UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — AnneMarie Mingo, assistant professor of African American and women’s studies in the College of the Liberal Arts, is the 2016 recipient of the Barash Award for Human Service.
Created in 1975 by the family of the late Sy Barash, the award honors a full-time member of the faculty or staff or student body on the University Park campus who, apart from his or her regular duties, has contributed the most to human causes, public service activities and organizations, or the welfare of fellow humans.
Events such as the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, show that work remains in strengthening race relations across the nation, and Mingo is challenging students to be a part of that solution. She’s also been an understanding ear for students struggling to grapple with these controversies.
Mingo turned a negative into a positive when Penn State students expressed anger and frustration while being heckled during a protest over Brown’s death. Mingo stressed with them strategies for positive change and was later tapped to attend a meeting with community leaders focusing on finding a better way forward.
“Students looking for advice during the controversies over our ‘Die-In’ event flocked to her, campus and community leaders seeking more systematic and robust ways of communicating around controversial events sought her out, the president of our University invited her — a brand new assistant professor — to serve on a newly established diversity committee,” said a colleague.
After the massacre at the predominantly black Mother Emmanuel A.M.E. Church in South Carolina, Mingo found another chance to enact change. She met with grief-stricken students, took part in a graduate student-led peace march, and helped organize a memorial service fundraiser for the church at a local A.M.E. church.
A colleague said Mingo is “deeply and inescapably committed to promoting the welfare of her fellows, both in her work as an ethicist and her life as a citizen,” adding that her efforts improve the community and have “cultivated the resources to work across its tensions and divides, and to work through its grief and outrage.”