Actor and film director Woody Allen famously said, “80% of success is showing up.”
How about if success is actually showing
up for other people? Mary Jo D. Parker, Ed.D., who received the first Trailblazing Women Leaders in STEM Award last spring from the Women in STEM at the University of Houston Clear Lake, believes
that’s her most trailblazing attribute. “I show up for people! I believe in my ability
to positively influence almost any situation,” she shared. “I give my time, talent,
and positivity to our undergraduates and faculty…I believe in the inherent goodness
and rightmindedness of student potential, especially for underserved students.”
Parker has brought that attitude to every day of her 15 years as head of the College of Sciences and Technology’s Scholars Academy, which is now celebrating its 25th anniversary. And she has brought innovation, like an online sequenced, non-majors biology course, which was groundbreaking in 2011. “Much of my doctoral work involved using online platforms as shared learning environments and as mechanisms to connect users in shared geographically distinct datasets across biology, water quality, and data analyses,” she said. “This sharing of data allowed learners to assemble knowledge from near and far to find significance across the data and draw broader conclusions.”
During this same time, she instituted “kitchen chemistry/bio labs” to initiate hands-on activities of key constructs associated with biology concepts. Even students from other universities in and out of state registered for the online biology course because their university did not offer the course at the time. Parker was dabbling in the future nine years before COVID.
Not only does Parker show up for people, she knows how to write! Especially grant proposals that resonate with funders. Over the last 15 years, her proposals to the Department of Education MSEIP, NOAA, Texas Office of the Governor, Texas Workforce Development, National Summer Transportation Institute, and Texas Talent Connection have brought in approximately $8.16 million, directly benefiting Scholars Academy students and indirectly all UHD STEM undergraduates. More than 25 tenure-track/tenured faculty have benefited, too, and the grants have also funded research supplies and conference travel for faculty and students.
When Parker arrived at UHD in 2009, she had years of experience as a teacher and an administrator in secondary education. “As a biology teacher and biology department chair at Caney Creek High School in Conroe ISD, I assisted in the opening of a new high school,” said Parker. “I insisted that our new school (built in a very impoverished area of east Montgomery County) must have immediate access to state-of-the-art science lab equipment similar to that at a wealthy school recently built on the west side of the county.”
She went on to be the Headmaster/Principal of the Academy of Science & Health Professions, a new, emerging STEM magnet high school, envisioning what was possible for the minority, economically disadvantaged students north of the river that divides Conroe ISD.
“At the time, I did not realize just how much my own first-generation status would assist me in the leadership needed to develop this STEM magnet school.” She knew that the new magnet must hire teachers with higher education credentials to distinguish itself from the district’s other STEM magnet. “Little did I recognize that bringing this level of expertise and credentials would provide models for our first-generation students to experience, learn from, and begin dreaming of their own future in STEM.”
In the end, “Our students were entering university in and out of state at similar rates as the other magnet. The inspiration of the Ph.D. teachers in the magnet truly influenced our students to imagine and seek their own academic aspirations."
Parker attributes her innate leadership and innovative problem-solving skills to her mother, who lived to be 98 years old. “My mother was a Hispanic woman born in 1924 in the Texas border town of Zapata (about 50 miles south of Laredo). She was bilingual as the family spoke Spanish at home, and she spoke English at school as encouraged by one of her teachers. In the ninth grade, my mother took up the responsibility of going to work since her father was seriously ill and no money was coming in for the family.”
While she gave up her formal education, she never gave up on learning, After a few years of marriage, she lost her husband at age 44, and she found herself alone to raise three small children, ages one-and-a-half, six, and 12. She learned how to drive and went to work in the food industry, including running the canteen on the Naval Air Station, where she cooked, planned, sold, cleaned, and provided food for all 300 of the navy squadron. “During Hurricane Celia, our family took shelter in the school’s cafeteria (the local emergency shelter),” remembers Parker. “The ISD superintendent came into the shelter, saw my mother, and asked her to cook for the hundreds of people in the shelter. He opened the cafeteria for Mother as she gathered others to assist in the meal preparation. She always rose to meet the needs of others.”
Parker says her mother never questioned whether her children would go to college. Nor did she suggest how they would pay for college. She just made it happen. “Helping others, active involvement in faith, seeing Mother’s pride in her family, and her own work provided me the constancy and motivation to envision my own future in college, accomplishing what I envisioned for my future.”
Now Parker passes that dedication and commitment along to the students and faculty of UHD’s College of Sciences and Technology—every single day, fueled by her passion for learning and teaching.