ALUMNI NEWS
Prairie View A&M University's Associate Provost Dr. James A. Wilson Jr. Discusses Academics, and Innovation
By Dr. Samuel Odom
D r. James A. Wilson, Jr. (Iota Delta 1982) took some time to sit down with Brother Dr. Samuel Odom to discuss and share his collegiate, fraternal and profes- sional experiences for The Journal . Dr. Wilson indicated currently serves as the Associate Provost for Academic Affairs and the Director of Faculty Innovation and Enhancement (FIE) at Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU). In this capacity, Wilson as- sists in the university’s strategic planning and development as well as strengthen- ing PVAMU’s institutional and curricular enrichment programs.” Dr. Wilson joined PVAMU in 2009 as the Director of the Honors Program and an Associate Professor of His- tory. The following year, he was named Associate Provost and Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs. Dr. Wilson further established and enhanced foreign language and study abroad opportunities for student-to-stu- dent Chinese and Arabic exchanges and oversaw the opening of PVAMU’s Con- fucius Institute in 2014. He launched a partnership with Xi’an International Studies University. He also developed a foreign language partnership with the Summer Foreign Language Program at Middlebury College in Vermont, one of the most prestigious language programs in the country.” Dr. Wilson was selected as one of the 2019-2020 American Council on Education (ACE) Fellows, and he spent the year at Rice University working with President David W. Leebron. The ACE Fellows program prepares promising academics for leadership roles as future Provost or Presidents of universities and
colleges in the United States. He was nominated for this honor by President Ruth J. Simmons. Honors Program As Director of the Honors Program at PVAMU, Dr. Wilson advised and supported over 200 undergraduate Hon- ors students to study abroad in China, Korea, Taiwan, Ghana, South Africa, Morocco, France, Italy, Costa Rica, and Cuba. Each student received mentoring and assistance to continue their educa- tion at some of the nation’s top-ranked medical, law, and graduate programs. Each year, over 98% of these Honors students graduated at the top of their classes in three or four years. Immedi- ately upon graduating from PVAMU, Dr. Wilson and his Honors staff members worked diligently to ensure these stu- dents were admitted to institutions such as: MIT, Cornell, Duke, UCLA, Rice, Berkeley, Northwestern, University of Chicago, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Drexel University, University of Iowa, Carnegie Mellon University, Uni- versity of Wisconsin, Purdue University, University of New Mexico, University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M University, University of Houston, Southern Meth- odist University, Grand Canyon Univer- sity, Howard Medical School, University of Texas Galveston Branch Medical School, and Morehouse Medical School. Dr. Wilson sent multiple students to each of the school so that the brand of these outstanding students would eventually become a demand as recruit- ers began to contact Dr. Wilson for graduating seniors. Without question, very long hours produced some positive results in the nine years Wilson served as Director of the program.
“I enjoyed teaching the Honors Colloquium each year. I created a very challenging course entitled, The History of Images and Hollywood’s Construct of Black People. I first taught this course at the University of Texas at Austin with only two African American in the course of 35 undergraduate students. It was a big hit and so when I arrived at PVAMU, I wanted to challenge the Honors students so they could be introduced to critical theory, film studies, a historical perspective they had not experienced before, and a comprehensive way to think and write. I thought this course as if these bright freshmen were first year Princeton history graduate students. And it was exciting.” “Establishing individual profiles of academic excellence, a command of Chinese language skills and study abroad experiences, and a desire to con- duct cutting-edge research at the under- graduate level—substantially positioned my students to be competitive and I am so proud of these young intellectuals because we will be reading about them in a few years,” said Wilson. In addition to entering top-ranked graduate and professional programs, Dr. Wilson also encouraged students to con- sider the Peace Corps, because he was a
50 | SPRING 2021 ♦ THE JOURNAL
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