Anne R. Skinner, Senior Lecturer in Chemistry, Emerita

Having come to Williams in 1967, when tenure-track positions for women were scarce, you pieced together a remarkable career as teacher, scholar, and safety officer. Your students have benefited from both a firm foundation in chemistry and the application of it in locations as remote as Ethiopia. There and elsewhere they experienced both the rigor and the excitement of your research, which combines chemistry, geology, and archaeology to advance our understanding of evolution. Your use of electron spin resonance has helped track the migration of our ancestors over four continents and, most spectacularly, established that hominids had harvested fire up to a million years earlier than had been thought. Here at home, we have benefited from your careful attention in the role of college safety consultant, which has averted unknown numbers of injury and damage, and has earned the College Health and Safety Award for what was called “the most comprehensive program of chemical laboratory safety” in the country. With your guidance, these safety principles became part of the design of our Science Center. You have also applied this exemplary citizenship to the Town of Williamstown, which you have served in almost every capacity imaginable and for which you have earned nearly every honor available.

I hereby declare you Senior Lecturer in Chemistry, Emerita, entitled to all the rights, honors, and privileges appertaining thereto.

June 5, 2011

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