COLUMBUS -- Jacqueline Jones Royster, professor of English and senior associate dean in The Ohio State University's College of Humanities, has received the Pioneer Award in higher education from the Ohio Department of Education.

The award, launched in 1999 by Ohio's Superintendent of Public Instruction Susan Pave Zelman, recognizes individuals who have dedicated their lives to education in significant ways that impact public education in Ohio. The award was presented to seven recipients during the Teaming for Leadership conference last Tuesday.

Education is a part of Royster's family history. Her mother taught in rural schools in Georgia for 32 years. "I apprenticed at the feet of the master," she said. "She was an excellent model of what it means to be a teacher and is a personal blessing in my own life."

After serving more than 16 years on the faculty of Spelman College in Atlanta, Royster joined Ohio State's faculty in 1992. She is a graduate of Spelman and received both her master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Michigan.

While at Spelman, Royster and several colleagues founded SAGE: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women. This group co-edited the anthology Double-Stitch, Black Women Write about Mothers and Daughters and co-sponsored the SAGE writer/scholar program at Spelman College.

Since 1991, Royster has spent summers teaching at the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College in Ripton, Vt., where teachers from rural and urban settings across the country and around the world, including Ohio, gather to enhance their abilities to teach literature and writing.

Royster is the author of several articles, book chapters and books, including Traces of a Stream: Literacy and Social Change Among African Women, published this year. She also is working with Jerrie Cobb Scott, professor of education, University of Memphis; and Dolores Straker, associate dean for academic affairs at the City University of New York, on the textbook Classroom Environments: Wisdom and Practice.

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