who attended segregated schools.

“Many people believe integration was a failure when in fact it was actually a success,” Johnson said.

Although the United States is more racially diverse today than ever, school segregation has increased and educators are still witnessing significant student achievement gaps linked to socioeconomic status and race, he noted. The best way to fix the problem is to restore integration, boost funding for high-need schools and improve preschool education, he suggests.

“Our public schools can play a transformative role in creating opportunity, lowering poverty and encouraging upward mobility, or they can reinforce inequality. The choice is up to us.”

Johnson, who has studied topics ranging from federal spending on the Head Start program to the effects of school reform on education and the economy, has been invited to give policy briefings at the White House and Capitol Hill.

Despite a belief held by some Americans that the school integration of several decades ago did more harm than good, ��Johnson found the opposite to be true, said Jeffrey Valentine, who directs the education award.

“His study offers compelling evidence of how integration and more equitable school funding can improve life outcomes for black students without harming other students,” Valentine said. “He also makes a strong case for improving our nation’s educational system through public policies that encourage integration, strengthen early education and create a fairer funding model for schools.”

Recipients of next year’s are being named this week pending formal approval by university trustees. The annual, $100,000 prizes also honor seminal ideas in music, world order, psychology and religion. Winners will visit Louisville in April to accept their awards and give free talks on their winning ideas.

“It gives me great pleasure to announce Marion Hambrick as the new executive director of the Grawemeyer Awards. Dr. Hambrick comes highly recommended by his colleagues and peers, and we are grateful for his willingness to accept the role,” said UofL Provost Lori Stewart Gonzalez.��“The Grawemeyer Awards pay intentional and profound tribute to the power of creative ideas and the impact a single idea can have on the world.��I am confident Dr. Hambrick has the intellectual acumen and motivation to continue advancing Charles Grawemeyer’s vision of inspiring, honoring and nurturing achievements in ,��,��, and��.”

Hambrick served as the director of the Grawemeyer Award in ����ֱ�� from 2017 to 2020. The Grawemeyer Awards are presented annually by UofL and the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. By creating these awards, UofL alumnus����found a way to inspire, honor and nurture scholarly achievement.

Hambrick earned his BA in finance from Transylvania University in 1995, his MBA in finance from the University of Kentucky in 1996 and his PhD in educational leadership and organizational development with an emphasis in sport administration from UofL in 2010.

His teaching areas focus on financial principles in sports and conducting doctoral seminars in sport administration research. His research interests are centered on social network analysis in sports and recreational sport participation.

He was presented with the Red and Black Award for outstanding advising and instruction in 2010 and 2012 and was a UofL Faculty Favorite nominee in 2013 and 2015. Hambrick is a member of the North American Society for Sport Management and is lead or co-author of articles published in journals such as Managing Sport and Leisure, Sport Management Review, Journal of Sport Behavior and others.

Hambrick succeeds Charles Leonard, who retired from UofL in November.

UofL presents the annual prizes for innovative ideas and works in music composition, world order, psychology and education and gives a religion prize jointly with the seminary. Award recipients will be named at 10 a.m. EST on the following dates:

• Music Composition, Dec. 6
• Ideas Improving World Order, Dec. 7
• Psychology, Dec. 8
• ����ֱ��, Dec. 9
• Religion, Dec. 10

All recipients will be asked to visit Louisville in April to accept their $100,000 prizes and give free talks about their winning ideas.

Charles Grawemeyer, a UofL graduate, former seminary trustee and philanthropist, set up the awards program in 1984 to recognize the power of creative thought and underscore the impact a single idea can have on the world. He also asked that laypeople be involved in award selection to ensure broad understanding of the winning ideas.