Yvonne Clark

Yvonne Clark
Born 1925
Houston, Texas, United States
Citizenship American
Nationality American
Fields Mechanical engineering
Alma mater Howard University (1951)

Yvonne Clark (born 1925) is a pioneer for African-American and women engineers. She is the first woman to get a Bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering at Howard University. She is the first woman to earn a master's degree in engineering management from Vanderbilt University. She is the first woman to serve as a faculty member in the College of Engineering and Technology at Tennessee State University.[1]

Early life and education

Clark was born in 1925 in Houston, Texas and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. Her father was a physician/surgeon and her mother was a librarian and journalist. As a child she had a love for building and fixing things. She took an aeronautics class in high school and joined the school's Civil Air Patrol. In 1945 she graduated from high school at age 16 and spent the next two years studying in Boston. Clark then became the first woman to earn a degree in mechanical engineering from Howard University. After she graduated in 1951 she found that "the engineering job market wasn't very receptive to women, particularly women of color".[2] Clark earned her master's degree in Engineering Management from Vanderbilt University in 1972.[3]

Career

Clark helped to start Tennessee State's chapter of Pi Tau Sigma, a mechanical engineering society.[4] There, she was the first female member of the mechanical engineering department, and twice chaired it. She has worked for NASA, RCA, Westinghouse,[2] and Ford.[5]

Research

Clark spent many summers at Frankfort Arsenal doing research on recoilless weapons. She also spent a summer working with NASA in Huntsville, Alabama where she investigated Saturn V engines for hot spots. She then spent a summer at the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston working on containers to return moon samples to Earth. Clark did further research that discovered methods for revitalizing and modernizing part of the inner city through the Westinghouse's Defense and Space Center in Baltimore, Maryland. As of the 1990s, her research focuses on refrigerants. She is the main investigator for the research project "Experimental Evaluation of the Performance of Alternative Refrigerants in Heat Pump Cycles" funded by the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Clark is the student division team leader for the NASA funded project at TSU called the Center for Automated Space Science.[2]

Awards

References

  1. ↑ "SWE Women - Clark". societyofwomenengineers. Retrieved 6 April 2015.
  2. 1 2 3 Warren, Wini (1999). Black Women Scientists in the United States. Bloomington, Ind. [u.a.]: Indiana University Press. ISBN 9780253336033.
  3. ↑ "Faculty". Tennessee State University. 5 March 2013. Retrieved 21 February 2015.
  4. ↑ "Tennessee State Alpha Delta". Pi Tau Sigma. 2012. Retrieved 21 February 2015.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Yvonne Clark". Society of Women Engineers. 12 May 2009. Retrieved 21 February 2015.

External links

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