NEW HAVEN, Conn. – Patricia Melton '83, a seven-time Ivy League champion who starred for the Yale women's track and field team, has been selected as the winner of the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) Dick Enberg Award. CoSIDA announced the award Tuesday.
The Dick Enberg Award is presented by the College Sports Information Directors of America annually to an individual who has distinguished themselves nationally through career achievements and meaningful contributions to society while promoting the values of education and academics.
Melton is the president of New Haven Promise. In that role she has overseen the disbursement of more than $25 million to more than 2,200 city students in the last 10 years. Those students have largely been first-generation, low-income students of color, just as she had been in her hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. Knowing that college completion alone is not enough to secure the mission of the Yale-funded initiative, Melton established career and civic launch programs to assist students in securing nearly 1,000 paid internships and full-time positions in the region to date.
Throughout her career, Melton's initiatives have impacted tens of thousands of students. Prior to returning to Connecticut, she helped create several small-school design teams, which resulted in nine Early College High Schools throughout Ohio and Indiana. She contributed to Vincennes University's early college replication effort, assisting with the startup of four early college sites across Indiana.
Melton also served as the chief academic officer for the Evansville Vanderburgh School Corporation, Indiana's third-largest school district.
The first in her family to attend college, Melton earned a bachelor's degree at Yale and a master's degree at Arizona State. She served in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve while a student at Yale.
A track and field walk-on in college, Melton is a former U.S. Olympic trials finalist and track and field All-American. A seven-time Ivy League champion and captain of her team, as a sprinter, she moved to the 400-meter hurdles late in her college career and finished second at the national championships. She was bestowed the highest athletic honor in her Yale undergraduate class, the Nellie Elliott Award, in 1982. Her top 400-meter hurdle time remains the Yale school record after 40 years and was the Ivy League record for nearly two decades before being bettered by Olympian Brenda Taylor.
Melton would continue her track career, in a new event, after college. In 1988, she was a finalist in the 800-meter run at the U.S. Olympic Trials, finishing just shy of qualifying for the United States at the Seoul Olympics.
In 2007, she received the National Collegiate Athletic Association's Silver Anniversary Award, which recognizes former student-athletes who have distinguished themselves in their chosen field. In 2013, she became the first African-American woman to be awarded Yale University's George H. W. Bush '48 Lifetime of Leadership Award.
"Ms. Melton, a distinguished Yale College graduate, has dedicated her career to helping young people in our community," said Yale President Peter Salovey, who is also the chair of the board for New Haven Promise. "The Dick Enberg Award is richly deserved and comes as no surprise to all of us at Yale who have long taken pride in her exceptional achievements."
Melton is the 26th Enberg Award recipient. She will be recognized, along with the CoSIDA Academic All-America Hall of Fame® Class of 2022, in a luncheon June 28 at the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas during the CoSIDA Convention.
