Aggie Women Announce 2022 Eminent Scholar And Legacy Award Honorees

Texas A&M University’s Aggie Women Network (AWN) has named Professor Dorothy Shippen as the 2022 Eminent Scholar and selected Kathryn Greenwade ’88, posthumously, and Christine Hollinden ’87 as this year’s Aggie Women Legacy Award recipients.

Shippen is a University Distinguished Professor and Regents Fellow of Biochemistry & Biophysics in the College of Agriculture & Life Sciences. She pioneered the use of the flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana as a model for understanding the structure and function of telomeres, the DNA-protein structures found at both ends of each chromosome. Research at the Shippen Lab has been continuously funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and others. She has published over 90 research articles and is a frequent invitee to lecture on her research around the country.

Shippen has been honored with the Texas A&M Association of Former Students’ Distinguished Achievement Award for Graduate Mentoring and the Rose Award from the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology for outstanding contributions to biochemical and molecular biological research, and commitment to training younger scientists. Among other projects, she is currently working to maximize student diversity in biomedical sciences. She earned her doctorate in biology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and completed postdoctoral fellowships at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, San Francisco.

Honored for their contributions as outstanding women former students this year are Greenwade and Hollinden. The Aggie Women Legacy Award is presented to women who exemplify the Texas A&M core values and serve as an inspiration to future generations of Aggie women.

Greenwade, who died in February this year, served as vice president for Communications and Human Resources for The Association since 1999. She was a third-generation Aggie who earned her bachelor’s in journalism in 1988. Prior to working at The Association, she led the Former Student Career Services program for the Texas A&M Career Center.

In 2000, Fish Camp honored Greenwade as a namesake. She was known as a dedicated volunteer for many organizations both on and off campus. Among the organizations she served were Ronald McDonald House in Dallas, Habitat for Humanity Bryan-College Station and the Corps of Cadets as an academic mentor. She was a generous donor to the university and its students, a legacy that will carry on through her Endowed Century Club fund and the J. Walton Greenwade ’30 Endowed Aggie Ring Scholarship, which she established to support Aggies in perpetuity.

Hollinden is an award-winning marketing consultant and speaker who founded her marketing firm in 1993. Prior to that, she headed the marketing departments for firms including PWC and KPMG. She earned her bachelor’s in business administration from the University of Houston at Victoria and a master’s in business administration from Texas A&M.

Hollinden has several “firsts” to her name: first female president of the Texas A&M MBA/MS Association, first woman to help regenerate the Aggie entrepreneurship program, first female Advisory Board member of the McFerrin Center for Entrepreneurship, and the only female board member of Aggie Angel Network. The Aggie 100 has recognized her business four times, as well as numerous other fastest-growing lists. Hollinden volunteers her time to many endeavors including as a judge for the Texas A&M Engineering Showcase, Raymond Ideas Challenge and Texas A&M New Venture Challenge. She also serves on the board of directors for several organizations including the 5 Buckets Foundation for financial literacy.

The AWN will present the awards at its annual luncheon Oct. 28, noon-2 p.m. at the Bethancourt Ballroom in the Memorial Student Center. For more information about the luncheon, visit the Aggie Women Network site.