March is Woman's History Month…...

[tru_m.a.c]

Here at Higher Learning and throughout thecoli, us guys do get a bad rep for not supporting the *bill burr voice* LADIES!

So let's show em that we're not total douche bags

@2Quik4UHoes help me out on this one fam

 

[2Quik4UHoes]

Why not?

 

[Julius Skrrvin]

​

 

[2Quik4UHoes]

I gotta put these up, I just gotta....

 

[tru_m.a.c]

Spoiler

Yes I will be throwing some non black women in here. But I'll keep it black 99% of the time.

The First Woman to Get a Ph.D. in Computer Science From MIT

Irene Greif always thought she'd be a teacher. "For one thing," she told me, "I'd been told by my mother that it was good to be a teacher because you just worked the hours your kids were in school and you could come home." It had just always been the profession in the back of her mind, the default.

So then it must have been a bit of a shock when, after in 1975 becoming the first woman ever to receive a Ph.D. in computer science from MIT, Greif discovered that she didn't really enjoy teaching—she much preferred research. And so eventually she left teaching as a professor and did what she did best: studying, thinking, and figuring systems out. She founded a research field, computer-supported cooperative work, and has spent her life figuring out how to build better systems for humans to work together.

Can you talk a bit about what it was like being a woman at MIT during that time?

I think I was in the first big co-ed class. There had been women at MIT for ... forever, I'd have to check. But the big breakthrough for undergraduate women at MIT came in the 1960s, the mid-'60s, when Katharine McCormick donated a dormitory for women to MIT. [Editor's note: The money was actually donated at the tail end of the 1950s, but the dormitory took a few years to construct.] And that made a huge difference in whether parents would let their daughters go to the school.

In my class, that entered in '65, we had 50 women, in a class of 1,000. And that was big.

By now it's close to 50-50, so there's really been a huge change compared to what it had been.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technolo...et-a-phd-in-computer-science-from-mit/284127/

 

[the next guy]

nice today is also women's day

 

[tru_m.a.c]

I'ma put this one up on a personal tip. This is my homie from school. We both started the same year. Everybody was dumb fukkn hype for her when we found out. We ARE!

Kimberly Grant to become first African American woman to graduate in Mining Engineering at Penn State

http://www.eme.psu.edu/news-events/news/grant-profile

The College of Earth and Mineral Sciences is set to laud the first African American woman to graduate in Mining Engineering at Penn State: Ms. Kimberly J. Grant. “I will always remember Kimberly for her passion about workers’ safety and health and the need for strong compliance with both safety and environmental regulations,” said Larry Grayson, undergraduate program officer for mining engineering, an encouraging mentor to Kimberly since she began her studies in 2009. “She has quiet passion for important issues and worked very hard for her grades, always doing a very professional job on her assignments and projects. Kimberly will be a true and dedicated professional, and I am very proud of her and her family for supporting her.”

Kimberly took time out of her very busy class schedule to chat with me in her final semester at Penn State. Our conversation follows:

Question: What was the most difficult aspect of the road to your B.S. in Mining Engineering?
Answer: The going has been tough, but I’ve been really determined. Everyone except my family was telling me no. ‘No, you can’t get into Penn State.’ ‘No, you can’t be an engineer.’ ‘You don’t have the smarts.’ ‘You don’t have the grades.’ ‘You won’t be able to do the math.’ On paper, they were right. My placement tests weren’t good. The curriculum followed by inner city high schools in Philadelphia just can’t provide the level of preparedness needed to test well for an engineering program. I was already behind, even before classes started. But when I got to Penn State and talked to my college advisor, Jonathan Merritt, I told him how much I wanted to pursue Mining Engineering. He listened. Although he was probably skeptical, he still listened and gave me an honest appraisal of the work required and the difficulties ahead.

Q: Why Mining Engineering? That’s an unusual goal, isn’t it?
A: Coming from inner city Philadelphia, I didn’t know anything about mines. But I’ll never forget seeing reports of mining disasters on the news, depicting the lives lost, and the grieving families, and I was determined to work one day to be a part of improving health and safety in the mining industry.

Q: Have there been obstacles for you, given that this is a male-dominated field?
A: Oh yes. Sometimes, guys don’t take women seriously, and I can tell you it’s even worse for a black woman. When I first walked into a mining engineering class, the guys’ first reaction was, ‘Who are you, where are you from, and what are you doing here?’ They weren’t mean about it, just really surprised and curious. They all laughed and shook their heads. On a field trip in a coal extraction course, we visited an underground coal mine in West Virginia. The workers there were chuckling and whispering, ‘What’s she doing here?’ But then, once we were in the mine, and I was making observations and answering questions, they shut up pretty quickly. That was a good feeling. Oh, and don’t get me wrong about the guys in my mining engineering courses. After that original shock, they have all been really great and we’ve really bonded. We enjoy each other’s company; we have the same passion about our field.

Q: What would be your advice to other women interested in the same path?
A: Don’t be discouraged by males who don’t think you are fit for the field. You can still maintain your femininity, too. I met a representative from the Matterhorn Mining Boot company at a meeting of the Society of Mining and Metallurgy Exploration (SME) in 2010. I asked her if the company made any boots that weren’t all black, which are very mannish looking. She completely surprised me by express-mailing a pair of pink and black steel-toe mining boots that she had special-ordered just for me.

Q: Do you have any Penn State honors, awards or experiences that you’d like to talk about?
A: I’ve been fortunate to receive a Bunton Waller Scholarship twice, as well as the Robert Stefanko Memorial Scholarship three times. I joined the Silent Praise MIME Ministry as a freshman in 2006, and this was one of the best decisions I have ever made. In Silent Praise, we utilize physical interpretation and movement in Christian worship, reaching out to every age group. The support and friendship from this wonderful fellowship has helped me endure the lows and celebrate the highs. I have also enjoyed playing IM Girls’ Basketball for Penn State since 2007. Basketball—there’s another passion. I played in high school and love it.

Q: What are your plans after receiving your degree this fall?
A: My personal goal is to participate in outreach projects, talking to high school students in inner city schools, encouraging them to work hard and not to take no for an answer. My career goal is to work in the industry and bring about a better public perception of what the mining industry is. I am also very interested in research in mining health and safety; I would love to earn a master’s degree someday.

Q: How would you rate the advising and mentoring assistance you have received in EMS over the years?
A: That’s easy. I would rate it a ten. I have been made to feel really comfortable by all the college’s advisors and faculty mentors. I have never been discouraged from seeking my dream. I have never felt judged as inadequate.

 

[Thoughts]

Let's start with "Eve" ...since the beginning of time these bytches been fukkin' up.

 

[tru_m.a.c]

Of course I gotta throw a soror up in there.

"I have the nerve to walk my own way, however hard, in my search for reality, rather than climb upon the rattling wagon of wishful illusions."
- Letter from Zora Neale Hurston to Countee Cullen

 

[tru_m.a.c]

The First African-American Woman to Receive a Doctorate from M.I.T. Champions the Dividends of Education

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/jackson-shirley-ann-champions-dividends-education/

The president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., came to that job in 1999 with a stellar resume. Besides being the first African-American woman to earn a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Shirley Ann Jackson headed the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission during the Clinton administration and was a physicist at Bell Laboratories and other notable research institutions. How did this lightning-quick thinker develop her interest in both science and education policy? Look for a hint in this chapter excerpt (pdf) of a book for young people that chronicles Jackson's early life as someone with "a curious mind and a passion for uncovering the secrets that lay hidden in the world around us."

Read more about her in Strong Force: The Story of Shirley Ann Jackson, Joseph Henry Press, an imprint of The National Academies Press, 2006.

For an in-depth Q&A with Dr. Jackson about our energy future and strengthening science eduation, read "Speaking Out on the "Quiet Crisis"" in the December issue ofScientific American.

 

[yomamasmellikehotdogwater]

Small animated trailer of Marie Curie for u simple minded nikkas:

 

[tru_m.a.c]

Ida Stephens Owens - First African-American to Earn the PhD

Ida Stephens Owens completed her PhD in Biochemistry and Physiology in 1967. The Carolina Times, in a front page story heralding the event, noted that Owens became the first African American to earn the PhD at Duke and the first woman ever to receive a degree in this field of study at Duke. A native of Whiteville, NC, Dr. Owens graduated summa cum laude from North Carolina College, now North Carolina Central University.

In 1975, as a member of the Laboratory of Developmental Pharmacology in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD, Dr. Owens initiated a research program investigating the UGT drug detoxifying system that is now recognized for its studies on the genetics of human diseases. In 1981, this research program was extended and made into a permanent Section on Drug Biotransformation, and Ida Stephens Owens was named Chief. She was first to determine genetic defects in children with Crigler-Najjar diseases, thereby uncovering for the first time the unique 13-gene UGT1Acomplex locus, which was been subsequently studied for its relationship to population genetics. Currently serving as the Head of the Section on Genetic Disorders of Drug Metabolism in the Program on Developmental Endocrinology and Genetics (NICHD), Dr. Owens has shown that each of 6/19 UGT isozymes that she has studied has the unique capacity to detoxify innumerable chemicals derived from metabolism, diet, environmental contaminants and medications. Unique for enzyme systems, her findings show each isozyme has a non-fixed element (active-site) that is instantly altered by classic, but isozyme-specific, phosphate signaling that enables unlimited chemical detoxification.

Having received the NIH-Director’s award in 1992, Dr. Owens is recognized throughout the world for her work on drug detoxifying enzymes. She has written key publications in scientific journals on the genetics and mechanisms controlling this enzyme system and has been invited to speak at many international scientific conferences in this field. Dr. Owens is also a member of several leading scientific societies.

http://womenstudies.duke.edu/parlors/the-portraits-project

 

[tru_m.a.c]

Dr. Evelyn Boyd GranvilleField: Mathematics
Why she’s on our list: In 1949 (just a few years after Euphemia Lofton Haynes), Dr. Granville received her doctorate in mathematics. She has worked at the New York Institute of Mathematics, and as a professor at Fisk University, Texas College, University of Texas and California State University.

Granville was born in Washington, D.C., on May 1, 1924. Her father, William Boyd, worked as a custodian in their apartment building; he did not stay with the family, however, and Granville was raised by her mother, Julia Walker Boyd, and her mother's twin sister, Louise Walker, both of whom worked as examiners for the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Granville and her sister Doris, who was a year and a half older, often spent portions of their summers at the farm of a family friend in Linden, Virginia.

Evelyn Boyd grew up in Washington, D.C. and attended the segregated Dunbar High School (from which she graduated as valedictorian) maintained high academic standards. Several of its faculty held degrees from top colleges, and they encouraged the students to pursue ambitious goals. Granville's mathematics teachers included Ulysses Basset, a Yale graduate, and Mary Cromwell, a University of Pennsylvania graduate; Cromwell's sister, who held a doctorate from Yale, taught in Dunbar's English department.

Inspired by her high school teachers and with the encouragement of her family and teachers, Granville entered Smith College with a small partial scholarship from Phi Delta Kappa, a national sorority for black women. During the summers, she returned to Washington to work at the National Bureau of Standards. After her freshman year, she lived in a cooperative house at Smith, sharing chores rather than paying more expensive dormitory rates. Granville majored in mathematics and physics, but was also fascinated by astronomy after taking a class from Marjorie Williams. She considered becoming an astronomer, but chose not to commit herself to living in the isolation of a major observatory, which was necessary for astronomers of that time. Though she had entered college intending to become a teacher, she began to consider industrial work in physics or mathematics. She graduated summa cum laude in 1945 and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

With help from a Smith College fellowship, Granville began graduate studies at Yale University, for which she also received financial assistance. She earned an M.A. in mathematics and physics in one year, and began working toward a doctorate at Yale. For the next two years she received a Julius Rosenwald Fellowship, which was awarded to help promising black Americans develop their research potential. The following year she received an Atomic Energy Commission Predoctoral Fellowship. Granville's doctoral work concentrated on functional analysis, and her dissertation was titled On Laguerre Series in the Complex Domain. Her advisor, Einar Hille, was a former president of the American Mathematical Society. Upon receiving her Ph.D. in mathematics in 1949, Granville was elected to the scientific honorary society Sigma Xi.

This was second year an African American woman received a Ph. D. in Mathematics was 1949 (the first was 1943 when Euphemia Lofton-Haynes earned a Ph.D.). That same year, Marjorie Lee Browne finished her Ph.D. thesis at the University of Michigan, but was not awarded the degree until February of the next year,1950.

Granville then undertook a year of postdoctoral research at New York University's Institute of Mathematics and Science. Apparently because of housing discrimination, she was unable to find an apartment in New York, so she moved in with a friend of her mother. Despite attending segregated schools, Granville had not encountered discrimination based on race or gender in her professional preparation. Only years later would she learn that her 1950 application for a teaching position at a college in New York City was turned down for such a reason. A female adjunct faculty member eventually told biographer Patricia Kenschaft that the application was rejected because of Granville's race; however, a male mathematician reported that despite the faculty's support of the application, the dean rejected it because Granville was a woman.

In 1950, Granville accepted the position of associate professor of mathematics at Fisk University, a noted black college in Nashville, Tennessee. At Fisk, Boyd she taught two students, Vivienne Malone Mayes and Etta Zuber Falconer, who would be, respectively, the seventh and eleventh, African American women to receive Ph.D.'s in Mathematics.


After two years of teaching, Granville went to work for the Diamond Ordnance Fuze Laboratories as an applied mathematician, a position she held for four years. From 1956 to 1960, she worked for IBM on the Project Vanguard and Project Mercury space programs, analyzing orbits and developing computer procedures. Her job included making "real-time" calculations during satellite launchings. "That was exciting, as I look back, to be a part of the space programs--a very small part--at the very beginning of U.S. involvement," Granville told Loretta Hall in a 1994 interview.

On a summer vacation to southern California, Granville met the Reverend Gamaliel Mansfield Collins, a minister in the community church. They were married in 1960, and made their home in Los Angeles. They had no children, although Collins's three children occasionally lived with them. In 1967, the marriage ended in divorce.

Upon moving to Los Angeles, Granville had taken a job at the Computation and Data Reduction Center of the U.S. Space Technology Laboratories, studying rocket trajectories and methods of orbit computation. In 1962, she became a research specialist at the North American Aviation Space and Information Systems Division, working on celestial mechanics, trajectory and orbit computation, numerical analysis, and digital computer techniques for the Apollo program. The following year she returned to IBM as a senior mathematician.

Because of restructuring at IBM, numerous employees were transferred out of the Los Angeles area in 1967; Granville wanted to stay, however, so she applied for a teaching position at California State University in Los Angeles. She happily reentered the teaching profession, which she found enjoyable and rewarding. She was disappointed in the mathematics preparedness of her students, however, and she began working to improve mathematics education at all levels. She taught an elementary school supplemental mathematics program in 1968 and 1969 through the State of California Miller Mathematics Improvement Program. The following year she directed a mathematics enrichment program that provided after-school classes for kindergarten through fifth grade students, and she taught grades two through five herself. She was an educator at a National Science Foundation Institute for Secondary Teachers of Mathematics summer program at the University of Southern California in 1972. Along with colleague Jason Frand, Granville wrote Theory and Application of Mathematics for Teachers in 1975; a second edition was published in 1978, and the textbook was used at over fifty colleges.

In 1970, Granville married Edward V. Granville, a real estate broker. After her 1984 retirement from California State University in Los Angeles, they moved to a sixteen-acre farm in Texas, where they sold eggs produced by their eight hundred chickens.

From 1985 to 1988, Granville taught mathematics and computer science at Texas College in Tyler. In 1990, she accepted an appointment to the Sam A. Lindsey Chair at the University of Texas at Tyler, and in subsequent years continued teaching there as a visiting professor. Smith College awarded Granville an honorary doctorate in 1989, making her the first black woman mathematician to receive such an honor from an American institution.

Throughout her career Granville shared her energy with a variety of professional and service organizations and boards. Many of them, including the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and the American Association of University Women, focused on education and mathematics. Others, such as the U.S. Civil Service Panel of Examiners of the Department of Commerce and the Psychology Examining Committee of the Board of Medical Examiners of the State of California, reflected broader civic interests.

When asked to summarize her major accomplishments, Granville told Hall, "First of all, showing that women can do mathematics." Then she added, "Being an African American woman, letting people know that we have brains too."

Most important is her biography, My Life as a Mathematician by Eveyln Boyd Granville, which can be read on Agnes Scott College's "Women in Mathematics" website.

http://www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/PEEPS/granville_evelynb.html

 

[tru_m.a.c]

Bessie ColemanField: Aviation
Why she’s on our list: Coleman was the first black woman aviator. She received an international pilot’s license in 1921 in France due to the Jim Crow laws of the United States.

Bessie Coleman was born into a large family in Atlanta, Texas, on January 26, 1892, the tenth of thirteen children.

In 1901, Bessie’s happy life took a dramatic hit.George Coleman left his family.He had become fed up with the racial barriers that existed in Waxahachie and all across the state of Texas.He returned to Oklahoma, or Indian Territory as it was called then, to find better opportunities.Unable to convince his wife and children to go with him, he left with a heavy heart.Soon after Bessie's father left, her remaining older brothers also left home, leaving Susan Coleman with four girls under the age of nine.Within days of George’s departure, Susan found work as a cook/housekeeper for Mr. And Mrs. Elwin Jones.They were generous employers who allowed Susan to continue to live at home and who would give food and handed-down clothing to the Coleman girls.While her mother worked at the Jones residence, Bessie took over as surrogate mother and housekeeper at the Coleman home on Mustang Creek.Every year Bessie’s routine of school, chores, and church was shattered by the cotton harvest.Each man, woman, boy and girl was needed to pick the cotton, so the Coleman family worked together in the fields during the harvest. At the age of twelve Bessie was accepted into the Missionary Baptist Church.Bessie completed all eight grades of her one-room school, yearning for more.Bessie saved her money and then in 1910 took her savings and enrolled in the Colored Agricultural and Normal University in Langston, Oklahoma.Bessie completed only one term before she ran out of money and was forced to return to Waxahachie.She continued her former life working as a laundress in the small Texas town.In 1915, at the age of twenty-three, she set out to stay with her brother, Walter, in Chicago while she looked for work.All she wanted was a chance to “amount to something”.

By 1918, Bessie's mother Susan and her three younger sisters, Georgie, Elois and Nilus, had joined Bessie and her brothers in Chicago. Walter and John had served in France during World War I and returned safely, only to witness 1919 Chicago battered by the worst race riot in history. By then, Bessie had been in Chicago for nearly five years. During that time, she had moved north, learned a trade and supported herself, watched her brothers return from war and survived a race riot. As the summer of her 27th year ended, she was still looking for a way to "amount to something." Taking her cue from brother John's teasing remarks about French women flying and having careers, Bessie decided she would become a flier.

Having secured funding from several sources and received a passport with English and French visas, Bessie departed for France in November of 1920. She completed in seven months, a ten month course at the Ecole d'Aviation des Freres Caudon at Le Crotoy in the Somme. Learning to fly in a French Nieuport Type 82, Bessie's schooling included "tail spins, banking and looping the loop." She received her license from the renowned Federation Aeronautique Internationale(FAI) on June 15, 1921. Her birthplace was listed as Atlanta, Texas, but her age was listed as 25(the figure she had given passport authorities in Chicago) rather than 29 that she actually was. The license did not indicate that Bessie was the first black woman to ever earn a license from the prestigious FAI nor that she was the only woman of the sixty-two candidates to earn FAI licenses during that six-month period.

In the time between her 1922 flying debut in New York and her 1925 Texas debut, Bessie never lost sight of her goal of opening a school for aviators. She flirted briefly with a movie career, traveled to California to earn money for a plane of her own, crashed that plane once she bought it and then returned to Chicago to formulate a new plan. It was another two years before she finally succeeded in lining up a series of lectures and exhibition flights in Texas. Once there, she defied not only racial barriers but gender barriers as well. She appeared in San Antonio, Richmond, Waxahachie, Wharton,Dallas and numerous unreported small towns and fields. At Love Field in Dallas, she made a down payment on a plane from the Curtiss Southwestern Airplane and Motor Company, probably an old Jenny(JN-4 with an OX-5 engine).

Following a brief return to Chicago, Bessie left for a series of lectures in black theaters in Georgia and Florida. After two months in Florida, she opened a beauty shop in Orlando to hasten her accumulation of funds to start the long awaited aviation school. Using borrowed planes Bessie continued exhibition flying and occasional parachute jumping. As she had often done in other U.S. locations, Bessie refused to perform unless the audiences were desegregated and everyone attending used the same gates. With the patronage of a wealthy businessman, Bessie made the final payment on her plane in Dallas and arranged to have it flown to Jacksonville for her next engagement scheduled for May 1, 1926.

At the end of April in 1926, Bessie's Jenny arrived in Jacksonville. On the evening of April 30th, she and her mechanic took the plane up for a test flight. Once aloft, the plane malfunctioned and the mechanic, who was piloting the plane from the front seat, lost control of the plane. Bessie fell from the open cockpit several hundred feet to her death.

Five thousand mourners attended a memorial service for Bessie before her body traveled by train from Orlando to Chicago. An estimated ten thousand people filed past Bessie's coffin to pay their last respects. Thousands more attended the funeral of that little girl from Texas who dreamt of a better life as she picked cotton at the dawn of the 20th century. Only after her death did Bessie receive the recognition that she deserved. Her dream of a flying school for African American's became a reality when William J. Powell established the Bessie Coleman Aero Club in Los Angeles, California in 1929. As a result of being affiliated, educated or inspired directly or indirectly, by the Bessie Coleman Aero Club, flyers like the Five Blackbirds, the Flying Hobos(James Banning and Thomas Allen), the Tuskegee Airmen, Cornelius Coffey, John Robison, Willa Brown and Harold Hurd continued to make Bessie Coleman's dream a reality.

In 1931, the Challenger Pilots' Association of Chicago began an annual flyover at Chicago's Lincoln Cemetery to honor Coleman. Three years later, William J. Powell dedicated his book, Black Wings, to Coleman's memory. More than 45 years later, in 1977, women pilots in the Chicago area established the Bessie Coleman Aviators Club.

The 1990s brought long awaited accolades: Mayor Richard Daley redesignated Old Mannheim Road at O'Hare Airport as Bessie Coleman Drive in 1990; May 2, 1992 was declared Bessie Coleman Day in Chicago; and in 1995, the U. S. Postal Service issued a Bessie Coleman stamp commemorating "her singular accomplishment in becoming the world's first African American pilot and, by definition , an American legend."

 

[tru_m.a.c]

Dr. Betty Harris
Field: Chemistry

Born and raised in Monroe, Louisiana, the young Betty Harris was interested in chemistry. At college she obtained a BS degree in chemistry from Southern University and an MS degree in chemistry from Atlanta University.

Harris then started to work as a visiting staff member for the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The Los Alamos National Laboratory focuses primarily on field and laboratory studies of geological processes related to environmental issues. After working for some time and gaining more exposure to the field of research, she decided to become a research chemist and earned her Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico.

As a research chemist at Los Alamos, Betty Harris worked in the areas of hazardous waste treatment and environmental restoration facilities contaminated with energetic materials such as propellants, gun propellants, and explosives. She eventually became a noted expert in the chemistry of explosives. Recently, she has even worked with Girl Scouts to develop a chemistry badge that is similar to the chemistry merit badge for Boy Scouts. Through her research, Harris obtained a patent for her invention of a spot test for identifying explosives in a field environment. She has received the state's Governor's Trailblazer Award for her achievements.