Each year, CIES recognizes an outstanding scholarly article that explores themes related to people of African descent, with its Joyce Cain Award. Proposed by the Under-represented Racial, Ethnic and Ability Groups Committee and approved by CIES’ Board of Directors in 2000 the Joyce Cain Award for Distinguished Research on African Descendants is awarded by the Comparative and International Education Society to honor the memory of Joyce Lynn Cain, a colleague whose scholarship on African descendants reflected her dedication to introducing individuals across ethnic boundaries to African culture.

Dr. Joyce Lynn Cain, teacher, researcher, practitioner, and international scholar, was one of the early researchers who combined her extraordinary skill as a public school teacher with research focused on the preparation of teachers to teach minority children in school settings. She was a forerunner in conducting comparative research on minority students in the USA and Africa. It was her love of the African cultures and heritage that led her to be an advocate and an advisor to African countries, particularly Zimbabwe. She was inspired to plan study trips to Africa for others in the USA and was called on as a consultant for international agencies, such as the U.S. Agency for International Development.

She was a loyal member of the faculty of Michigan State University, where she served as an Associate Professor of Teacher Education until her passing in 1996. Her focus on, and attention to, the importance of Africa has inspired many researchers and practitioners.

The Award is conferred on an outstanding scholarly article that:

• explores themes related to people of African descent; the article may report research concerning Africans in any part of Africa, or in the Diaspora (African descendants in the Americas, Europe, and other venues), in contemporary or historical contexts;
• fulfills the requirements of academic excellence, namely originality and methodological, theoretical, and empirical rigor; and,
• reflects the scholarly purpose of the Society—comparative, cross-cultural, interdisciplinary, and international/global studies contributing to the interpretation of developments in education in broad and interrelated economic, political, and social contexts.

To be eligible for the Award, articles must be written by a member of CIES. Articles must be published in a refereed journal during the two-calendar year period between January of the preceding year and December of the current year. Articles slated for publication in the final months of the current year may be submitted in manuscript form with a letter from the journal editor stating the intended publication schedule.

The recipient of the Joyce Cain Award will be honored at the upcoming Annual Meeting of CIES and will receive a $1000 USD monetary award.

The deadline for nominations is December 1, 2021. Nominations, applications, and queries should be sent via e-mail to the Office of the Executive Director at oed@cies.us

Please note that self-nominations are welcome.