ACE Honors The Ohio State University’s James L. Moore III With 2021 Reginald Wilson Diversity Leadership Award
May 20, 2021

​​​​ACE announced today that James L. Moore III, vice provost for diversity and inclusion and chief diversity officer at The Ohio State University (OSU), is the recipient of the 2021 Reginald Wilson Diversity Leadership Award.

The award is named in honor of the late Reginald Wilson, who served as senior scholar emeritus at ACE and was founding director of the Council's Office of Minority Concerns, and is presented annually to an individual who has made outstanding contributions and demonstrated sustained commitment to diversity in higher education. Wilson passed away Dec. 13, 2020.

James Moore III

James L. Moore III

“Dr. Moore is one of the most influential voices in our country when it comes to addressing the ongoing structural issues of racism and equity on our campuses and in the community,” said ACE President Ted Mitchell. “He gives critical voice to the needs of underrepresented student populations. He has created dynamic academic spaces focusing on Black males in the academy and those spaces serve as a beacon of strength and hope for higher education nationally and internationally.”

Moore’s work on expanding diversity to underrepresented populations began in Ohio but has spread around the world. Serving as the inaugural EHE Distinguished Professor of Urban Education, he is also the first executive director of the Todd Anthony Bell National Resource Center on the African American Male at OSU, which has increased the cumulative GPAs of undergraduate Black males, and he is co-founder and co-organizer of the annual International Colloquium on Black Males in Education, a scholarly endeavor that fosters collaborations with ministries of education in various countries.

His leadership of OSU’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion, one of the oldest, largest, and most comprehensive of its kind in the country, has sustained close relationships with nine of the largest urban public-school districts in Ohio through its Young Scholars Programs (grades 8-12), and beyond. During his tenure at the National Science Foundation (NSF), Moore was one of the program directors who founded and launched a $100 million national program to broaden access and participation in STEM and now offers guidance to and collaborates with faculty at OSU and at other universities on several NSF grants.

Having co-edited five books with over 150 publications, his research agenda focuses on school counseling, gifted education, urban education, higher education, multicultural education/counseling, and STEM education. Moore has obtained over $28 million in grants, contracts, and gifts; and given over 200 scholarly presentations and lectures throughout the United States and other parts of the world (e.g., Brazil, Bermuda, Jamaica, Canada, England, Spain, China, India, Indonesia, and France). He has earned numerous prestigious awards, honors, and distinctions and was selected to be an ACE Fellow, an American Counseling Association Fellow, and a Big Ten Committee on Institutional Cooperation Academic Leadership Program Fellow. Since 2018, Moore has been cited by Education Week as one of the 200 most influential scholars and researchers in the United States.

Moore received his B.A. in English Education from Delaware State University and both his M.A.Ed. and Ph.D. in Counselor Education from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

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