In 1999, Mary Turner Lane established the Mary Turner Lane Award in Women’s Studies, an annual award honoring a senior women’s studies major or minor who has made an outstanding contribution to research on women’s issues. Lane created the fund to encourage and further academic research in women’s studies. Lane was the founding director of women’s studies at UNC.
“The award reflects the curriculum of the time and is a way of validating women’s studies at Carolina,” Lane said just after establishing the award. “It originally grew out of my interest in the millennium, and I thought that it should be celebrated in every way possible.”
Lane passed away in 2009, but her legacy continues. Since it was first awarded in 2002, more than 15 students have received the Mary Turner Lane Award, which also includes a cash prize. Students have been recognized for their research on a number of issues, including eugenics, egg donation, pregnancy and more.
Mary Turner Lane
A native of New Bern, Lane was widowed at 29 in the late 1940s with a daughter to raise. With the encouragement of friends and family, she entered graduate school at Carolina (Lane had earned her bachelor’s degree from Salem College) and completed her master’s degree in education in 1953. She later earned her doctorate in education at Duke. Lane began her Carolina career as an instructor in 1954 and retired in 1986. She was a professor in the School of Education before becoming UNC’s first director of women’s studies in 1976.
In the 1960s, her committee service on dorm visitation and self-limiting hours for female students marked the beginning of activism that would soon extend to faculty rights. She lobbied for faculty rights when there were no written rules for promotion or tenure, a situation that put female faculty at a disadvantage. Lane recalled one faculty member on maternity leave who had to pay out of her pocket for an interim instructor to teach her class.
“Having rules helped all faculty, not just the women,” said Lane.
Founder of the Association for Women Faculty, chair of the Committee on the Status of Women and first director of the women’s studies program, Lane earned a number of awards for her crusading efforts, including the prestigious Spencer Bell Award in 1997. The award recognizes a woman who has made outstanding contributions to Carolina and honors Cornelia Phillips Spencer, who successfully campaigned to re-open the University after the Civil War.
“Mary Turner Lane is an astute and seasoned ‘politician.’ Without her input, there would not have been a women’s studies program at Carolina. She knew how to negotiate with administrators in a tough but charming way — something that I, as a northern academic, did not know how to do — and how to stand her ground and get results,” Joan Scott said in 2001. Scott taught the first women’s studies course at Carolina in 1977 and is now a professor emerita at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, N.J.
“Mary Turner’s commitment to feminism — to equal treatment for women — never faltered. She knows the value of establishing permanent spaces for women within institutions — this award she has established is an example of how savvy and generous she is.”
Portions excerpted from the article “’Genteel warrior’ creates award in women’s studies,” which appeared in the spring 2001 issue of Carolina Connections.
