Dr. Sherle L. Boone is a professor of Psychology in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at William Paterson University in Wayne, New Jersey. After completing his Bachelor’s degree in psychology at North Carolina Central University, he obtained his Ed.D. in Educational Psychology from Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey.


A former chair of the Psychology Department and numerous committees for tenure, promotion, and faculty recruitment at William Paterson, Professor Boone has published studies in the areas of human aggression, creativity, identity formation in people of African descent, and parenting strategies in African American families. He is the principal author of “A Test of Racial Conceptualization Between African Americans and Indigenous Africans,” a series of studies published in the May 2008 edition of Social Identities.


His travels to West Africa and South Africa helped him to complete the studies presented in his forthcoming book, Meanings Beneath the Skin: the Evolution of African-Americans, which traces the cultural and psychological transformations of African-Americans from the 17th through 20th centuries.


Professor Boone is the founder and President of the W.E.B. DuBois Scholars Institute, where more than 1400 students have participated since its inception in 1988. He is also a member of the Mellon Mays University Fellows Dissertation Grants Selection Panel, sponsored by The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation in Princeton, New Jersey.