Best of CASE District VIII Award
 

Institution: Oregon State University Foundation

Title of entry: “Reaching new heights ..." by Siobhan Murray

About this entry: This profile in the Oregon Stater alumni magazine follows Elaine Gething Davis, ’49, one of the first nine female engineering students at OSU and one of the first female space engineers at Boeing. Davis faced her fair share of challenges: her male classmates would taunt her, saying she was “just there to get married,” and she experienced gender discrimination in her early career. But this only made her pursue her goals with more vigor. “I simply would not give up, as hard as it was,” she said. “I figured, ‘My parents are sacrificing to send me to school.’ I couldn’t disappoint them.” After a trailblazing career as a Boeing aerodynamicist designing Cold War defense systems in partnership with the military, she happily married, tap danced into her 80s and created a lasting legacy by establishing a scholarship that supports OSU students of all genders into the future.