Community Keynote and Awards
March 17, 2026 5:30-8 p.m.
Shorter Community AME Church
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Campus Keynote
March 18, 2026 2 -3 p.m.
St. Cajetan's Event Center
2026 Professor: Nikole Hannah-Jones
Nikole Hannah-Jones is an award-winning investigative reporter who covers civil rights and racial injustice for The New York Times Magazine and the Knight Chair in Race and Journalism at Howard University where she is the founding director of the Center for Journalism & Democracy.
Her reporting has earned her the Pulitzer Prize, the MacArthur “Genius” Grant, the Knight Award for Public Service, the Peabody Award, two George Polk awards, the National Magazine Award three times and an Emmy. She is a Society of American Historians Fellow and a member of the Academy of Arts & Sciences.
Nikole got her first letter to the editor published at just 11 years old and she became hooked on journalism when she joined her high school newspaper and began writing about students like her, who were bused across town as part of a voluntary school desegregation program, winning her very first journalism award from the Iowa High School Press Association.
Her heroes are the race beat reporters, such as Ida B. Wells, Ethel Payne, Simeon Booker and Claude Sitton, whose fearless coverage helped move this nation closer to its promise.
Prior to joining The New York Times, Nikole worked as an investigative reporter at ProPublica in New York City, where she spent three years chronicling the way official policy created and maintains segregation in housing and schools. Before that, she reported for the largest daily newspaper in the Pacific Northwest, The Oregonian in Portland, Ore., where she covered numerous beats, including demographics, the census and county government.
Nikole started her journalism career covering the majority-black Durham Public Schools for The News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C. During her three years there, she wrote extensively on issues of race, class, school resegregation and equity.
Nikole is a native Iowan, a child produced by the hopes of both the Great Migration and those who migrated from foreign shores. She has also lived in Indiana, Georgia, North Carolina and Oregon. Now she is Bed-Stuy fly in Brooklyn.
Emcee: Tamara Banks
Emmy Award winning journalist Tamara Banks lives by her motto: “One Person Can Make a Difference.”
Tamara is a freelance national and international TV news correspondent/producer, talk show host, and documentary filmmaker, focusing on social justice, and dedicated to creating transformative social change through excellence in journalism. Tamara spent many years in Denver as an Anchor/Reporter on WB2 News. Her work has been featured on numerous news networks including PBS, CNN, ABC News, HDNet’s World Report, BBC, NPR, Al Jazeera America, Al Jazeera, WB 2 News, FOX News, as well on as a number of radio stations and newspapers over the past 20 plus years. In addition to social justice, her areas of expertise include geocide, crimes against humanity, and political issues across the U.S. and internationally…particularly in South Sudan and Darfur. She will soon head to another conflict zone. That one… in northern Ethiopia.
Over 40 Years of Honoring Rachel B. Noel's Legacy
The Rachel B. Noel Distinguished Visiting Professorship was initiated in 1981 to foster multiculturalism, diversity, and academic excellence at Metropolitan State University of Denver. The professorship brings renowned scholars and artists of distinction to MSU Denver to conduct classes, seminars, performances, and lectures for students, faculty, and the larger Denver community.
Rachel B. Noel Distinguished Professors have included such luminaries as Princeton Professor Cornel West, pianist Billy Taylor, author Iyanla Vanzant, former president of Spelman College Johnetta Cole, jazz singer Diane Reeves, the late actor and civil rights activist Ossie Davis, and executive editor of Ebony magazine Lerone Bennett Jr.
Past Professors
Cleo Parker Robinson: 2023-24 Shakti Butler: 2022-23 Calvin Mackie: 2021-22 Phoebe A. Haddon: 2020-21
Rachel B. Noel Past ProfessorsRachel B. Noel Distinguished Visiting Professorship Event Recordings
Films about Rachel Noel
Great Colorado Women:
Rachel Bassette Noel
This film was sponsored by the MSU Denver Foundation’s Rachel Noel Endowment to share her story with the larger community. This film aired on PBS, channel 6, January 13, at 7:30 p.m.
Rachel B. Noel:
A Life Shared
This film was created by MSU Denver in the mid-2000s to celebrate the life and legacy of Rachel Noel.
About Professor Rachel B. Noel
A champion of the civil rights movement in Denver and in Colorado, Rachel Noel was the first African American woman elected to public office in Colorado, the first African American elected to the Denver Public Schools’ (DPS) Board of Education, the first African American to be a member and chair of the University of Colorado Board of Regents, and the first African American woman elected statewide in Colorado.
On April 25, 1968, she presented the DPS board with the Noel Resolution, recognizing that the “establishment of an integrated school population is desirable to achieve equality of educational opportunity.” It directed the superintendent to develop “a comprehensive plan for the integration of the Denver Public Schools.” Under a cloud of threats to Noel and her family, the resolution passed on May 17, 1968. The U.S. Supreme Court would eventually affirm Noel’s position in its landmark decision of 1973, Keyes v. Denver School District No. 1, making Denver the first city outside the American South to be instructed by the country’s highest court to address de facto segregation with school busing.
Noel also played a critical role in MSU Denver’s history. She came to MSU Denver as a teacher of sociology and African American Studies in 1969 and served as chair of the African American Studies Department from 1971 to 1980.
Noel died at the age of 90 in 2008. During her lifetime and after, Noel’s legacy has inspired the MSU Denver community and beyond. In 1981, the University created The Rachel B. Noel Distinguished Visiting Professorship to honor Noel. A recipient of many awards and distinctions, Noel also lived to see a Denver Public Schools middle school named in her honor. Although that middle school was closed, the building and campus is still called the Rachel B. Noel campus and is home to various charter programs. The Noel Community Arts School, housed in the former Montbello High School building, consists of both a high school and a middle school.
Noel was awarded honorary doctoral degrees from the University of Denver in 1993 and the University of Colorado in 2004 and an honorary degree from MSU Denver in 1981. She held a bachelor’s degree from Hampton University and a master’s degree from Fisk University. Noel’s other commendations and accomplishments were many, including:
- Rocky Mountain News Top 100 Citizens of the Century, 2000
- Denver Mayor’s Millennium Award, 2001
- Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame, 1996
- Civil Rights Award, Anti-Defamation League, Mountain States Region, 2004
- Pillars of Leadership Award, National Organization of Black Elected Legislative Women, 2002
- Metropolitan State College’s Plain and Fancy Award, 1990, and Outstanding Female Faculty Member 1974-75
- Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Award, 1990
- Civil Rights Commission, Colorado Advisory Committee; Mayor Wellington Webb’s Black Advisory Committee; Mayor Federico Peña’s Black Advisory Committee (chair)
- Commissioner, Denver Housing Authority
- Council Trenholm Memorial Award, National Education Association, 1978
- Eddy Award, Denver Classroom Teachers’ Association, 1963