Researcher of Black Educators & Students Honored for Service Learning

Dr. Julius Davis Recognized for Involving Students in His Research & Community Outreach

MEDIA CONTACT: Damita Chambers, dchambers@bowiestate.edu, 301-832-2628 mobile

(BOWIE, Md.) – A Bowie State University education researcher, who is developing a national model program to encourage more Black males to become educators, is being honored for outstanding achievements in service-learning scholarship – another recent recognition of his professional contributions. 

Dr. Julius Davis was selected for the Campus Compact Mid-Atlantic’s Early Career Engaged Scholarship Award, recognizing a scholar for their outstanding research in curricular and/or co-curricular service-learning that advances the field. He will be presented with the award on Dec. 10 in a virtual ceremony.

“I am always humbled to represent Bowie State through my work, especially for an award for engaged scholarship around curricular and co-curricular service-learning,” he said. “A big part of what we were trying to do with the center is bridge theory, research and practice. It’s important for our students to learn how to do that. For a lot of our students, they had not even thought about graduate school or a career in research until we provided them with the experience.”

Dr. Davis launched the Center for Research & Mentoring of Black Male Students & Teachers (bowiestate.edu/centerforblackmales) in 2019 with funding from the University System of Maryland (USM)’s Wilkins H. Elkins Professorship. Since then, Dr. Davis has worked with the center’s leadership team to develop youth programming, community partnerships and research to expand the pipeline for more black males to enter the education profession, where they only represent about 3 percent of the workforce. Dr. Davis is also a 2020 USM Elkins Professor, which has continued to fund the center’s work for another year.

In the 2019-20 academic year, the center collaborated with more than 20 partners, published more than 23 scholarly publications, established the Black Male Teachers College for about 20 black male youth and organized the Bowie Educators and Leaders Alliance. The center has also engaged Bowie State students in its work through the Scholar Fellows program, which provides mentoring, networking and professional development program for college students.

Madeline Yates, executive director of the Campus Compact Mid-Atlantic, said the Dr. Davis’s scholarship is “an exemplary model to other faculty in the Mid-Atlantic region.”

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