The Dr. A. James Hicks Leadership Award

- presented to a member of the Governing Board, South Carolina Research Advisory Council, or Executive Board, who works with the alliance to enhance program opportunities for undergraduate students and whose leadership demonstrates commitment to the stated program goal of leading the nation in the production of minorities in SMET disciplines.

Dr. A. James Hicks is the Program Director of the Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP), the National Science Foundation (NSF). Prior to becoming the LSAMP Program Director, Dr. Hicks served as Chairperson and Professor of Biology, and later Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at North Carolina A&T.

Dr. Hicks has served on several prestigious panels of proposal evaluators to include the National Academy of Sciences; the Directorate for Science and Engineering Education/NSF; the Department of Education/Minority Institutions Science Improvement Program (MISIP); and the NSF Minority Graduate Fellowship Program. In 1995, he was a member of the North Carolina delegation to Baden-Wittenberg, Germany, which negotiated a Memorandum of Understanding to allow student and faculty exchanges between North Carolina and Germany.

Dr. Hicks has received numerous honors and awards for his achievements in science and for his efforts in promoting the advancements of underrepresented groups in science, engineering and mathematics. Most notably, in 1988 he received the White House Initiatives Faculty Award for Excellence in Science and Technology with a letter from President Ronald Reagan. He received the Director's Award for Administrative Excellence in 1998 at NSF, and the United States Department of Agriculture's Group Honor Award for Excellence for establishing a national awards program honoring outstanding teachers and research scientists at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, in 2001. Notably in 2001 he received the Lifetime Service Award from the national project director of the LSAMP Program, 2002.

In recognition of his commitment to scholarly excellence for minorities, the LS-SCAMP program has established the A James Hicks Leadership Award in his honor.