Ohio State Newark Professor Receives Diversity Award

The Ohio State University at Newark Dean/Director William L. MacDonald, PhD, and Central Ohio Technical College (COTC) President John M. Berry, PhD, presented the 2020 President’s & Dean/Director’s Diversity Award to Associate Professor Tiyi Morris, PhD.

“Professor Morris has worked tirelessly to enhance teaching about diversity, equity, justice and multicultural issues in her classes, curriculum development and service to Ohio State Newark,” read her nomination. “Students frequently express very strong gratitude for how much they have learned from her. Some even describe her teaching as ‘life-changing’ for them.”

Morris, who started at Ohio State Newark in 2006, is a member of Ohio State’s Department of African American and African Studies and has an interdisciplinary research and teaching focus that combines the fields of American history, Black studies and women’s studies. She authored the 2015 book Womanpower Unlimited and the Black Freedom Struggle in Mississippi which chronicles the integral role of the Black women’s organization in sustaining the civil rights movement in Mississippi.

As noted in her nomination, Morris’s other activities include:

Teaching in the Scarlet and Gray Excellence Learning Community for first-year students of color. 

Teaching in the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program to help both incarcerated and non-incarcerated students learn side-by-side key issues in women’s and gender studies. 

Leading education abroad trips to give students an international perspective of ethnic and racial diversity.

Serving on the ad-hoc Diversity and Inclusion Committee.

Helping to develop and make available a Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies minor at Ohio State Newark.

 
Through her teaching and extracurricular activities, Morris has “enlightened hundreds of students about important concepts, themes, historical issues, activism, and challenges facing people in the United States and around the world.”

The President’s & Dean/Director’s Diversity Award is established to recognize outstanding achievements which advance the college’s/campus’s overall awareness of and sensitivity to differences among people(s) including: race, mixed races and heritages, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, age, physical abilities, mental abilities, cultural heritage, religious beliefs, political beliefs, and geographic location. 

Central Ohio Technical College and The Ohio State University at Newark have forged an outstanding array of educational opportunities for the central Ohio region and beyond. This partnership is viewed as a model for higher education in the state of Ohio.  At Central Ohio Technical College, students gain hands-on, applicable experience to begin working in the field, or to transfer those credits toward a bachelor’s degree program. The Ohio State University at Newark offers an academic environment that is inclusive of diversity, challenging but supportive with world-renowned professors and access to Ohio State’s more than 200 majors.