After more than 20 years as a Rebel, Sara Brown celebrated her retirement Tuesday afternoon at the University’s National Center for Physical Acoustics.
As 2 o’clock rolled around, scientists and graduate students at the NCPA took a break from their projects and headed to the building’s lobby where a double chocolate cake reading “Happy Retirement Sara” waited for them.
“Working with all these guys over the years I’ve learned one thing,” Brown said. “They all like sweets.”
Brown first stepped on campus in fall 1995 as a biology graduate student. Since then she’s earned two master’s degrees in the subject (one from Ole Miss, one from Southern Mississippi) and a PhD in higher educational leadership. She said these two degrees came together when she joined the NCPA in 2001.
“Within ‘sustainability’, I was interested in the sustainability of being able to do research, acoustic for example, that uses alternative energy forms as a way of doing work itself,” Brown said.
Brown said her goal is for the center’s research to come full-circle. Since its creation in 1986, the NCPA has used the resources and brainpower within the University to explore acoustics science and provide research to the federal government. In lieu of acoustic physics classes, the Center contracts graduate students with real-world acoustics projects.
“We start with a high risk, high end scientific idea that can end up being used in the general public,” Brown said.
NCPA interim director Craig Hickey opened Tuesday’s reception by thanking Brown for her above and beyond administration and friendship. Hickey remembered Brown’s help in getting NCPA’s new research group, Porous Media, off the ground soon after she joined the center. He said their offices were side by side back then.
“She saved my butt. And made the transition smooth,” Hickey said.
Brown announced her retirement in late 2016, and Hickey said she is leaving the center in great condition. He said administrators will definitely have to work to fill the void behind Brown, however. She was one a small few researchers with over twenty years of tenure.
When NCPA Research Administrative Coordinator Latonya Weekly joined staff 14 years ago, she said Brown made an early impression.
“She worked in one of the first groups I was involved with, but over the years I formed a real personal relationship with her,” Weekly said.
One of Brown’s favorite undertakings of her time at the NCPA was the foundation of the Basic Acoustic Summer School. Named for the late Hank Bass, who led the 1980’s charge to found the NCPA, the BASS school helps introduce Acoustics science to undergraduates.
“In memory of him, I came up with the idea for the BASS school,” Brown said.
BASS brings in undergraduate students for eight weeks in the summer to complete an acoustics project with a professional researcher. Dr. Josh Gladden thanked Brown on Tuesday for her guidance, protection and help in creating the BASS program.
After Gladden and Hickey spoke, Weekly emerged with Brown’s parting gift: a custom-inscribed rocking chair. The Latin words across the chair’s back seem to embody Brown’s attitude towards research and science: “For wisdom and knowledge”.
Brown said she already has plans for the rocking chair post-retirement. She said she is looking forward to relaxing back home with her husband, blues guitarist Kenny Brown. Together, the two live on a farm surrounded by Brown’s many animals.
“I’ll be sittin’ on my front porch rockin’ on a rockin’ chair,” she smiled.
