Professor receives 2019 AESA Lifetime Achievement Award

Cynthia Dillard, the Mary Frances Early Professor of Teacher Education in the College of Education’s department of educational theory and practice, was recently awarded the 2019 Taylor & Francis Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Foundations of Education from the American Educational Studies Association (AESA).

“I have won a number of awards in my academic career, but receiving the 2019 AESA/Taylor-Francis Lifetime Achievement Award is very special,” Dillard said. “It signifies that my work and spirit as a black feminist scholar has literally fortified the very foundations of the field of education.”

Two of her books, “On Spiritual Strivings: Transforming an African American Woman’s Academic Life” and “Engaging Culture, Race and Spirituality: New Visions,” were awarded the AESA Critics Choice Book Award in 2008 and 2014, respectively.

AESA is a society comprised of college and university professors who teach and research in the field of education and focus within liberal arts disciplines such as history, politics and sociology.

Dillard will deliver a lecture at AESA’s annual conference in Baltimore on Oct. 31 and will be recognized at AESA’s awards ceremony on Nov. 2.