TO THE CHAPTER INVISIBLE
Students on White Campuses” (1981), Dr. Smith emerged as a pioneer of the now widely recognized discipline of educational equity and race consciousness. Prior his tenure as a professor at Baruch College, Dr. Smith held faculty positions at Northeastern Illinois State University, Bethune-Cookman College, Atlanta University and the Uni- versity of Pittsburgh. At Baruch College he held several key positions, including chairman of the Department of Education, director of open admissions, chairman of the Committee for the Creation of the School of Public Affairs, chairman of the Black and Hispanic Faculty Association, and founding chairman of the CUNY African American Faculty and Staff Network. He was chair of the University Community Educational Programs at the University of Pittsburgh, where he created the Malcolm Marcus Martin Scholarship. At Baruch College, Dr. Smith held many key positions including Associate Provost, Professor and Chair of the Department of Education, and Director of Open Admissions. He chaired the committee for the cre- ation of the School of Public Affairs and also chaired the college’s Black and Hispanic Faculty Association. He was the founding chair of the CUNY African American Faculty and Staff Network. He also oversaw the Baruch College Search for Education Evaluation Knowledge (SEEK) Program in its early days. Outside of Baruch, Dr. Smith held numerous posi- tions including past president of the National Alliance of Black School Educators (NABSE), as well as the founding president of its New York chapter. He com- missioned NABSE’s seminal report “Saving the African American Child.” He chaired the New York city Board of Education’s Commission on Students of African De- scent and wrote the report, “Dropping Out of School in New York State: The Invisible People of Color.” He was a founding member and first chair of the Board for the Education of People of African Ancestry and served as U.S. representative of the University of South Africa. He was a consultant to the President's National Advisory Council on Education, the Rock- efeller Foundation, and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, among many others. He advised numerous public-school systems, colleges and universities across the country, including the New York City, Jersey City, Newark and several New Jersey
public school systems. He chaired the New York City Board of Education’s Commission on Students of African Descent and wrote the report, “Dropping Out of School in New York State: The Invisible People of Color.” From 1995-2014, Baruch College hosted the annual Dr. Don- ald H. Smith Distinguished Lecture series which featured scholars in the areas of African and African American history and culture. In 2002, Dr. Smith’s autobiography “Climbin’ Up the Mountain Children: The Journey of an African Ameri- can Educator, was published. On December 7, 2019, historic Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, NY held a memorial service in memory of Dr. Donald H. Smith.
Smith featured in an article entitled "Story of a Kappa Home" by C. Rodger Wilson in the December 1953 issue of the Kappa Alpha Psi ® Journal, Volume XXXIX, Number 4.
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