Vice Chancellor Denise Rodgers, CACP committee chair, with Clement A. Price Human Dignity Award recipient Peter Guarnaccia at the university’s Beloved Community Celebration.
Photo: Nick Romanenko.
Peter Guarnaccia, professor in the Department of Human Ecology, was recognized with the Clement A. Price Human Dignity Award by the Committee to Advance Our Common Purposes (CACP).
“I am thrilled to receive the Clement A. Price Human Dignity Award. I am very honored to be recognized for my more than thirty years of work on diversity, equity and inclusion at Rutgers, in New Jersey, nationally and internationally,” said Guarnaccia.
Guarnaccia and Lori Scott-Pickens, director of community outreach at Rutgers School of Criminal Justice, were honored with this signature CACP award for their community service at the Beloved Community Celebration held on April 20 in the Honors College courtyard at Rutgers-New Brunswick.
Guarnaccia was celebrated for his work and long-term service to Rutgers and beyond in support of healthy communities and for teaching students to broaden their understanding of themselves and the populations that they serve. He formerly served as the faculty director of Project L/EARN, a research training program in mental health research for underrepresented undergraduates at Rutgers, and as the faculty director of an international service-learning program on Community Health in Oaxaca, Mexico.
“During my 37 years at Rutgers, I have dedicated my teaching, scholarship and service to promoting cultural diversity, health equity and cultural competence both at the university and more broadly,” he added.
Professor Peter Guarnaccia with Rutgers students in 2018 in Capulalpam, Mexico, where they learned about residents’ efforts to resist mining interests from polluting their community.
His teaching, at all levels of the university, has been focused on highlighting the social and cultural dimensions of health, addressing inequities in health and preparing the next generation of scholars from underrepresented groups to build research and action agendas to improve the health of underserved communities both at home and around the globe.
The Human Dignity Award was named posthumously in 2016 in honor of Price, who died in 2014. He was a revered voice, the official City Historian of Newark, a renowned scholar of African American history and a Board of Governor’s Distinguished Service Professor at Rutgers-Newark. A former CACP chair, he was the founding director of the Price Institute on Ethnicity, Culture and the Modern Experience. In recognition of Price’s humanitarian vision for unity and peace through inclusion and diversity, the award recognizes “outstanding individuals who have demonstrated extraordinary achievement and commitment to promoting and practicing diversity, inclusion, equity, and access within the university and/or in partnership with community organizations.”
CACP is the longest standing university-wide committee focused on diversity and inclusion. Its vision is to sustain and nurture a civil, compassionate, intellectually honest and inclusive academic community that is respectful and fosters dialogue and interaction between those with differing views and belief systems.
Recipients of the 2022 Beloved Community and Arts Awards were also announced at the inaugural event designed to recognize the university’s commitment to promoting and practicing diversity, inclusion, equity and access.
View the full event here, and the program lineup here and here. Read more at the Rutgers Today article.
