Bro. Walter A. Gill – The Urban Professor
Bro. Walter Gill is a teacher, author, artist, actor and former university professor. He attended public schools in Jefferson City, Missouri and Baltimore, Maryland. He was the first African American to graduate from prestigious Baltimore City College High School, the country’s third oldest high school. Gill graduated from Morgan State College (now University) in Baltimore and acquired his master and Ph.D. degrees in educational communications from Syracuse University (NY). It has been estimated that Dr. Gill has touched the lives of over 16,000 students, in K-12, undergraduates and in graduate school.
His teaching philosophy is grounded in his parent’s humanitarian service. His father Dr. Robert L. Gill was the fifth African American to receive a PH.D. in Political Science from the University of Michigan. (Dr. Ralph Bunche was the first). He was a professor at Morgan State University for 34 years and 22 other colleges throughout the world, a devote Christian and author of The History of the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity. His mother Rubye was a scholar-athletic and graduate of Oberlin Conservative (Ohio), Chicago Musical College and Northwestern University. She won Third Place in the Colored Woman’s Tennis Tournament in 1934. She organized the Public School of Music Department at Howard University, was a teacher in public school, member of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority and a community organizer.
Dr. Gill was a university professor or administrator at Bowie State College (MD), Morgan State University (MD) and the University of Nebraska at Omaha where he was recommended for tenure before moving back to Baltimore in 1991. His other books were A Common Sense Guide to Non-traditional Urban Education (1997) and Issues in African American Education (1991).
As a youth advocate Dr. Gill has been employed as: art and social studies teacher, counselor for at-risk and delinquent males, director of a boys club, a summer project for inner-city African American middle school males, and as a social worker in foster care. As an artist he has been engaged in painting, clothes design, ceramics, and theatre performance which garnished two best actor awards.
As a teacher with youth Dr. Gill has excelled, especially with hard-to-reach, challenged and delinquent males as documented by several media program segments. Many of his classroom techniques are documented: “America-America” produced by Idea Television for Brazilian television; Baltimore Fox 45’s Cover Story and Maryland Public Television’s “Focus on the Arts.” The Sun featured a cover story, “Respectful approach to toughest students,” in January 2000.
Dr. Gill’s educational beliefs are based on three philosophies: “He who teaches learns and he who learns teaches,” (African Proverb; “Education does not mean teaching people to know what they do not know, it means teaching them to behave as they do not behave,” (John Ruskin); and “Call education what name you please. If it fails to bring about good results for the masses, it falls short of its highest end.” (Booker T. Washington).
Walter Gill is also known as Wali Hakeem –wise friend. Dr. Gill is available for speaking engagements, classroom lectures and staff development presentations. His latest book can be obtained at http://www.teachinginurbanamerica.com/. He may be reached at Dual Image Consultants, 410-889-9100 or urbanprofessor@aol.com
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