The Salisbury Area Chamber of Commerce will host its General Membership Luncheon March 15 at 12 p.m. at Reign Event Center. The luncheon will feature speaker Dr. Juliette Bell, President of University of Maryland Eastern Shore.
Bell is the University of Maryland Eastern Shore’s 15th leader since its founding in 1886, and the fourth woman to hold the post. Bell is a biochemist who grew up in rural Alabama 50 miles east of Birmingham, the state’s largest city.
She graduated valedictorian of her class, earning a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Talladega (Ala.) College. She received her Ph.D. in chemistry with a biochemistry concentration from Atlanta University and did postdoctoral work in biochemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Following her post-doctoral fellowship, she worked as a senior staff fellow and research biologist at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Research Triangle Park, N.C.
Bell made full professor at Fayetteville State in 1998, directed its Biomedical Research Program (1993-2006) and established the Research Initiative for Scientific Enhancement (2002-2006) program. She was founding dean of the university’s College of Basic and Applied Sciences from 2004 to 2006 and provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs from 2006-2008.
In August 2009, Bell was named chief academic officer at Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio, a historically black institution with an enrollment of 2,500 students.
Bell has served on the National Science Foundation’s Biological Sciences Advisory Board and as a consultant to the American Association of Colleges and Universities. Among her honors: the 2001 National Role Model Citation from Minority Access, Inc. and the 2000 Millennium Award for Excellence in Teaching in Mathematics, Science, Engineering and Technology at Historically Black Colleges from the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
Tickets to this luncheon are $25 for Chamber members and $35 for future members. Tickets can be purchased online at salisburyarea.com or by calling Chamber Events Director Lauren Barnas at 410.749.0144.
