Dr. Joyce Bell, alumna of the CEHD TRiO Upward Bound and TRiO McNair Scholars Program, has been honored as a 2011 Council for Opportunity in Education National TRiO Achiever.

Each year more than 850,000 students participate in TRiO programs nationally. Since 1976 CEHD's three TRiO programs--Upward Bound, Student Support Services, and McNair Scholars--have worked with low-income, first-generation college students to prepare them for college success and graduate school matriculation.

Bell, nominated by long-time directors of the University's TRiO programs Bruce and Sharyn Schelske, started in Upward Bound as a 9th-grader at Minneapolis South High School. Upon high school graduation she attended St. Thomas University. She was accepted into the McNair program in 1998 and conducted research during the summer component of McNair in 1998, continuing to work with McNair staff to apply to graduate school. She graduated from St. Thomas with a B.A. degree in sociology in 1999 and entered graduate school in the Ph.D. program in sociology at the University of Minnesota. She received her doctorate in 2007.

Bell is currently an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Pittsburgh. Her areas of specialization include: American race relations, Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, and collective behavior and social movements. She currently has a book manuscript in progress: The Institutionalization of Black Power in the Social Work Profession, 1966-1976.

She and other TRiO Achievers were honored at the Council for Opportunity in Education's National Conference in Washington, DC, Sept. 24-28.