Passion, Research & Real Talk as a Black Woman Navigating Academia: Fall 2025 Pizza and Prof with Professor Yolanda Covington-Ward

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On November 13 from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m., Professor Yolanda Covington-Ward will join Commonwealth Honors College (CHC) for its annual Pizza and Prof night. This year, the event will take place in the Maple Hall lounge. Pizza and Prof is a longtime CHC event that presents a great opportunity for students to connect with faculty and learn more about research that could inspire their Honors thesis.

Covington-Ward, who is a professor and chair of the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies, will speak about her journey to academia as a first-generation college student. 

“I'd like to talk about the ways that I was introduced to seeing college as an opportunity for social mobility, and also share my own experience of navigating these worlds where Black women are often not at the center,” noted Covington-Ward.

Reflecting on her own experience as a young Black woman entering academia, Covington-Ward says that it was a “disconcerting” experience in which she had to juggle multiple selves — her identity with her family and her identity on a college campus. As she pursued graduate education and became a professor, she realized academia was a place with many power structures and that representation was crucial for people to know that they too, could pursue higher education and be in positions of power.

“It's important to me to talk about my personal experience because I think the stories of people who have been excluded from academia for a very long time are often left out of our understandings of how academia works, and who gets to access some of the opportunities that academia affords, and who is not given those opportunities,” Covington-Ward explained.

In addition to serving as department chair, Covington-Ward teaches Introduction to African Studies and a first-year seminar called Using Black Feminist Writing for College Success. Next semester, she will teach a course she developed called Black Women, Power and Representation in Africa and its Diasporas. In these classes, she says she aims to connect with her students by sharing her story. 

“What it means to have someone who looks like you in front of that classroom, leading the class, modeling how to be a leader in that kind of setting also opens up to them different possibilities in terms of what they can imagine for themselves,” said Covington-Ward. “So that I think is really, really important.”

During Pizza and Prof, professor Covington-Ward hopes to share her experience and connect with students. 

She will create an opportunity for students to ask questions about her research, which focuses on embodiment, identity, religion, performance, and politics of people of African descent. Students will also have an opportunity to gain insight from Covington-Ward’s personal experiences in academia. 

“I want to talk to them about my experience. I want to connect with them around their own experiences as well, whether they be experiences of feeling alone and feeling alienated, whether they’re experiences of feeling exhilarated about what you're learning in a class, whether it's experiences of connecting to someone and being able to find a role model. So I’m just hoping that they can take away some useful pieces to continue to inspire them on their own journey,” Covington-Ward concluded. 

Don’t miss this opportunity to share a slice and thoughtful conversation with Professor Covington-Ward and fellow members of the UMass community. Everyone is welcome to join.