BALTIMORE - Shirley Jackson, chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) will present the 20th annual W.E.B. DuBois lecture on Monday, Nov. 16 at 7:30 p.m. in the University Center Ballroom. Her talk, "Expanding Our Universe: New Models of Success for the Minority Community," is sponsored by the department of Africana studies and will be preceded by a UMBC Gospel Choir performance at 7 p.m. The concert and lecture are free and open to the public.

The first woman and African-American to serve as NRC chair,Jackson was appointed by President Clinton in 1995 as the principal executive officer and official spokesperson for the NRC, an agency responsible for licensing and regulating nuclear facilities and materials in the United States. Jackson has worked to uphold the commission's charge to protect the environment and public health, safety, defense and security in the use of nuclear materials.

Prior to her appointment at the NRC, Jackson, a theoretical physicist, was a professor at Rutgers University, a research scientist at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois and a consultant for such companies as AT&T Bell Laboratories. In 1973 she became the first African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and in 1996 was awarded MIT's Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Leadership Award. Her numerous other awards include the McDonalds Corporation's Black History Maker of Today award and the New Jersey Governor's Award in Science (the state's highest award to a citizen). Jackson has published more than 40 scholarly articles and given hundreds of presentations across the United States.

Jackson is the first scientist to participate in the W.E.B. DuBois lecture series that began in 1978. The lecture is part of UMBC's Humanities Forum, a free annual public series that brings nationally and internationally known scholars to discuss contemporary issues in the humanities.

For more information on Jackson's lecture, please call the department of Africana studies at 410.455.2158.