the life of sherry bowen
BY: DAMIEN STROWBRIDGE
A former student of IRCC, Ms. Bowen attended the University of South Florida to receive her Bachelor’s degree in Zoology. She continued to get her Clinical Laboratory Master’s degree from the University of North Dakota.
Ms. Bowen has been a full-time Biology faculty member since 2005. Classes taught include lecture and laboratory courses in Anatomy and Physiology, General Biology I, Life Science, and Microbiology. She has also been the Project Coordinator for two multi-million dollar grants, both dealing with Math and Science education. Her responsibilities included the overall management of the grants to include supervision of activities, budgeting, acquisitions, documentation, and federal reporting. The Living Science web site was recognized, in an international competition, by the 2004 NAWeb Conference as the Educational Web Site of the Year.
Her greatest personal influence has been her father. He was one of the founding teachers of IRCC. They moved here to Ft. Pierce the year IRCC (IRJC at the time) started and was located in trailers by Delaware Elementary. Ms. Bowen loved medicine and worked in the medical field for 30 years as a lab supervisor. Ms. Bowen wants to pass on to her students some of the experiences that she has had throughout her career as well as hopefully passing on her love of science.
She feels it is her job to teach the students; to not assume that they know the information. So she is very careful about approaching the subject with the assumption that this is new material and it will have to be explained at their level. Ms. Bowen became the Department Chair of the Biology Department in 2008. In 2010, Ms. Bowen was blessed to be a part of the building of the S.T.E.M building in Port Saint Lucie. Ms. Bowen has been working on this building for the past 2 years. She has led the department in helping to build it from the ground up. She has encouraged participation from all faculties which is a good thing. The S.T.E.M (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) building cost a total of $19.5 million dollars. The S.T.E.M. building is the cutting edge of equipment for students.
Students will be exposed to the latest advances in Science, Math, Engineering and Technology. Ms. Bowen stated “We are ensuring that when students walk out of the college systems that they are able to begin working”. Casey Lunceford, Dean of Arts and Science at Indian River State College, stated “Sherry is an outstanding individual; she gives one hundred percent in everything that she does she works many hours nights and weekends, to make sure thing get done not only here on main campus but also the new S.T.E.M. building. She has the students and college best interest at heart”.
The S.T.E.M. building will include 6 labs on the 3rd floor an additional lab on the 1st floor along with other prep rooms. The upper level labs will be housed with Cell Physiology, Genetics and Micro Biology. Some of her colleague described her as a fighter, stubborn in a good way; she is a very organized person, an awesome leader, she’s a very loyal person, fair, gentle, and most of all firm. On a scale of 1-15 she would be at a 15 say Dr. Jennifer Capers professor at Indian River State College, she has done a very great job with the chair and S.T.E.M. building and also the bachelor degrees dealing with science. Classes at this multi-million dollar building will begin in January.
The dedication of the building will be the 26th of February 2013.
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