President Bush Honors Chemical Engineer

Christine S. Grant, associate professor of chemical engineering at North Carolina State University, has been named a recipient of a Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics & Engineering Mentoring. Grant was one of nine individuals and eight institutions that were named on May 6 as recipients of the award by President George W. Bush.

The awardees are honored for encouraging women, minorities, and people with disabilities to participate in these subjects during their education. The recipients will each receive a $10,000 grant to apply to their mentoring programs.

The National Science Foundation, which administers the presidential mentoring award program on behalf of the White House, notes that Grant is one of only six tenured African-American women faculty members in chemical engineering nationwide. “Her outreach activities serve students from K–12 through graduate education,” according to NSF. “She includes students in her research agenda, and she gives additional attention to mentoring junior faculty.” Grant has created an array of activities that are intended to stop leaks in the academic pipeline for women and students from traditionally underrepresented groups and to teach students “how to work within the system.”

Grant received a bachelor’s degree in 1984 from Brown University, Providence, R.I., and M.S. (1986) and Ph.D. (1989) degrees from Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, all in chemical engineering. Grant says her research has applications in the development of environmentally benign cleaning technologies in the chemical, food, and electronics industries.