Dr. Mary Gallant selected for the Empowered Woman Award by IAOTP

Dr. Mary Gallant, Associate Professor of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Rowan University, was recently chosen to receive the Empowered Woman of the Year Award for 2021 given by the International Association of Top Professionals (IAOTP). Her exemplary role as a female professional in a male dominated industry displays her influence, capability, and proficiency.

Inclusion with the International Association of Top Professionals (IAOTP) is an honor in itself, only a few women are chosen for this distinction based on their years of experience, professional accomplishments, academic achievements, leadership abilities, and contributions to their communities. With innovation and compassion, these women empower others to reach their goals, while creating change for future generations. Additionally, Dr. Gallant will be honored for her 2020 selection as a Lifetime Achievement Award recipient at IAOTP’s Annual Awards Gala being held at the Plaza Hotel in New York City this December.  www.iaotp.com/award-gala

The President of IAOTP, Stephanie Cirami, stated “Choosing Dr. Gallant for this award was an easy decision for our panel to make.  She provides visionary leadership in her field and her extraordinary merits prove she has the ability to empower women worldwide. We look forward to celebrating all of her success at the Annual Awards Gala.”

Dr. Gallant is being recognized for having more than 3 decades of professional experience as an accomplished Associate Professor of Sociology. She demonstrated success as a member of the traditional full-time faculty at Rowan University and also in every role she has served.

Her key areas of expertise include teaching Classical Social Theory, a core course for Juniors and Seniors in the Sociology major and its BA in Sociology, both under the College of Liberal Arts and Science (CLAS) and the new College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS) at Rowan University.

Aside from her core courses, she also taught senior seminars and topics courses. Between 1997 and 2004, she developed and taught a course titled, “Sociology of the Holocaust” (08399) for Sociology as the Coordinate major for the then Department of Education on campus. From 2009 onwards, she developed and taught a senior seminar course titled, “Sociological Imagination” (08428) for the Sociology Sequence A for Liberal Studies/Humanities and Social Science (LS/HSS).

Within an impressive repertoire of prior roles at Rowan University, Dr. Gallant treasures most fondly that of being Department of Chair for Sociology for a short seven years between 2007 and summer 2015. During that time the number of students in the traditional major grew along with its curricular base, and CLAS at Rowan University became CHSS.  Under CHSS, working with colleagues eager to benefit the new college and its interdisciplinary mission, she was instrumental in advancing a new interdisciplinary curricular base for Sociology (announced in her PowerPoint presentation representing Sociology during the Provost’s Spring Lecture, 2013).

This base provided the start for new programs and curriculum of different kinds that now align Sociology with Medicine and other divisions and programs across the whole of Rowan University. No small tribute to the continuing success of the combined Sociology and Anthropology department was her mastering the organizational and interpersonal elements of incorporating the Anthropology faculty coming to us in 2012 from Geography as it changed its major within CHSS.  At the start, the Anthropology faculty formed a smaller component of Sociology’s operations.

Between 2012 and 2015, leadership of both Anthropology and Sociology worked together to realize one success after another.  The department now has a new major approved for Anthropology that expands what we offer the new academic system at Rowan, within an impressive repertoire of prior roles at Rowan University, Dr. Gallant treasures most fondly that of being department Chair for a short seven years.

Some of Dr. Gallant’s most important academic achievements are those associated with her research on the Holocaust.  In 1994, Dr. Gallant presented a paper at the World Conference of Holocaust Scholars and Survivors, Errinerung und die Zukunft II, held in Berlin, GDR.  Her paper was titled, “Children and Adolescents in the Holocaust: Effects of Trauma.” Thousands of people from all over the world attended the colloquium that took place in Germany, London and Oxford.  She also has a book chapter on rescue that grew out of a separate presentation she gave at this World Conference that is now published in a three-volume work out of Palgrave titled, Remembering for the Future; The Holocaust in an Age of Genocide, edited by John K. Roth and Elisabeth Maxwell.

Her most recent chapter on the Holocaust is on the rescue of ten thousand Jewish children brought from Germany and its territories to the United Kingdom just before WWII.  The book chapter is titled, “The Kindertransport: Gender and the Rescue of Jewish Children” in Different Horrors, Same Hell; Gender and the Holocaust (2013), edited and introduced by Myrna Goldenberg and Amy H. Shapiro, University of Washington Press.  Dr. Gallant’s first book, Coming of Age in the Holocaust: The Last Survivors Remember (2002), is based on grants-funded, primary research. Using data from in-depth interviews with Holocaust survivors, she observed that there were certain symbolic processes critical to surviving destruction of self and identity during persecution and oppression that survivors engaged right at the start of the onslaught as well as all the way through.  Dr. Gallant is currently continuing research and publishing while working on a third book, this time on informal social processes shaping medical students during training as they contend with stress and uncertainty.

Dr. Gallant earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Minnesota. The President of IAOTP, Stephanie Cirami, stated “Choosing Dr. Gallant for this award was an easy decision for our panel to make.  She is an exceptional Professor who is enthusiastic about Sociology. Her knowledge and effective teaching skills have added so much vibrancy to the education of her students and colleagues alike. We are thrilled to be able to honor her in this way and cannot wait to call her name on stage this December at the Plaza Hotel in New York City.”

Looking back, Dr. Gallant has numerous cherished accomplishments over the course of her professional career in Sociology. Her remarkable leadership and commitment to her profession has led to her selection for the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Association of Top Professionals. In 2019, Dr. Gallant was honored as Top Associate Professor of the Year in Sociology, she was featured in an article for TIP (Top Industry Professionals) Magazine and was honored at IAOTP’s Annual Awards Gala in Las Vegas at the Bellagio Hotel. In the spring of 2018, she was featured on the famous Reuters Billboard in Times Square NY and was selected as Woman of the Month by P.O.W.E.R. magazine.  She received the Excellence in Scholarship Award presented by Rowan University and is also a two-time winner of the University’s prestigious Wall of Fame Award. Her professional affiliations include the Eastern Sociological Association and the American Sociological Association.

Dr. Gallant believes success is rarely due to personal merit alone; besides what ingenuity, perseverance and resilience add to individual achievement, a larger debt is owed to our connections to others, along with the love of family, friends, teachers and mentors. She likes “ordinary” joys; she wants to write, do research and teach. Whenever possible she listens to National Public Radio, J.S. Bach cantatas and attends with great interest the frolicking of birds and bunnies in her back garden. She asks us to remember a quote from Anne (Annalies Marie) Frank (June 12, 1929) who perished at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, February/March, 1945:

“Human greatness does not lie in wealth or power but in character and goodness.” –Anne Frank

For more information on Dr. Gallant please visit:  www.iaotp.com

View her Video Biography:  https://youtu.be/65RVADAxBeo

About IAOTP

The International Association of Top Professionals (IAOTP) is an international boutique networking organization that handpicks the world’s finest, most prestigious top professionals from different industries.  These top professionals are given an opportunity to collaborate, share their ideas, be keynote speakers, and to help influence others in their fields. This organization is not a membership that anyone can join.  You have to be asked by the President or be nominated by a distinguished honorary member after a brief interview.

IAOTP’s experts have given thousands of top prestigious professionals around the world, the recognition and credibility that they deserve and have helped in building their branding empires.  IAOTP prides itself to be a one of a kind boutique networking organization that hand picks only the best of the best and creates a networking platform that connects and brings these top professionals to one place.

For More information on IAOTP please visit:   www.iaotp.com