Samuel Kelley Named SUNY Distinguished Service Professor

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CORTLAND, NY (05/21/2008)(readMedia)-- State University of New York has promoted Professor of Communication Studies Samuel Kelley, a member of the SUNY Cortland faculty since 1979, to the rank of Distinguished Service Professor.

The rank, which can only be conferred by the SUNY Board of Trustees on the recommendation of the campus, System Administration and SUNY chancellor, constitutes a promotion above that of full professor. The title honors and recognizes substantial extraordinary service not only at the campus and within SUNY, but also at the community, regional and state levels. Honorees must have held the rank of full professor for five years, have three years of full-time service at the nominating institution, and have completed at least 10 years of full-time service for SUNY.

The recipient of a 2005 SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities, Kelley co-founded and has helped to sustain the Gospel Choir at SUNY Cortland for many years. He was instrumental in raising more than $40,000 to support the Gospel Choir’s recent tour of England, where 51 students had the opportunity to perform at a number of locations. He also facilitated the Gospel Choir’s first television appearance on WSKG-TV last winter.

He has helped the Alumni Affairs and the Cortland College Foundation raise more than $70,000 for student scholarships. The coordinator of the Communication Studies Student Internship Program for many years, Kelley has delivered keynote addresses at Honors Convocation and the President’s List Reception.

A native of Phillips City, Ark., Kelley earned a bachelor’s degree in speech and drama from the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff and a master’s degree in speech from the University of Arkansas. He received a Ph.D. in speech, with a concentration in radio, television and film from the University of Michigan. Kelley also holds an M.F.A. in playwrighting from the Yale University School of Drama.

Kelley began his SUNY Cortland career as an assistant professor in 1979 and was promoted to professor in 1994. A Blake-Scott Mentor to disadvantaged students on campus, he advises the Gospel Choir, the WSUC campus radio station, the CSTV campus student television station and the Black Student Union. The director of the African American Studies Program from 1991-96, he has helped coordinate the Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration.

In 2001-02, he was awarded the Black Student Union Award for his leadership, service and dedication to the SUNY Cortland student group. In 2004, Kelley received the African American Studies Award of Excellence for his longstanding contributions to the SUNY Cortland Gospel Choir.

He participated in a weeklong Association of Scenic Artists Program, held in Havana, Cuba in January 2008, as an invited guest at a number of exclusive events for renowned international playwrights. In 2007, he traveled to Beijing, China on a faculty exchange program. While at Capital Normal University, he served as lead lecturer for a presentation at the National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts: “Playwriting vs. Screenwriting in America: Theories and Practices.” In September 2004, he presented a reading of his play, A Hero for McBride, in Wales at the Theatres of Science Conference.

In the mid-1980s while at Yale, the Drama School produced his “Blue Vein Society,” a play about caste and color in black society’s struggle for upward mobility. The play was produced by nine theater companies and won third prize at the 2002 University of Louisville African American Playwriting Contest.

His most popular play, “Pill Hill” has won the prestigious Joseph Jefferson Award for Best Ensemble Performance, in 1994 in Chicago, Ill.; the Kieffer Award for Best Production, in Cleveland, Ohio in 1993-94; the Cornerstone Competition for Best Play in St. Paul, Minn., in 1990; and the Molly Kuhn Award for Best Play at the Yale School of Drama. “Pill Hill” was published in Dramatic Publications in 1995.

“Thruway Diaries,” his play about racial profiling, was one of seven selected for honorable mention in The Pen is a Mighty Sword Competition and ran in 2005 at the Jubilee Theatre in Forth Worth, Texas.

“White Chocolate,” a play about black identity in small town white America, premiered at the Paul Robeson Performing Arts Company in Syracuse, N.Y., and was produced by the Billie Holiday Theatre in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 2001-02. It received a Certificate of Recognition in the New Voices Play Festival, sponsored by Plowshares Theatre Company in 1996.

Kelley’s biographical play, “Faith, Hope and Charity: The Story of Mary McLeod Bethune,” was twice part of the Juneteenth Legacy Theatre Bold Journeys Tour in Louisville, Ky. The play has also been performed in Albuquerque, N.M., Cortland, N.Y., and the Paul Robeson Performing Arts Company in Syracuse, N.Y. The most recent production was March and April of this year at the Nuyorican Poets Café in New York City, which was also produced by the Juneteenth Legacy Theatre.

A four-time visiting artist at Paul Robeson Performing Arts Company of Syracuse University, Kelley was guest director for his play “White Chocolate,” which premiered there during the 1999-2000 theater season. He was elected to the company’s board of directors in 1999. A chapter on Kelley and his works appears in African American Dramatists.

Kelley has participated in playwright residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Mary Anderson Center for the Arts, Byrdcliff Arts Colony, Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and in 2005 at the Blue Mountain Center in Blue Mountain Lake, N.Y. In 1998, he served as the James Thurber Playwright-In Residence at Ohio State University.

As a performer, Kelley has presented the works of James Weldon Johnson and Martin Luther King, Jr., at schools, churches and community centers. Kelley resides in Cortland, N.Y.

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