She was named the recipient during the college's Commencement ceremony, held at Holland Municipal Stadium on Sunday, May 4, at 3 p.m.

The award, first given in 1965, is presented by the graduating class to the professor who they feel epitomizes the best qualities of the HopeCollege educator.

Young, who is an assistant professor of English, was one of the first faculty members that the members of the class encountered when they arrived on campus as freshmen in August of 2004. She and colleague Dr. Stephen Hemenway co-delivered the address during that year's Opening Convocation, which marked the formal beginning of the academic year.

Young has been a member of the Hope faculty since 2002. She was a Preparing Future Faculty pre-doctoral teaching fellow during the 2002-03 school year, a program in which Hope participates with Howard University of Washington, D.C. She became an assistant professor in 2003. Her service to the college included serving as co-advisor to the Black Student Union student organization from 2002 to 2005.

Her interests include early writers of the African Diaspora (pre-1865); African-American literature; jazz and hip-hop as literature; and creative writing. Her dissertation, which she completed in 2004, focused on the marketing from 1767 to 1865 of the poetry of Phillis Wheatley, who was kidnapped from Africa as a child and wrote as a slave in Boston, Mass.

Prior to coming to Hope, Young was a multicultural summer teaching fellow at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. She had also taught at Howard, as well as at TouroCollege and the Center for Worker Education in New York City, and has made a variety of presentations during professional conferences.

In addition to her Ph.D. from Howard University, Young holds a bachelor's degree from Douglass College of Rutgers University and a master's from City College of CUNY of New York City.

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