Pastors Pen Reflection

 Dear <<Name>>
      There are so many people I could choose to highlight on this last week of Black History month. I’ve read about people who have made such a difference in our world and it still amazes me that more stories are not told of those who make our country great. The African American people who have put their lives on the line and yet have not received credit in history or in life for that matter. I keep hoping for better!

This week I would like to share the story of Mae Jemison.
 
Mae was the youngest child in her family.  Her family moved to Chicago, Illinois, when Mae was three years old to take advantage of better educational opportunities, and it is that city that she calls her hometown.  
 
She knew she wanted to pursue a career in biomedical engineering and was awarded as an honor student, National Achievement Scholarship and she went to Stanford University. She received a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering from the university in 1977. She then attended Cornell University Medical College and, during her years there, found time to expand her horizons by studying in Cuba and Kenya and working at a Cambodian refugee camp in Thailand. After Jemison obtained her M.D. in 1981, she interned at Los Angeles County/University of Southern California Medical Center and later worked as a general practitioner. For the next two and a half years, she was the area Peace Corps medical officer for Sierra Leone and Liberia where she also taught and did medical research.
 
When she returned to the US Jemison made a career change and decided to follow a dream she had nurtured for a long time. Jemison was one of the 15 candidates chosen from a field of about 2,000 into NASA.  Jemison became the first African-American woman to be admitted into the NASA astronaut training program. After more than a year of training, she became the first African-American woman astronaut, earning the title of science mission specialist. A job that would make her responsible for conducting crew-related scientific experiments on the space shuttle.
 
When Jemison finally flew into space on September 12, 1992, with six other astronauts aboard the Endeavour on mission STS47, she became the first African-American woman in space. After leaving the astronaut corps in March 1993, Jemison accepted a teaching fellowship at Dartmouth. She also established the Jemison Group, a company that seeks to research, develop and market advanced technologies.
 
You can read more about this amazing woman on her bio page follow the link below. I hope you have found these past weeks as insightful as I have.
 
https://www.biography.com/people/mae-c-jemison-9542378
 
Rev Terri