Jewel Prestage – Dean of the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Southern University. First African-American woman to earn Ph.D. in Political Science
Noliwe Rooks - associate director of the African-American program at Princeton University, W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of Literature at Cornell University, chair of and professor in the Africana Studies Department at Brown University, founding director of the Segrenomics Lab at Brown University
Shirley Briggs – artist and writer; studied under Grant Wood; provided artwork for a number of projects within the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, and worked on a number of dioramas for the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of Natural History
Max Allan Collins – writer of comic strip Dick Tracy (Chester Gould was the creator and Collins took over in 1977 when Gould retired); also writes mystery novels
Jorie Graham – poet (1996 winner for The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems 1974–1994) and MacArthur Fellow on faculty of Iowa Writers' Workshop
James E. Hansen – heads NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies; recognized in Time's "100 Most Influential People of 2006" for his efforts to bring understanding and fighting the effects of global climate change