Judith Ray won the 2022 College of Education and Human Development Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Minnesota for a lifetime of overcoming gender and racial barriers.
Ray, born in a segregated community in St. Louis, was part of the first cohort of Black students to integrate Harris Teachers College, now Harris-Stowe State University.
After earning her teaching degree and two master’s degrees, Ray (’79 MS Phys. Ed.) taught physical education at West Chester University, where she was the first and, at that time, only Black person in her department.
She pursued her doctoral degree at the University of Minnesota, where she was part of the first cohort of the Common Ground Consortium, a program that recruits and supports Black graduate education students.
She retired in 2013 from the School of Business and Professional Studies at Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, the nation’s first historically black college and university, after more than three decades of teaching, research, managing grant acquisitions, and more.