Oakwood Qualifies to Compete at Honda Campus All-Star Challenge Nationals in California

Oakwood University's HCASC Team 2015: (l-r) Greg Edouard, '15; Sesly Huerfano, '17; Coach Dr. Rennae Elliott, Communication Department chairperson; Parris Boles, '15; and Jennifer Miller, '15.

Completing a hard-fought journey that began in the fall, the team representing Oakwood University has qualified to compete at the Honda Campus All-Star Challenge (HCASC) National Championship Tournament to be held March 21-25 in Torrance, California. Now in its 26th season, HCASC is a unique academic competition that showcases the academic prowess of the best and brightest students from America's Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).

With 76 HBCUs vying for a spot in the Nationals, teams competed in seven qualifying tournaments held in late January. Forty-eight teams emerged from the group, including Oakwood earning the opportunity to compete for the title of "National Champion" and a $50,000 institutional grant from Honda.

Greg Edouard, Parris Boles, Sesly Huerfano, and Jennifer Miller will represent Oakwood. Dr. Rennae Elliott, Chairperson, Communications Department will coach the team.

The 2015 National Championship Tournament will be live-streamed on Monday, March 23rd starting at 12:00 ET on HCASC.com and other websites.

For more information on the 2015 HCASC, including a full list of the 48 qualifying teams, visit www.hcasc.com. Connect with HCASC via social media for updates on Facebook and Twitter using #HCASC.

The Honda Campus All-Star Challenge has been celebrating HBCU excellence since 1989. The Honda Campus All-Star Challenge is one of Honda's largest and longest running philanthropic initiatives in the United States. Since 1989, the program has awarded more than $7.5 million in grants to participating HBCUs, impacting the lives of over 100,000 students across 22 states. The participating HBCUs share in grants from Honda of up to $328,000 each year.

Oakwood Set for Home Depot Competition

The Home Depot, the world's largest home improvement retailer, has accepted Oakwood's application for its 2015 Retool Your School Campus Improvement Grant Program. This program, established in 2010, provides support for campus improvement projects at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) across the country.

This year, the Retool Your School Grant Program will use a new grant structure which will award a total of $255,000 in grants to 9 accredited HBCUs in $50,000, $25,000, and $10,000 grant denominations. Based on student enrollment, schools will be categorized into one of three clusters:

schools with 4,000 students or more,
schools with between 3,999 and 1,201 students, or
schools with less than 1,200 students.

"This is a very exciting year for The Home Depot's Retool Your School program," says Melissa Brown, manager, Multicultural Marketing, The Home Depot. "For the first time, student bodies are competing for grant money against schools their same size. This allows for larger and more impactful improvements to be made to the winning schools."

Online voting will take place from February 27 to April 20, at www.retoolyourschool.com.

During the online voting period, Oakwood supporters can view descriptions of projects and cast one vote per day per device for their favorite HBCU project. Supporters can also capture votes for Oakwood by using the designated hashtag on social media. Each use of a school's Retool Your School designated hashtag counts as one social media vote. We will share the hashtag next week.

Following the online vote, judges will also evaluate each school's project proposals within the qualifying clusters. Judges will consider the depth of each proposal and the school's ability to execute the project within the respective budgets of $50,000, $25,000, or $10,000, as applicable.

Oakwood's three proposals highlight how each project will make a lasting, positive impact on the campus. The three projects are:

$50,000 - Mile-long circuit of outdoor exercise stations emphasizing the laws of health
$25,000 - Fruit trees near the Unity Pond
$10,000 - Bleachers for fans and seating for players on the soccer field

The Home Depot will announce the grant recipients on May 11, 2015.

Oakwood Remembers Anna Knight

Florence Knight Blaylock and Dorothy Knight Marsh pause for a photo opportunity with Oakwood administrators.

The Eva B. Dykes Library and Office of the Provost is proud to have sponsored a Tribute to Anna Knight, presented by her nieces Florence Knight Blaylock, '58, and Dorothy Knight Marsh, earlier today in the Powell Auditorium.

Anna Knight was the first Christian female to serve as a missionary to India. She was trained as a nurse by Dr. John Kellogg, at the Battle Creek Sanitarium. She is also well-known for her contributions to education.

Knight was the founder of the National Colored Teachers Association in 1922, an organization she served for 37 years. The life of Miss Anna Knight is a considerable part of the "Oakwood story." To read more about her life, click here.

Oakwood Choirs Plan Service and Singing Activities for Spring Break

The Aeolians will be doing something different for this year's annual Spring Tour. They will be ministering to children suffering from HIV who live in Jamaica. With the exception of the two concerts listed below, their priority is to bring as much joy as possible into the children's lives, spending quality time sharing words of encouragement and love, playing group games, and singing songs.

The two scheduled performances in Jamaica are:

February 28 | 7:30 p.m.

Main Auditorium

Northern Caribbean University - Mandeville, Manchester

March 7 | 8:00 p.m.

Karl Hendrickson Auditorium

Jamaica College - Old Hope Road, Kingston 6

Voices of Triumph will be ministering in Orlando, Florida, spending time at various nursing homes, area academies, Boys & Girls Clubs, and detention centers. Their two scheduled performances are:

February 28

Patmos Chapel Seventh-day Adventist Church | Orlando, Fla.

March 7

Mt. Calvary Seventh-day Adventist Church | Tampa, Fla.

Dynamic Praise has released its tour schedule to include the following:

February 27, 7:00 p.m.

Emmanuel-Brinklow Church

18800 New Hampshire Avenue, Ashton, MD 20861

February 28, 11:00 a.m.

Metropolitan SDA Church

6307 Riggs Road, Hyattsville, MD 20783

February 28, 7:00 p.m.

Location: Community Praise Center Church, 1400 Russell Road

Alexandria, VA 22301

March 1, 8:30 a.m.

New Shiloh Baptist Church

Alumni Notes

Keith Goodman, '96, senior pastor of the North Philadelphia Seventh-day Adventist Church, announced his candidacy for mayor on February 15. Read the story here. (Photo: Tom Gralish/Staff Photographer, philly.com)

Dr. Frank Mullins, '97, Assistant Professor of Management at North Carolina A&T State University (NC A&T), along with co-authors, Pamela Brandes and Ravi Dharwadkar, recently published a manuscript titled, "To thine shareholders be true? Linking large corporate ownership to the firms' use of commitment human resource practices, in Human Resource Management (HRM)."

Mullins has been recognized as a 2014-2015 Louis O. Kelso Fellow by the Employee Ownership Foundation and Rutgers University, School of Management and Labor Relations. This $12,500 fellowship is given for the study of shared capitalism in business and society.

In 2014, Mullins was honored as a recipient of the Junior Faculty Teaching Excellence Award given annually to two junior faculty members university-wide at NC A&T.

He is married to Maquisha Mullins,'98, who is completing a Ph.D. in Leadership Studies with a concentration in leadership development at NC A&T. They are the proud parents of three boys - Jared, Darin, and Caleb.

Pollard's Places

This past weekend, Prudence and I had the privilege of presenting at the Annual Marriage Retreat of the South Atlantic Conference, in Charleston, South Carolina. The event was attended by 200 couples, ranging from 6 months of marriage to 60 years of marriage! All enjoyed the enrichment. Congratulations to the administration of the South Atlantic Conference, Elder and Mrs. William Winston, president and first lady; and Elder and Mrs. Melvin Preston, Family Life coordinators.

OU Picture of the Week

The National Weather Service's issuing winter weather advisories for the Huntsville/Madison County area led Oakwood's Administration to delay the opening of offices and beginning of classes until 10:00 a.m. on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. This morning brought a little bit of snow to the campus. Pictured here is East Hall, the oldest building on campus. Our hearts go out to families and individuals in the northeastern part of the country, and other areas where far more severe winter weather is occurring. Photo by Richard Hodnett.

About Oakwood

The mission of Oakwood University, a historically black, Seventh-day Adventist institution, is to transform students through biblically-based education for service to God and humanity.