As her father migrated from one university to another to teach, to head programs or to run academic departments, those campuses became a young girl’s home and her playground. They too were places of beauty, remembers Dr. Adia Harvey Wingfield, who learned to move with ease among scholars and students. During most of her youth, living on the grounds or near university gates felt privileged and special.
Often summers were “like being at a country club” with swimming pools and tennis courts, says Wingfield of those early years, most spent at North Carolina State University. But as she traveled among the buildings dotting the landscape, Wingfield would also peer inside those halls of learning. A daughter’s eyes were on her father, scholar and educator William B. Harvey, Ed.D., absorbing all that he did in his world of academia. She watched as he engaged and mentored students in ways that extended beyond the walls of the classroom and how he made the pursuit of equity in higher education the subject of his scholarship, as well as the motivation for his life’s work.
“What I saw was the immense enjoyment that he got out of his work and his ability to make intellectual contributions through research while also using them to also make a difference in the academy and also in society,” says Wingfield. “I knew then that I also wanted to do something to promote change and in an environment that welcomed that work.”
As a sociologist, educator and author, Wingfield is doing just that at Georgia State University and in the world. In 2012, she received the American Sociological Association’s Distinguished Early Career Award. Already with a long list of publications to her credit and making great strides in her field, Harvey says his daughter, the professor, “is probably 15 years ahead of where I was at this same point in my academic career.”
