Inside This Issue

Italian Textbooks Language House Activities Lusophone Fair Latino/a Symposium In the News Awards

Archives

Previous Editions

Alumna Creates Professorship for the Department

Nancy Gillespie Brinning was a French major who graduated cum laude from the University of Georgia in 1948 and enjoyed a highly distinguished, path-breaking career as one of the first women to hold an executive position in the natural gas industry. Recently, she made provisions to endow a professorship in the Department of Romance Languages. In May of 2003, she spoke to the Department of Romance Languages Newsletter about how she applied skills she acquired as a French major and a Spanish minor to excel in business. Her insights about how to make life-long connections between language study and career goals are valuable for students and graduates who wish to use advanced foreign-language study to prepare themselves for professional careers.

As a student, Mrs. Brinning connected a French major to a Spanish minor, with courses that included Enlightenment Philosophy, Spanish Drama of the Romantic Era and Advanced French Linguistics. Several years after graduating from UGA, she began to work for the Piedmont Natural Gas Company in Charlotte, North Carolina. Mrs. Brinning drew upon the writing and editorial skills she sharpened at UGA to improve communications within her company and those between the company and its shareholders. She notes that she constantly rewrote pamphlets and insisted, as early as the 1960s, on eliminating sexist language from company policies. Her ability to process and organize complex information led to steadily increasing responsibilities in the office of the president. Recognizing her importance to the company, the board of directors elected her to the position of Board Secretary and eventually, Vice President. As such, she was the first woman elected to a board of directors in the natural gas industry.

Mrs. Brinning strongly recommends that students who wish to pursue professional careers after graduation prepare themselves with programs of study in the liberal arts. She also has these words of inspiration for today’s students in Romance Languages as they think about jobs after graduation: “Know your value and skills, take the initiative to use them, and then speak up to gain recognition for them.”