ARHU Dean Receives President's Commission on Ethnic Minority Issues Award

Dean Thornton Dill honored for fostering equality, diversity and inclusion across campus.

Bonnie Thornton Dill, dean for the College of Arts and Humanities (ARHU) and professor of women’s studies at the University of Maryland (UMD), has been awarded the President’s Commission on Ethnic Minority Issues (PCEMI) 2018 Faculty Minority Achievement Award.

The PCEMI awards recognize faculty, staff, students and individual units that have made outstanding contributions to the university’s equity efforts. The awards also recognize those who have worked to improve racial climate on the College Park Campus by creating an educational and work environment that is rich in diversity, inclusive and supportive of all students, faculty and staff.

Thornton Dill has supported campus-wide initiatives which impact scholarship and teaching. In particular, she has overseen an expansion in the number of faculty of color at the college and garnered public and private support for initiatives designed to apply arts and humanities scholarship to the everyday lives of underserved communities. She is principal investigator of a major grant from the The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation that brings together the study of African American history and culture with the digital humanities. Thornton Dill chaired the Byrd Stadium Naming Working Group, a president-appointed initiative in response to a student-led petition requesting the university to rename Byrd Stadium.

A pioneering scholar on the intersections of race, class and gender in the U.S. with an emphasis on African-American women, work and families, she is founding director of both the Center for Research on Women at the University of Memphis and the Consortium on Race, Gender, and Ethnicity at UMD. Her scholarship includes three books and numerous articles. Her recent research examined the experiences of historically underrepresented minority faculty in research universities, focusing specifically on the impact of occupational stress on their physical and mental health as well as their career paths.

The awards ceremony will take place on Friday, May 4 from 3-5 p.m. in the Special Events Room in McKeldin Library. Family, friends and colleagues of the dean are invited to join. Please RSVP with Jim Glenn at jhg3@umd.edu.