Howard J. Foster receives E. Harris Harbison Award, 1970
Dr. Howard J. Foster (right) of the Alabama A&M University, Normal, AL receives the E. Harris Harbison Award for Gifted Teaching from Dr. William H. Danforth, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Danforth Foundation, New York City, 18 October 1970.
Dr. Howard J. Foster, a professor of physics and mathematics at Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical College, Normal in Huntsville, Ala. was one of 10 honorees to receive a $10,000 E. Harris Harbison Award for Gifted Teaching. A former scientist for the National Bureau of Standards of Washington, D.C., for the U. S. Army Missile Command's Laboratories at Redstone Arsenal, Ala., and the author of numerous publications, he held AB and MA degrees from Fiske University, had attended Morehouse College and the University of Chicago, and in 1964 earned his PhD from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.
Dr. Foster would spend the Fall 1970 term at MIT as a Visiting Professor engaged in teaching and research, and helping to organize a Student-Faculty exchange program between southern Black colleges and the Institute. Along with members of MIT's physics department, he planned to develop a new program under which the Institute and seven black colleges would combine their talents and resources to stimulate interest in science and research among students and faculty of the schools involved. Selected science students from the southern colleges would spend one or two terms in residence at MIT, typically during the junior year. In addition, science faculty members from the southern colleges would be able to come to MIT for one term or more of teaching and research and selected MIT science professors and students would be able to spend similar periods of time at the black colleges.
--Adapted from MIT press release, MIT Institute Archives & Special Collections (AC0069), 19 October 1970