Sheri Sarnoff Named 2017 Patricia Stocking Brown Research Award Recipient

The University Libraries at the University at Albany, SUNY today presented the 2017 Patricia Stocking Brown Fund for Feminist Social Justice Research Award to University at Albany undergraduate student Sheri Sarnoff.

A dual History/Psychology major, Ms. Sarnoff received $100 for her research on attempts to establish and maintain a day care facility at the University at Albany, 1969-1983. The project, created as part of the Department of History's Senior Honors Thesis Seminar, explores the respective roles of the Women's Liberation Front, families, and the University administration in efforts to provide on-campus child care. Professors Ryan Irwin and Kori Graves of the Department of History serve as faculty advisors to this project. Ms. Sarnoff expects to receive her Bachelor of Arts degree in May 2018.

The annual Award honors Professor Patricia Stocking Brown, who taught Biology and Women's and Minorities' Studies for 35 years at nearby Siena College. Trained at the University of Michigan in comparative endocrinology, and a self-described feminist, Patricia Stocking Brown was the first female faculty member in the sciences at Siena. There she established an extraordinary career as a caring and rigorous teacher and researcher who promoted student research, feminist analytical thinking and evidence-based medicine. Brown was the wife of University at Albany Distinguished Teaching Professor of Biology Emeritus Stephen C. Brown.</img>

Professor Patricia Stocking Brown died in 2004 from metastatic breast cancer. The University at Albany Libraries' Department of Special Collections & Archives holds Brown's papers along with those of the grassroots nonprofit Capital Region Action Against Breast Cancer (CRAAB!), which she co-founded in 1997, and the New York State Breast Cancer Network, a coalition of grassroots breast cancer groups around the state, she co-founded soon after.

Donors from the University at Albany's Women's Studies and Biology Departments, including Professor of Women's Studies Emerita Bonnie Spanier, established The Patricia Stocking Brown Fund for Feminist Social Justice Research in University Libraries to support and promote students' interest in and use of primary materials related to the study of social justice, housed in the Department of Special Collections & Archives. Award applicants must be a registered University at Albany graduate or undergraduate student and currently engaged in or planning a research project/class paper related to feminist social justice. Awardees must utilize at least one manuscript or archival collection at the University as part of their research.