News

Following a national search, Johnson C. Smith University is pleased to announce the appointment of its band staff. 

The staff will be led by Dr. Tomisha Brock, director of Bands and assistant professor of Music. She will be assisted by Justin Hubbard, assistant director; Aja McAllister, dance instructor; Dairon McGraw, flag coordinator; and Ronnie Freeman, percussion instructor.

For Dr. Tyler Bunzey, assistant professor of Cultural Studies at Johnson C. Smith University, his courses offer students the unique opportunity to learn from industry greats.

This semester, he’s invited four fashion designers, some of whom have designed for Gucci, P Diddy, King Combs and Kodak Black, to his classrooms via Zoom. They all donated their time for free to inspire students to engage in creativity. 

The Department of Counseling Services at Johnson C. Smith University was recently awarded the Garrett Lee Smith Suicide Prevention Awareness Grant to address mental health concerns on campus.

Tierra Parsons, director of Counseling Services at JCSU, says the nearly $300,000 grant will help the campus take a proactive approach to mental health. The grant announcement came just one day before the start of National Suicide Prevention Month, which began Sept. 1.  

While most teenagers headed off to high school excited to see their friends and learn something new, Obaida Mohammad and his siblings were stopped daily at Israeli checkpoint crossings in Israel-Palestine. Mohammad and his fellow Palestinians experienced and continue to experience much more traumatic inconveniences than checkpoints. Through his lived experience of midnight raids of villages and homes, arrests without cause and extreme military presence and oversight, Mohammad decided it was time to start discussing the humanitarian crisis that is the continual displacement of the Palestinian people.

Hundreds of new Golden Bulls joined together Thursday morning in the Jane M. Smith Memorial Church for Freshman Convocation.

The convocation, which is a rite of passage for all new Smithites entering the storied University, featured the bestowing of cords and pins as new students recited the honor code and received official greetings from their elected student leaders, administration and Dr. Valerie Kinloch, 15th president of JCSU.

In August, HBCU Living Legends, an initiative aimed at uplifting historically Black colleges and Universities in North Carolina, hosted a gala celebrating the 2023 Class of HBCU Living Legends.
This year’s Johnson C. Smith University class includes civil rights pioneer Dorothy Counts-Scoggins ’64, former Bennett College president Dr. Phyllis Dawkins ’75 and radio host Larry Mims ’00.

The pews were packed in the Jane M. Smith Memorial Church Thursday as Johnson C. Smith University kicked off its inaugural Lyceum Engagement Series with a public address from Dr. Valerie Kinloch, the 15th president of JCSU.

Kinloch shared her strategic vision for the University with the crowd, which was comprised of faculty, staff, alumni, community members and student groups, including the entire IIOS Marching Band and Golden Bulls Football team.

Dr. Angela White, dean of College University and Student Success, hopes to make Johnson C. Smith University a model for holistic, coordinated student care at an HBCU. In order to accomplish that goal, she has instituted two initiatives that will work hand-in-hand to address student needs both inside and outside of the classroom.

Israel-Palestine is a spiritual mecca for several world religions. Now, students at Johnson C. Smith University will have the opportunity to embark on a two-week journey to the region in Summer 2024. This will be the first study abroad trip held since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which handicapped or all together halted travel to certain areas outside of the U.S. 

Calina and Paul Hillman, with the assistance of their two young children and a cousin, rose up early Friday to help their son Jashaun Clark move into his room on the second floor of Myers Hall.

The parents looked at Clark with pride as they explained he was their first child to attend college, and they were excited to see how Johnson C. Smith University could transform Clark into the best version of himself both on and off the track.