Dr. Ulysses Van Spiva Awarded the National School Boards Association’s
Benjamin Elijah Mays Lifetime Achievement Award
Alexandria, VA – October 10, 2008 – The National School Boards Association’s Council of Urban Boards of Education (CUBE) has announced that Ulysses Van Spiva has been selected as the recipient of the 2008 Benjamin Elijah Mays Lifetime Achievement Award.
Dr. Ulysses Van Spiva, a former school board member in Virginia Beach, Va., received the award at the CUBE 41st Annual Conference on September 27, 2008 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Spiva, a professor and dean emeritus at Old Dominion University, started his career as a math teacher, was a policy fellow for the U.S. Office of Education in the 1970s, and served on various community and civic groups from the 1980s to today.
“NSBA is honored to present this award to Dr. Spiva,” Katrina Kelley, director of CUBE, said. “In many ways Dr. Spiva’s career mirrors that of Benjamin Mays – dedicated scholars, professors, mentors, and community activists who demonstrated outstanding leadership through service on their local school boards. We want to recognize Ulysses Spiva as someone who has made a great impact on the lives of many children, and as a role model with passion for excellence in scholarship and civic responsibility.”
The Mays Lifetime Achievement Award is given to an individual who, for the span of his or her lifetime, has demonstrated a long-standing commitment to representing the educational needs of urban schoolchildren through his or her service as a local school board member. Benjamin Elijah Mays, whom the award honors, was a teacher, minister, author, and civil rights activist who served as president of Morehouse College and the Atlanta school board from 1970 to 1981.
For more information about CUBE’s Benjamin Elijah Mays Lifetime Achievement Award, please visit http://www.nsba.org/cube. Past winners include school board members Lawrence Marshall of the Houston Independent School District and Henry A. Spears of the Montgomery Public Schools, Montgomery, Alabama.
The Council of Urban Boards of Education (CUBE) was established in 1967 by the National School Boards Association as a national membership organization governed solely by urban school board members and dedicated to the needs and interests of urban school boards. CUBE member districts total more than 100 urban districts in more than 35 states and educate nearly 8 million students in more than 12,000 schools with a collective budget near $80 billion. CUBE helps urban school boards find solutions to challenges at the local level and seeks to improve their policy making effectiveness.
Founded in 1940, the National School Boards Association is a not-for profit federation of state associations of school boards representing 95,000 local school board members throughout the United States. Its mission is to foster excellence and equity in public elementary and secondary education through local school board leadership. NSBA represents the school board perspective in working with federal government agencies and national organizations that impact education, and provides vital information and services to state associations of school boards throughout the nation.