Header

Patricia Brown

1928-

Patricia BrownPat was the first woman engineering graduate of the University of Southwestern Louisiana.

Pat joined SWE in 1951 when Isabelle French  (a Pioneer Member of SWE) carried an application from up Mt. Washington on a climbing trip with other women engineers from Sylvania and then made Pat carry it back down.  Pat filled out and mailed the application with her check, thus adding her name to the roster of SWE Pioneers.  In 1952 she helped establish the Detroit Section and became a dynamic worker in national SWE.

Pat moved around a lot, from Salem, MA, to Albany, NY, to Ferndale, MI, to Pittsburgh, to Dallas, to Columbus, OH (where she became a Charter Member of the South Ohio Section), and finally to the Chicago area.  The local scuttlebutt was that whenever a SWE Section accepted hosting a national convention, Pat immediately moved away so that she didn’t have to get involved.

Pat lived in Dallas when elected President of SWE, becoming the first President elected from the Members-at-Large.  She was active on the Information Highway when it was still Route 66; her primary specialty was technical information storage and retrieval.  She retired in 1993 but is still very active in all things associated with computers (including slot machines and video poker!).

Although Pat lives in the Las Vegas area, she has chosen to be a Member-at-Large. Currently, Pat is Production Manager for MAL News, the bimonthly publication for SWE Members-at-Large.

  • B.S. in Ch.E., 1947, University of Southwestern Louisiana
  • M.A. in Chemistry, minor in Ch.E., 1949, University of Texas
  • Fellow Life Member of SWE