2013 Patricia Stocking Brown Research Award Recipient Named
ALBANY, N.Y. (May 15, 2013) - The University Libraries at the University at Albany, SUNY presented the 2013 Patricia Stocking Brown Fund for Feminist Social Justice Research Award to University at Albany graduate student Sean Heather McGraw today. McGraw, a fifth year doctoral candidate in the Department of History, received $500 for her project to research the history, influence and uniqueness of the lesbian community in the Capital District of New York since the 1970s. Professor Gerald Zahavi of the Department of History will serve as faculty advisor to the project.
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.
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 his or her research.
sending millions of gallons of water, large, thick chunks of ice, and trees cascading across Western Avenue, into homes and businesses and stranding one homeowner's car in a tree well south 
of Western Avenue. ("Flood Hits Western Avenue," Knickerbocker News, Late Edition, March 21, 1963).
The University at Albany's uptown campus was built as part of Governor Nelson Rockefeller's program to improve the State University system in the early 1960s. Rockefeller commissioned Edward Durell Stone to create a master plan and oversee the construction of the new campus resulting in one of the largest modern academic campuses in the United States. Unlike traditional campuses that grow and develop over time, the Uptown Campus was conceived and constructed all at once, over a short period of time, designed and overseen by a single architect. The groundbreaking took place in 1962, and by 1971 all of the buildings were complete and operational. The site of the uptown campus was at one time known as the Albany Country Club. Founded in 1893 by a private group, 
the new country club was an instant success, and quickly won the support of prominent Albanians. In addition to golf, by 1930, the club offered tennis, and later dammed a pond (named Kuyl or Kill) for swimming and skating. 
The damming was done by erecting a 300 foot earthen and wooden dam in exactly the same location as the Campus or Indian Pond is located today. It was the Country Club dam that gave way in March of 1963. For more information on the history of the Uptown Campus site see the "Ask Geoff" column of the Fall 2012 UAlbany Magazine: