Barnard biology professor honored with Emily Gregory award for teaching

Carrying on the spirit of Emily Gregory, a Barnard professor and a pioneering woman in science, biology professor Jennifer Mansfield has been named this years Emily Gregory Award recipient.

The award, established in 1974 in honor of the first woman to be named a full professor at Columbia University in 1895, is Barnards only student-nominated and student-selected teaching award. Gregory, who died in 1897, was the first American woman to receive a doctorate in botany. According to Mansfields students, Mansfield reinforces Gregorys legacy of promoting a future generation of women in science.

Shes definitely an inspirational person in this field at this college. Shes a really good example that you dont have to be cutthroat in this field. Shes so smart and capable, Natasha Antony, BC 14, who took a genetics class with Mansfield, said. Shes a remarkable example of a woman in science.

The Emily Gregory Award, sponsored by McIntosh Activites Council, is not the first time Mansfield has been honored for her scientific pursuits.

Mansfield completed a three-year Kirschstein Postdoctoral Fellowship at Harvard Medical School, granted by the National Institutes of Health, and was awarded the Charles A. Huebschman Prize for marine biology and the James Howard McGregor Award for her promise as a teacher of zoology.

But Mansfield said that its a uniquely special honor to receive the Emily Gregory Award.

This award is an absolutely wonderful honor, because it comes from the students in particular, Mansfield said. I came to Barnard because I wanted to work with students, and this makes me feel wonderful.

Mansfield, who joined Barnards faculty in 2006, is an associate professor of biological sciences and focuses on developmental genetics and vertebrate development. She helped develop the biology departments new curriculum on manduca functional genomes.

I think in courses or in the lab, in teaching biology, obviously you want students to understand the main context, of course, but I think its also equally important that students of biology understand how knowledge is generated, she said. Its essential that they understand how data is evaluated by evaluating data themselves.

According to Maya Feldman, BC 16, this approach makes for highly effective teaching. Feldman works in Mansfields lab and is also one of her advisees.

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Barnard biology professor honored with Emily Gregory award for teaching