PAESMEM for Dr. Louis Dale

University Of Alabama At Birmingham, Birmingham AL

Investigators

Abstract

Dr. Louis Dale has done extraordinary work at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, serving as an effective mentor, especially of minority students, for 30 years. Dr. Dale's work is outstanding taken in the context of the university environment in which he operates. He is a tenured faculty member of mathematics who at the beginning of his career was the only African American faculty member in his school -- a minority in a majority-dominated institution. Throughout his career he has served as a mentor to minority students and his mentoring programs have developed in a consistent fashion over the years. He has written a book on mentoring and taken his programs to HBCUs in Alabama. His mentoring work with students is supportive, but at the same time is rigorous and demanding, challenging them to become the best that they can be. The number of students he has mentored who have earned Ph.D.s and who have gone on to the professoriate at other colleges and universities is one of the strongest indicators of Dr. Dale's effectiveness as a mentor.