Cheryl F. Wilson is the Director of the Office of Student Involvement and Leadership and an academic advisor at Douglass College, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. For the past seven years she has also served as the director of the historic Africana House of the Douglass College Global Village, where she teaches the house class under the Africana studies department and plans trips and programs that supplement the coursework. In a previous position, she served as the Program Director of the Associate Alumnae of Douglass College, where she directed the Douglass Extern Program and coordinated Reunion Weekend for four years.
As the advisor of the Douglass Black Students’ Congress, the oldest and largest Black women’s organization at Rutgers, she has enhanced student life at the college and university through her program ideas, which include the Jazz ‘N Java Multicultural Poetry Night once a semester, the annual Kwanzaa Ball in December, and the annual “Diaspora Day! Festival in April.
An enthusiastic educator, Wilson has also taught English/Language Arts to Black and Latino high school students at Union County College in Elizabeth, New Jersey. In addition, she volunteered and facilitated a workshop series for grade school girls at the New Brunswick Charter School entitled, “Life Enhancement Skills for Girls.”
Previously, Wilson worked as the Career Developer for the Urban Women’s Center in Trenton, New Jersey, where she conducted workshops and one-on-one counseling sessions for disadvantaged women in search of housing and employment and the opportunity to lead independent lives with their children.
A freelance writer, her articles have appeared in such publications as ESSENCE magazine, The Black Collegian magazine, SWING magazine, The Bricker Bulletin on Executive Education, and the Douglass Alumnae Magazine. For five years she served as the Health and Business Editor of The Nubian News, the only African American and Latino newspaper in the state of New Jersey.
She has been active in the Black Alumnae Network (BAN) since 1995 and served as chair from 2002 to 2006. She created BAN’s SISTERS! newsletter in 1998, which she writes, edits, and distributes; planned the “BAN Goes Gullah!” trip to St. Helena Island in 2004 where alumnae studied the Gullah culture; and created and coordinated BAN’s 20th and 25th anniversary “Celebrate Sisterhood!” conferences.
She has volunteered with such agencies as the American Cancer Society, the New Jersey Women and AIDS Network, the Delaware-Raritan Girl Scout Council, and Big Brothers/Big Sisters. She is very active in her church, where she is a Sunday School officer and director of the Young Adult Choir. She has received numerous honors and awards, including the Woman of Excellence award from the Middlesex County Commission on the Status of Women in 2000 and the Alumnae Recognition Award from the Associate Alumnae of Douglass College in 2004. In her spare time, she actively serves as mentor to select girls and young women throughout the state.