Tara Lake has a saying: “If you love learning, you ought to teach”. She’s pretty sure she didn’t make that up, but she lives by the phrase just same.

Tara Lake began her life in teaching and research as an undergraduate at Florida A&M University (FAMU), under the tutelage of mentors who guided her work through the auspices of research fellowships and internships. Selected for an undergraduate research internship at the University of California, Berkeley, Tara also had the honor of working with scholars at that institution. 

Her advisors at FAMU gave her opportunities to develop skills for the classroom before she’d earned her bachelors degree – she tutored in the University Writing Center and was once selected to lead class lecture in a professors absence.

Tara’s mentors exposed her to world of Nineteenth Century African American literature and history. But she soon began honing her own interdisciplinary research interests – ones that would take her to locations as far as London and South Africa in search of answers and, more importantly, new questions.

As a graduate student at UCLA, Tara was fortunate to receive several grants and awards in support of her research. She pursued research that merged her academic interests, led her to collections around the country, and provided her with new perspectives on the role of Black cultural production in American performance identity. 

At UCLA, Tara mentored students in that university’s McNair Program and lectured in the University Honors Program and worked as in undergraduate academic counseling.

Guiding students inspired Tara, but it also forced her to face difficult questions about access, empowerment, and equity in education. When an opportunity to head up African American studies at Los Angeles Valley College (LAVC) emerged, she jumped at it. 

While at LAVC, Tara taught courses in African American literature and history and restored a sociology course to the curriculum.  She advised the Black Student Union, spearheaded the annual Kwanzaa and Black heritage celebrations and established the UBUNTU African-centered Student Success Program. Ms. Lake also led a group of students and faculty to New Orleans for a Hurricane Katrina Service-Learning Trip after heading up a fundraising effort that garnered over $16,000.

While at LAVC, Tara Lake was honored by the student and faculty community numerous times, winning several awards for teaching and campus community leadership.  Over the past year, Tara’s been developing the college’s online curriculum in African American Studies - one of few of its kind in existence.

Writing has become a full-time occupation for Tara, but she hasn’t exactly left the classroom. In Durham, she’s heading up several community projects set to kick off in fall 2009. You can check out a few of these at www.YearoftheGriot.com.