WSU grad chosen as director of Coretta Scott King Center

PULLMAN — WSU graduate, Dana Patterson, has been named the first director of the Coretta Scott King Center.

The center is located at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, a small private school where Coretta Scott King was a member of the Class of 1951.  Coretta Scott King, wife of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, worked to eliminate racism and poverty. 

Patterson said heading an institution named in her [King’s] honor is a perfect career step.

Patterson was director of WSU’s Talmadge Anderson Heritage House for Equity and Diversity for three years prior to 2006, when she received her doctoral degree in higher education. She credits that experience, and the teaching and mentoring she received at the university, for landing her the job directing the Coretta Scott King Center for Cultural and Intellectual Freedom.

“My formal education, my out-of-classroom experiences, and my work have all been on a path leading to this,” she said in a phone interview.

It is a rare position that will allow her to be a top administrator, to teach and to be an activist, she said.

“I have the opportunity to educate on issues of social justice, and to do that around the principles that Coretta Scott King lived by,” she said. “This is not just a job for me, it’s a way of life.”

Patterson never met Coretta King, but has met two of the four King children. She was instrumental in bringing one of them, Yolanda, to Washington State two years ago for Martin Luther King Day activities.

Patterson was a moving force while she was in Pullman, according to her WSU advisor, associate Professor Kelly Ward.

Patterson was one of the first education students to choose a formal academic emphasis in cultural studies and social thought.

“Her dissertation was about black women getting doctoral degrees,” Ward said. “It was very, very well done. She’s a really gifted writer.”

Patterson, who began work as the director in December, was chosen from a field of 60 candidates. 

“They’re lucky to have her,” Ward said of the Coretta Scott King Center.

Her first order of business at Antioch is working on a strategic plan for the center, which will have its grand opening on March 27. That planning echoes the work she did as part of the team at WSU’s Office of Equity and Diversity, which she said provided a very nurturing environment. Patterson is also considering her teaching options, which range from co-teaching with the drama faculty to giving courses on gender and race.

“My teachers at WSU were so well versed in so many things that I feel well prepared to teach anything, and lead my students in vibrant conversations,” she said. “The WSU College of Education provided just a phenomenal education.”

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