Terrell L. Strayhorn is Professor of Higher Education and Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies at Illinois State University. He also serves as Director of the Center for the Study of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Visiting Scholar in the Evelyn Reid Syphax School of Education at Virginia Union University (VUU), where he worked as Provost and Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs. Previously, he has served as an academic leader and/or faculty member at The Ohio State University (OSU), University of Tennessee-Knoxville (UTK), and LeMoyne-Owen College. He has held faculty affiliations with the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race & Ethnicity, the Todd A. Bell National Resource Center on the African American Male and the Criminal Justice Research Center at Ohio State and continues affiliations with the Rutgers Center for Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs), VUU Center for Transcendent Leadership, and Research Advisory Board for Children's Defense Funds Freedom Schools.An acclaimed student success scholar and respected expert on issues of diversity, racial equity, and belonging, Professor Strayhorn is author/editor of 11 books, including The Evolving Challenges of Black College Students (2010), College Students’ Sense of Belonging (2012), Living at the Intersections (2013), and Theoretical Frameworks in College Student Research (2013), to name a few. He has published more than 200 refereed journal article & book chapters and more than 150 papers at international and national conferences. External grants totaling over $5 million from agencies such as the US Department of Education, National Science Foundation (NSF), and American College Personnel Association (ACPA) support his research program. Named "one of the most highly visible scholars in his field," by the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, Strayhorn has won numerous awards and in 2011, Diverse: Issues in Higher Education named him one of the nation’s “Top Emerging Scholars.” Strayhorn has been named “Who’s Who in Columbus,” “20 to Know in Education” in 2013 and “Forty Under 40” in 2015 by Columbus Business First magazine, and one of the most prolific scholars in the country by several news sources. In October 2015, Strayhorn was initiated into The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi and later was selected as a Fellow of the Association of Governing Boards (AGB) Institute on Governance & Leadership. In 2022, he was named Diversity Scholar-in-Residence at Harrisburg Area Community College.Dr. Strayhorn received a bachelor’s degree (BA) from the University of Virginia (UVA), a masters degree (MEd) in educational policy from the School of Education at UVA, and doctorate (PhD) in higher education from Virginia Tech. He is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Incorporated and a native of Virginia Beach, Virginia.Read more about this authorRead less about this author