Event Program

2022 Award Recipients

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Amanda Boston | Dr. Larry E. Davis Emerging Scholar Award

Dr. Amanda Boston is an assistant professor in the Department of Africana Studies. Her research, writing, and teaching focus on twentieth-century and contemporary African American urban history, politics, and popular culture. Her current projects explore gentrification’s racial operations in her hometown of Brooklyn, New York and their role in the making and unmaking of the borough’s Black communities. Boston holds a PhD and an MA in Africana Studies from Brown University, as well as an MA in Political Science and a BA in Political Science and African & African American Studies from Duke University. Prior to joining the Pitt faculty, she was a Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow at New York University.

Esa Davis | Dr. Larry E. Davis Excellence in Faculty Mentorship Award

Esa M. Davis, MD, MPH, FAAFP, is an Associate Professor of Medicine, Clinical and Translational Science at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. She is the Director of the UPMC Tobacco Treatment Service, Co-Director of the Clinical and Translational Science Institute’s KL2 scholars’ program, and Director of the Career Education and Enhancement for Health Career Research Diversity (CEED) program at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Davis’s research areas of interest include understanding perinatal determinants of adverse maternal cardiovascular health outcomes and in improving treatment strategies for tobacco use disorder in both hospitalized and presurgical patients. Her research has contributed new knowledge on the relationship of perinatal risk factors for maternal obesity, racial inequities, and adverse health outcomes, including gestational diabetes, peripartum cardiomyopathy and hypertension disorders of pregnancy. She has conducted comparative effectiveness trials on screening strategies for gestational diabetes, strategies to reduce postpartum hypertension, and strategies to treat hospitalized tobacco users after discharge. Her research has been funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. She has served on national committees including National Academy of Sciences, NIH study sections and American Heart Association (AHA) Research Committee and chaired the AHA Peer Review Sub-committee. She currently serves on the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, the AHA Funding and Quality Certification Committees, and the AHA Greater Pittsburgh Affiliates Board. Dr. Davis is a practicing family medicine physician, who maintains a primary care practice and coordinates a women’s health contraception clinic providing gynecological services to underserved women. She directs the UPMC Tobacco Treatment Service, which provides inpatient treatment to hospitalized tobacco users, outpatient perioperative treatment to presurgical patients, education and training to physicians and clinical staff, and conducts clinical trials. She teaches and mentors students and trainees across all levels and disciplines. She has extensive teaching and mentoring experience and has won several research and teaching awards. She is dedicated to improving the career pathway for underrepresented minorities and women in science and medicine. 

Jay Huguley | Dr. Larry E. Davis Excellence in Community-Engaged Scholarship Award

Dr. James P. Huguley’ is an Associate Professor and the Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work. He is also the chair of Race and Youth Development research at the Center on Race and Social Problems. Dr. Huguley’s research focuses on school-based interventions that promote positive developmental outcomes for students of color, particularly in urban school settings. He is the Principal Investigator for the Just Discipline Project, a community-engaged, research-to-practice initiative centered on best practices in positive school climate and restorative school discipline. Through his work with Just Discipline, approximately 7,000 students in Greater Pittsburgh are receiving relational and behavioral support in school. He is also Co-Principal Investigator on the Pittsburgh Parenting Project, which examines best practices in culturally distinct parenting in African American families, and the DREAMs program, which provides trauma-responsive support to students in schools in a relational and restorative model. Dr. Huguley has received over $10 million in funding to support his community-engaged research efforts and has published his work in leading journals across fields, including Psychological Bulletin, Educational Research, and Race and Social Problems. Prior to his academic career Dr. Huguley was a youth program director and middle school teacher. He received his bachelor's in English and Secondary Education from Providence College, and both his master’s in risk and Prevention and doctorate in Human Development and Psychology from Harvard University.

Valerie Kinloch | Dr. Larry E. Davis Excellence in Leadership Award

Dr. Valerie Kinloch began her tenure as the Renée and Richard Goldman Endowed Dean and Professor of the University of Pittsburgh School of Education in July 2017. Under her leadership, the school has strengthened its commitments to equity, justice, and innovation by focusing on teaching, research, community engagement, academic programs, student success, faculty development, and alumni involvement. Among her many professional appointments, Dean Kinloch is President of the National Council of Teachers of English, a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), a Fellow of the American Council on Education (ACE), a member of the Board of Trustees of Johnson C. Smith University (her undergraduate alma mater), and Co-Chair of Remake Learning. Dean Kinloch is the author and co-editor of numerous books and publications on race, place, identities, literacies, and justice, including the newly released Where is the Justice? Engaged Pedagogies in Schools and Communities and the critically acclaimed and award-winning Harlem on Our Minds: Place, Race, and the Literacies of Urban Youth. She holds a BA in English from Johnson C. Smith University, and an MA in English and African American literature, and a PhD in English and Composition Studies with a cognate in Urban Studies from Wayne State University. Currently, she is working on projects focused on transformative leadership and justice-directed community-engaged initiatives.

Sandra Murray | Dr. Larry E. Davis Academic Excellence Award

Sandra Murray is a Professor in the Department of Cell Biology, School of Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. She received her BA from the University of Illinois in Biology, an MS in Biology from Texas Southern University, and a PhD in Anatomy from the University of Iowa. She completed her postdoctoral studies in Molecular Cell Endocrinology at the University of California, Riverside. Dr. Murray combines imaging, biochemical, and molecular approaches to elucidate the mechanisms that regulate gap junction protein (connexin) removal from the surface membrane and the fate of these proteins once removed. She has been invited to present her research findings at national and international scientific meetings and she has published a long list of articles in peer-reviewed journals. Over the years, she has integrated her research and professional development activities to enhance the training of undergraduates, graduates, postdoctoral fellows, and junior faculty members in Pittsburgh, across the country, as well as internationally. Her passion and skills for mentoring and training have been enhanced by serving as a member of the Minorities Affairs Committee of the  American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) and of the Endocrine Society, Student Affairs, and Publication Committees. She has served as a co-chair or program director for the ASCB Junior Faculty and Postdoctoral Fellows Career Development Workshop and Visiting Professor Programs. She has influenced training and mentoring policies while on the advisory boards of the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students and the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology and ASCB council.