Having received this recognition, she is excited to share Athens with her great nieces this weekend. Part of her tour will include showing them where she got started on her career path and memories of attending OU.
“My time at OU obviously was a very special time,” Ackerman said. “Of course to be away from home and be sort of on your own for the first time is its own exhilarating experience. But certainly, in the time that I was at OU, because there were maybe 200 African American students. We were sort of our own community.”
Having graduated from OU almost 56 years ago, Ackerman continues to cherish the sense of community she gained from her time at the university. Ackerman said being a part of such a supportive community tremendously helped her life and career.
In addition to her involvement in various campus organizations, Ackerman worked with a professor in a writing clinic, which has since been dissolved.
At the time, students were required to pass an English proficiency assessment if they did not complete one year of English with a B grade or higher, Ackerman said. In the clinic, she worked to help students study for and pass this assessment.
Ackerman went on to become a teacher, having graduated on a Saturday in January of 1966 and immediately began work the next Monday, she said.
“You know, it was not really my plan to be in education,” Ackerman said. “It's sort of what it is that I knew that I could do.”
Becoming a teacher was the first achievement on a long list of accomplishments, including her term on OU’s Board of Trustees, founding the Taylor Academy and co-founding IndeedWeCode.
Ackerman was the first African American woman appointed to the OU Board of Trustees. One of her favorite experiences on the board was watching and helping students push for various results from the university, she said.
“The opportunity to serve a nine-year term gives you an opportunity to see a lot of growth in the institution. And one of the things that I'm really happy about … is the fact that a new student center was desperately needed,” Ackerman said. “And student organizations at OU during the time that I was a trustee had really pressed the university to please come up with a student center.”
The new student center was eventually built due to the students’ pushing, she said. That building is now known as Baker Center.
During Ackerman’s 25-year stint as an English teacher within the Cleveland Heights-University Heights City School District, she founded the Taylor Academy. The academy was geared toward helping students who were at risk of failing high school.
Ackerman said this did not only include children with rough backgrounds; students failing for any reason, whether it was due to choosing to socialize rather than attend class or those with home situations which made it difficult to perform well, were helped by the academy.
“Most of those students were able to get their lives back on track, which is what we talked about, in them coming to Taylor Academy,” Ackerman said. “They had been sidetracked and we got them back on track so that they could return back to the major high school and earn their diplomas and go on to wonderful lives.”
She said after 15 years of operation, the academy was shut down due to budgetary concerns.
A more current project, IndeedWeCode, was founded in 2015 and is still operating today. She said the goal of the organization is to help young African American women learn how to code and work cohesively with technology.
“IndeedWeCode is why I get up in the morning,” Ackerman said.
Through her work on the Ohio Board of Regions, she discovered a lack of technological advancement opportunities for various groups, especially African American women. This inspired her to create a solution for the issue.
Part of the program includes a summer camp for middle-and high school-aged girls. Although the camp was briefly suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was reinstated in summer 2022.
“In my wildest dreams, I never imagined such a thing happening to me,” Ackerman said in reference to being named Alumna of the Year. “But what will be very special for me this weekend is the opportunity to share this experience with my family and my closest friends.”