George R. Brewster
1939–2021 SWE Fellow, Rodney D. Chipp Memorial Award recipient
George R. Brewster, F.SWE, 1985 Rodney D. Chipp Memorial Award recipient, and retired manager of salary recruiting at Corning Inc., died May 4. For much of his 34-year career with Corning, Brewster was actively involved in recruiting and supporting women and underrepresented minorities in engineering. He gave many talks on how to choose the right employer, how to interview, and how to succeed in the workplace. He regularly attended SWE and other diversity organization conferences and helped to charter SWE’s Twin Tiers Section in 1979.
Brewster graduated with honors from Northeastern University, earning his B.S. in business in 1961. As an ROTC cadet, upon graduation he was commissioned as a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army and served three years until he was honorably discharged. Entering industry, he worked briefly for Honeywell, then started at Corning as a first line shift supervisor.
In a Grassroots Oral History Project interview, he described how his mother’s experiences made him sensitive to the discrimination women face in traditionally male occupations. In the 1940s, while he was growing up, his mother was one of two women postmasters in the United States. By the 1950s, there were only about a dozen more women in the role. She repeatedly had to defend her position, at one point even hiring a lawyer, as many men resented her. “I remember that was my first experience of trials and tribulations women face in the workforce and how they were minimalized in a male-dominated place,” he noted. “So … I think I had that understanding or empathy for the position that young women had in engineering.”
In the same interview, he described an incident that took place early in his career as a recruiter for Corning in which male employees played a joke on a new female engineer that would rightly be considered sexual harassment, though that language had not come into common usage. Viewing this incident as evidence of the need to transform workplace cultures, Brewster was instrumental in making policy changes at Corning, including an internal education program focused on women in the workplace that covered not only how and why certain policies were needed, but also the penalties and drawbacks of not implementing them.
Brewster’s many contributions to SWE also include: membership on the SWE advisory board; initiating and establishing the Corning Career Guidance Award for sections and collegiate sections; serving as a support person and resource for collegiate sections at several universities; and coordinating with Corning Glass Works the donation of the Steuben bowl to the annual Achievement Award recipient, a tradition that continued for many years.
For his efforts to champion women in engineering, in addition to receiving the Chipp Award, Brewster was named a Fellow in 2002, the year he retired.
Keeping his mother’s legacy in mind, coupled with his personal commitment to diversify the engineering profession, he established a scholarship for female high school girls entering engineering programs, named the Margaret R. Brewster Scholarship.
Brewster is survived by his three sons and their families, which include seven grandchildren. A funeral mass was held June 19 at St. Mary’s Church in Corning, New York. Donations in his memory may be made to All Saints Catholic Parish in Corning, or CareFirst/Hospice in Painted Post, New York.
Sources: SWE Archives; Grassroots Oral History Project; Legacy.com
