UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Earl F. Merritt, director of the Office of Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity in the Penn State College of the Liberal Arts, received the 121st Elder Watson Diggs Award from the Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity at July 19 awards ceremony held during the organization’s 86th Conclave in Tampa, Florida.
Kappa Alpha Psi is the nation’s second-oldest existing collegiate historically Black Greek letter fraternity and the first intercollegiate fraternity incorporated as a national body. The organization boasts more than 125,000 members and seven hundred undergraduate and alumni chapters in nearly every state and in international chapters in Nigeria, South Africa, the West Indies, the United Kingdom, Germany, Korea, and Japan.
The Elder Watson Diggs Award is the second highest honor bestowed by the fraternity to honor a member’s meritorious achievements. The award consists of a gold medallion bearing the likeness of fraternity founder Elder Watson Diggs and a framed certificate of merit.
Merritt — lauded as “a student of achievement, leader of men, and vanguard of excellence” during the awards ceremony — has held various chapter and province leadership roles in Kappa Alpha Psi since being inducted into the fraternity in 1969 while a student Kentucky State University. He was a charter member of the fraternity’s Bowling Green (Kentucky) Alumni Chapter and State College (Pennsylvania) Alumni Association and is currently a member and a past polemarch for its Harrisburg (Pennsylvania) Alumni Chapter. He is also currently a member of the Alpha Upsilon Foundation board of directors, which is overseeing the development of an endowment to support students at Kentucky State.
Additional awards previously bestowed on Merritt include the James M. Kidd Award for Distinguished Service from Kappa Alpha Psi’s Northeastern Province; the Outstanding Fraternity University Adviser Award and the Outstanding Panhellenic Adviser Award from Penn State; and the American Association for Higher Education Black Caucus Exemplary Award for Public Service.
Merritt received bachelor’s degrees in history, political science and sociology from Kentucky State University; a master’s degree in counseling from Murray State University; and a master’s degree in child development and family living from Western Kentucky University. He has been at Penn State since 1977 and has guided the College of the Liberal Arts’ Office of Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity (and its predecessors) since 1989.