The MSU Office of Affirmative Action Compliance and Monitoring will present its annual "Excellence in Diversity" awards at 4 p.m. today at the Kellogg Center.
One team and three individuals who will each receive a $2,500 cash award. Nominations came from faculty or students.
In addition, three other winners will receive $500 for their submissions in the "Students Making a Difference Through Artistic Expression" category.
For his work empowering minority students and faculty, Joseph Cousins, coordinator of international visitors and scholars for the Institute of International Agriculture, will receive the "Lifetime Achievement" award.
"Obviously, I'm humbled by winning the award," he said. "I see it as a recognition of our community."
Cousins is a leader in the Asian Pacific American Faculty and Staff Association. The award, he said, reflects the collaborative efforts of his peers during his 20-year career at MSU.
"I don't like to take credit for my work," Cousins said. "I'm the person who works behind the scenes, backstage, to help bring groups together."
Cousins helped form the Coalition of Racial Ethnic Minorities, an informal group of leaders of ethnic faculty and staff associations. The group comes together to discuss issues facing minorities in a university setting.
Paulette Granberry Russell, senior adviser to the president for diversity, said this is the only univeristy-wide award given to individuals.
"This is the largest award the university gives for excellence in diversity," Granberry Russell said.
Second-year College of Human Medicine student Yvonne Butler will be honored for a poem she submitted about her experience in West Africa in 2003 as a student volunteer for an HIV and AIDS educational program.
Her piece is taken from both her point of view as well as the point of view of a female patient who was dying from AIDS.
"She wanted the world to know that there is a lot of people suffering from AIDS, and there is not enough people helping them," Butler said.
Butler, who spent weeks educating African villagers about the disease, said her poem was just a way for her to tell the stories of the people she cared for who were living with HIV and AIDS.
"I didn't really think I was doing anything extraordinary," she said. "I was just hopeful that enough people would read it and recognize that this is a problem and a lot more needs to be done."
