Elizabeth Jones was concerned, and perhaps for good reason. In the mid-1950s, few women pursued chemistry degrees. The University of Washington was no exception. In a chemistry class of 200 students there, Jones was one of only four women. But that wasn’t her only concern. When she compared herself to her classmates, she realized that her high school education hadn’t prepared her. Not long after beginning her freshman year in the fall of 1956, she fell behind.
Jones worked diligently to catch up. When she took the final exam at the end of the first quarter, she had no idea how she had done. As other students’ attention turned to the upcoming winter break, she worried whether her hard work had been a wasted effort. At last, she visited her professor, who handed her the exam results. The suspense was over: She had received the highest marks in the class. She couldn’t believe it. Neither could her professor. “There’s no place for a woman in chemistry,” he said.
“To say the least, [the University of Washington] was not interested in the education of women,” Jones observes dryly.
She continued, undaunted, her studies in the sciences and soon stumbled across the new field of genetics. During her graduate studies, she tried her hand at teaching it. Now, more than 40 years of teaching experience later, Jones, professor of life sciences at Carnegie Mellon, has earned the Genetics Society of America’s inaugural Excellence in Education award.
