{"id":5227,"date":"2019-02-07T13:53:26","date_gmt":"2019-02-07T18:53:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/reporter\/?page_id=5227"},"modified":"2019-02-07T13:53:26","modified_gmt":"2019-02-07T18:53:26","slug":"first-female-valedictorian","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/reporter-winter2019\/features\/women-at-the-summit\/first-female-valedictorian\/","title":{"rendered":"First Female Valedictorian"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Joan Davies Jefferys \u201974 didn\u2019t date in college. She didn\u2019t socialize too much either. Mostly, she hit the books. \u201cI pretty much studied,\u201d recalls Jefferys, a math major. \u201cI guess that\u2019s how I ended up valedictorian,\u201d she jokes.<\/p>\n

The college\u2019s first female valedictorian, Jefferys recalls being \u201ctotally accepted\u201d by her male classmates. \u201cThere was no sexism,\u201d she says. \u201cIn math and sciences, we were just one of the group. The professors would call on us, treat us just the same.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though math was her passion, she credits her professional destiny as a biostatistician to Robert H. Brewer in Trinity\u2019s Biology Department. \u201cMy senior year, I was in the biology lab and the professor said he wanted to see me after lab in his office,\u201d she remembers. \u201cHe asked why I had majored in math when I was so good at biology. All of a sudden, he mentioned biostatistics, which I had not heard of. I don\u2019t think he really understood what it was either, but someone had given him a book about it. He hadn\u2019t read the book, but he gave it to me. I got a blanket from the dorm, found a nice shady spot on the lawn, and started looking through the book. I ended up going to Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, where I studied biostatistics.\u201d  <\/p>\n

Johns Hopkins is where Jefferys has spent most of her professional life as a statistician working with medical research data. \u201cIf it weren\u2019t for that biology professor,\u201d she says, \u201cI probably would never have ended up here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Next: First Honored Female Athlete, Olivia Brown \u201978<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joan Davies Jefferys \u201974 didn\u2019t date in college. She didn\u2019t socialize too much either. Mostly, she hit the books. \u201cI pretty much studied,\u201d recalls Jefferys, a math major. \u201cI guess that\u2019s how I ended up valedictorian,\u201d she jokes. The college\u2019s first female valedictorian, Jefferys recalls being \u201ctotally accepted\u201d by her male classmates. \u201cThere was no … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “First Female Valedictorian”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"parent":5419,"menu_order":4,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/reporter-winter2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5227"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/reporter-winter2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/reporter-winter2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/reporter-winter2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/reporter-winter2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/reporter-winter2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5227\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/reporter-winter2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/reporter-winter2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}