Sojourner Truth Awards celebrate diversity and achievement

MIDDLETOWN — Orange County Community College will sponsor the Sojourner Truth Awards, a program for elementary and secondary age students to promote positive consideration of college, at 7 p.m. on Friday, March 10, at the Physical Education Building at the Middletown campus. Students from grades six through 12 - who have demonstrated skills in areas like languages, arts, mathematics, sciences, performing and media arts, athletics, citizenship, perseverance and effort - will be recognized. The guest speaker will be Dr. Joshua L. Smith. In December 1999, Smith was cited by Black Issues in Higher Education as one of the 20th Century college presidents who have influenced the higher education landscape, and for being “unafraid to take risks and unyielding in their commitment to educational equity.” The Sojourner Truth Award program is named in honor of Sojourner Truth, a woman who lived in the mid-Hudson Valley region after escaping from slavery, and who has been hailed as one of the most highly-regarded woman of the nineteenth century. For more information, call 341-4000 or write to bmedina@sunyorange.edu.