NACU to Present 2022 Ernest L. Boyer Award to Eboo Patel

The New American Colleges and Universities (NACU) is proud to announce Eboo Patel, founder and president of Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC), as the 2022 Ernest L. Boyer Award recipient. Dr. Patel is a respected leader on national issues of religious diversity, civic engagement, and the intersection of racial equity and interfaith cooperation.

“I am honored and humbled to receive the Boyer Award. I have great admiration for the previous recipients, and I look forward to doing everything I can to live up to their example of leadership and innovation,” said Dr. Patel.

The award pays tribute to Ernest Boyer’s legacy by honoring others who are making significant contributions to American higher education. While serving as president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Dr. Boyer called for a “New American college,” referring to institutions that integrate liberal arts, professional programs, and civic engagement to graduate professionals that are prepared to address society’s social, economic, and cultural challenges. Recent recipients of the Boyer Award have included Jose Antonio Bowen, Nancy Cantor, Cathy Davidson, Freeman Hrabowski, Frederick Lawrence, and Beverly Daniel Tatum.

“Dr. Patel has made it his life’s work to ensure that interfaith cooperation becomes a social norm in America,” said Sean Creighton, president of NACU. “In the last two decades, his efforts have reached administrators, faculty, and students at hundreds of colleges and universities to ensure that graduates have the skills needed in a religiously diverse world.”

NACU will present the 12^th Annual Boyer Award virtually in January 2022 in conjunction with the AAC&U Annual Meeting. Following the award presentation, Dr. Patel will deliver a presentation, “What Promises Does Your College Make?” in which he will discuss our expectations of college graduates and the purpose of college.

About Eboo Patel

Dr. Patel is the founder and president of Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC), a non-profit organization working to make interfaith cooperation a social norm in America. He is a respected leader on national issues of religious diversity, civic engagement, and the intersection of racial equity and interfaith cooperation. He is the author of four books and dozens of articles, and is a frequent keynote speaker at colleges and universities, philanthropic convenings, and civic gatherings, both in person and virtually. He served on President Obama’s Inaugural Faith Council.

Eboo’s contributions include the books Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation; Sacred Ground: Pluralism, Prejudice, and the Promise of America; Interfaith Leadership: A Primer; and Out of Many Faiths: Religious Diversity and the American Promise. His op-eds and interviews have appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, The Chronicle of Higher Education, on National Public Radio, and The PBS NewsHour. He also publishes a regular blog for Inside Higher Ed, called ‘Conversations on Diversity’.

Eboo holds a doctorate in the sociology of religion from Oxford University, where he studied on a Rhodes scholarship. He has been awarded the Louisville Grawemeyer Prize in Religion, the Guru Nanak Interfaith Prize, the El Hibri Peace Education Prize, the Council of Independent Colleges Academic Leadership Award, along with honorary degrees from 15 colleges.