For immediate release Please call Sarah Grolnic-McClurg, 413-538-2030, [email protected]
WHITE HOUSE CEREMONY TO HONOR MOUNT HOLYOKE COLLEGE CHEMISTRY PROFESSOR SHEILA E. BROWNE: Browne to Receive Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring on Thursday, September 10
South Hadley, Mass. -- On September 10, Mount Holyoke College professor of chemistry Sheila E. Browne will receive a Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring at the White House from President Clinton. The annual program, administered on behalf of the White House by the National Science Foundation, identifies outstanding mentoring efforts and programs designed to enhance the participation of groups underrepresented in science, mathematics and engineering.
In addition to the ceremony, Browne will participate as a panelist in a two-day symposium attended by Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley and Director of the National Science Foundation Rita Colwell while in Washington. Accompanying the award is a mentoring grant for $10,000.
As part of Browne's nomination for the award, students from Mount Holyoke's Native Spirit and Sistahs in Science, two campus organizations for which Browne has served as a faculty adviser, wrote letters speaking to her unrelenting work for and support of minority students at Mount Holyoke. With a membership last spring of 50 students, Sistahs in Science--a networking and mentoring group for students of color interested in science as a profession, see www.mtholyoke.edu/offices/comm/vista/9703/5.html --added that the "establishment of this group was totally inspired by our direct contact with Professor Browne."
Department Chair Mary Campbell's letter to the NSF included a five-page list of Browne's 83 current and past student research assistants; approximately 40% were women of color.
Other Mount Holyoke accomplishments of Browne's include her efforts to create more mentors, knowing that she alone could not increase the number of scientists of color. Recognizing the challenges these students face in the science classroom and the need for proactive advising, she organized faculty development workshops for the science departments, which Dean of the College Beverly Daniel Tatum, a national expert on race relations in America, and Dean of Religious Life Andrea Ayvazian helped lead. Browne also persuaded the College to extend these workshops to faculty in the humanities and social sciences.
Beyond the 83 students Browne personally mentored or is presently mentoring as research students and the 50 students participating in the Sistahs in Science group, Browne's work beyond the Mount Holyoke campus equally extensive. Since 1992, Browne has been, according to the Dr. JoAnn Moody, vice president of the New England Board of Higher Education, "an extraordinarily effective mentor" in the group's "Science and Engineering Academic Support Network." The network has 128 mentors from New England and Moody named Browne as the outstanding mentor of underrepresented minority students, past and present.
For the Network, Browne annually keeps in touch with two dozen students whom she is mentoring, helping them secure internships and post-doctoral positions, and linking them to other students and professionals throughout the country -- the same activities that she has done for Mount Holyoke undergraduates. She also has served as a keynote speaker at the Network's meetings and has spoken as a plenary-session panelist and workshop leader at its conferences. In 1996, Browne became a mentor-at-large for the group's minority doctoral scholars program, coaching 45 scholars preparing to enter the professoriate. For their annual institute in 1996, she was the keynote speaker on teaching and mentoring.
Described by students as "funny, committed, awesome, supportive, enthusiastic and animated," Browne has been known to use music to calm jittery nerves during labs. The first member of her family to graduate from high school, Browne's generosity with others and her verve stem from her own struggle to know firsthand what it is like to go to college on scholarship and to be a minority; she was one of only two women and the only person of Native American heritage in her entering Ph.D. class of 140 at the University of California at Berkeley.
Browne received her Ph.D. from Berkeley in 1974 and has taught at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, MA since 1976. A physical organic chemist, Browne's current research interest is polymer chemistry (www.mtholyoke.edu/offices/comm/vista/9709/2.html for more info.) Mount Holyoke is the oldest continuing institution of higher education for women in the United States. Founded in 1837 by Mary Lyon, it was a pioneer in establishing laboratory science education for women in the U.S.
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Sheila Browne, Mary Campbell and two students are available for interviews. For a fact sheet on the Sistahs in Science student group, call 413-538-2030.
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