 Mary E. Woodworth, Sr. Associate Provost and Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs, graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in biology and obtained her doctorate in biochemistry from Temple University. After returning to Michigan for post-doctoral research, she went on to Syracuse University to run the lab of a colleague on sabbatical leave at the National Institutes of Health. During this time, her primary research dealt with bacteriophages—viruses that infect bacteria. However, she changed her focus after talking to colleagues at Syracuse and Michigan and began studying the molecular biology of the DNA tumor virus, SV40. From 1973 to 1977, she worked at The Johns Hopkins University with Daniel Nathans, an expert in the field and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1978.
After leaving Johns Hopkins, she became a senior research scientist at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, N.Y. and an adjunct faculty member at SUNY-Buffalo. She joined the Miami faculty as chair of microbiology in 1989, becoming the first woman to serve as a chair of a science department at Miami. In the years that followed, she maintained an active research program, trained master’s and doctoral degree students, and was awarded $5.28 million in co-authored equipment and bioscience education grants. Her research has been supported by $1.14 million in individual grants, including a Research Career Development Award, from the National Cancer Institute.
In the fall semester of 1998, she taught at the Miami University Dolobois European Center in Luxembourg. On her return, she became acting associate provost and a year later was appointed associate provost. Many of her present responsibilities deal with faculty issues, including mentoring new faculty on tenure expectations for teaching, scholarship/creative activity and service, and mentoring women for leadership positions. She also continues her strong commitment to undergraduate education through her presence as a professor in the classroom.
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