AERA Selects Morgan Professor As 2024 Award Winner in Education Research

Dr. Camika Royal Receives American Educational Research Association’s ‘Outstanding Book Award’ for Published Research Focused on Education and Development

The American Educational Research Association (AERA)—the largest national interdisciplinary research association devoted to the scientific study of education and learning—announced Morgan State University’s Camika Royal, Ph.D., is the recipient of its 2024 Award for Excellence in Education Research. Dr. Royal, who serves as associate professor of Urban Education Leadership and program director for the Department of Advanced Studies, Leadership, and Policy in the School of Education and Urban Studies, was recognized in the category of “Outstanding Book” by AERA. The Outstanding Book Award was established to acknowledge and honor the year’s best book-length publication in education research and development.

Dr. Royal is included among 15 educators representing institutions nationwide and one standout journalist distinguished for their diverse contributions and impacts on higher education. Each of this year’s awards recipients was honored at the AERA 2024 Annual Meeting held in Philadelphia.

“We are pleased to present the 2024 awards to this commendable and exemplary group of education scholars and champions,” said AERA Executive Director Felice J. Levine. “They each have contributed tremendously to education research, across all career stages and fields, and continue to make a difference in the lives of students and educators.”

Founded in 1916, AERA advances knowledge about education, encourages scholarly inquiry related to education, and promotes the use of research to improve education and serve the public good. AERA pursues projects, initiatives and activities to advance the field of education research, promote cutting-edge lines of study, and deepen knowledge about education research as a discipline, profession, and field.

Dr. Royal was named the 2024 Outstanding Book Award recipient for her seminal work on the Philadelphia educational system, providing extensive, expert analysis of the intersection of race and education. Her book “Not Paved For Us: Black Educators and Public School Reform in Philadelphia” chronicles a fifty-year period in Philadelphia education, providing a critical look at how school reform efforts do and do not transform outcomes for Black students and educators. As an urban education scholar, Dr. Royal deftly analyzed decades of efforts to improve school performance within the School District of Philadelphia. In her research, Royal highlighted the experiences of Black educators as they navigated the racial and cultural politics of urban school reform while ultimately calling for an antiracist future in school reform policies.

“I am proud to have won the American Educational Research Association 2024 Outstanding Book Award. This is a tremendous acknowledgment from scholars nationwide,” said Dr. Royal. “I always wanted to do good academic work that matters for Black people, and to have that work recognized by this group in academia goes beyond what I ever hoped for. More importantly, I hope my work honors the ancestors who went before me and have made my way clear.”

Congratulations to Dr. Camika Royal on her stellar achievement and for exemplifying and upholding Morgan’s core value of excellence!