Biographical Text
Professor Emerita of English Hubertien Helen Williams Scott (December 9, 1927-) was born in Minnesota. She is the mother of four children: two sons, Richard Dale (Harnish) Williams (May 19, 1949-) and John David (November 27,1952-), and two daughters, Hubertien Helen (August 7, 1954-) and Elizabeth Marie (May 27, 1961-). She is the grandmother of Seth Patrick Williams, Hubi Helen Secreast, Donnie Estee Secreast, Ian Nicholas Ramdeen, and Kellie Michelle Ramdeen. Williams began her career as a secretary at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio (1944-45). After one semester at the University of Iowa, she entered nurses training in Springfield City Hospital School of Nursing (Ohio) 1946. She married Dale Elwood Harnish on August 7, 1948, completing her nurse's training in February 1949. Richard Dale was born May 19th, 1949, and her husband was killed a month later in an automobile accident coming home from work. She sat for the State Board examinations and became a Registered Nurse in July 1949. After the death of her husband, she and her son joined her family, her father stationed in Germany, where she went to work as a secretary to General Giffin at Headquarters United States Air Forces in Germany from December 1949 to September 1951, when she returned to the United States to marry Sgt. John H. Williams and become a "traditional housewife." In 1959 she attended the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, receiving an A.B. degree in 1962, with majors in English and philosophy. Williams then attended Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio, on a three-year National Defense Education Act Fellowship, and she received her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in English, from the university in 1963 and 1968, respectively. Dr. Williams became an assistant professor of English at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in 1965, achieving tenure in 1968. In 1970, she joined the Department of English at Appalachian State University as an associate professor. She received her tenure in 1973, and she received a Lilly Foundation fellowship to participate in a 23-day Outward Bound Wilderness experience in the San Juan mountains of Colorado in 1974. Williams was appointed professor in 1975. Throughout her academic career, Dr. Williams was active in a number of organizations, among which were the Modern Language Association, the South Atlantic Modern Language Association, Phi Kappa Phi, the National Honors Council, and the Southern Regional Honors Council. She worked on several research projects, with emphasis on an ongoing investigation of the role of myth and its relation to epistemology. This project was directly related to a National Endowment for the Humanities seminar in 1974-with follow-up workshops from 1975 to 1981-and was supportive of courses she team-taught in the university's General Honors Program, as well as of courses which she taught in the Department of English. Williams served as an administrative intern in the office of the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs in 1977, where she authored a comparative study of salaries for male and female professors at all levels and made recommendations for rectifying glaring salary discrepancies where they appeared. She also served as an equal opportunity associate representing her department and served on a number of university and departmental committees, including the Personnel Committee, the University Honors Program Committee, and the English Graduate Program. Williams was also a member of the steering committees for the Black-American Studies, Watauga College, the Developmental Studies Program, and the Honors Program. In addition to being an advisor for the General College, for the honors programs, and for English majors, she helped organize and was president of both the Women's Faculty Association and the Appalachian State chapter of Phi Kappa Phi. Williams also helped organize University Scholars. In 1978 she became the university's representative as a fellow in the FIPSE-funded Academic Leadership Program involving twelve universities nationwide. Her special project was improving literacy for all students at all levels across campus. She also developed a 20-minute placement essay for incoming freshman to determine their writing skills in order to assign them to an appropriate writing class at the freshman level. Dr. Williams was named coordinator of University Honors Programs in 1979 and served in that position until 1984. During that period, the Honors Program acquired its own building for housing honors students, and honors scholarship funding increased ten-fold. In 1984, she accepted an off-campus scholarly assignment, which included participation in an exchange program with Northeast University of Technology in China. During her two-year stay in China, she prepared Chinese graduate students to pass the GRE exams for admission to Ph.D programs in the U.S., Canada, England, and Australia. She did research and wrote test books for teaching English as a second language. That year, she and her Chinese co-teacher won that university's teacher of the year award. She delivered a paper at the International D.H. Lawrence Conference in France in 1990. She retired from Appalachian State University in September 1992, in March 1993, she was awarded the rank of professor emerita. Williams moved to Radford, Virginia in 1992, where she has taught part-time at Radford University and at Virginia Tech. She continues to travel extensively both at home and abroad. She and Warren Gary Scott, were married in February of 2005. They reside in Dublin, Virginia, where they remain active in the First Baptist Church of Radford and continue their travels across the nation. Sources: Appalachian State University files and personal correspondence. -Dr. Richard D. Howe
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