Grace Alele-Williams, Nigeria’s first female vice chancellor, passed away on Friday, March 25, 2022, at the age of 89.
Encomiums and tributes have continued to pour in following her passing.
Here are some things to know about a woman. will go down in Nigeria’s history as one of the women who made landmark achievements.
1. Grace Alele-Williams was born on December 16, 1932, in Warri, Delta State.
2. She attended Government School, Warri, and Queen’s College, Lagos, for her secondary education, graduating in 1949.
3. She graduated with an honors degree in mathematics at the University College Ibadan, now known as the University of Ibadan, in 1954.
4. Alele was appointed as a mathematics teacher at Queen’s School, Ede, Osun State, where she taught from 1954 to 1957.
5. She obtained her master’s degree in mathematics while teaching at Queen’s School, Ede, in Osun State in 1957.
6. She bagged her Ph.D. degree in mathematics education at the University of Chicago (U.S.) in 1963, thereby making her the first Nigerian woman to be awarded a doctorate.
7. She returned to Nigeria and spent two years at the University of Ibadan between 1963 and 1965, undertaking postdoctoral work as a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department and Institute of Education.
8. She was appointed a professor of mathematics at the University of Lagos in 1976.
9. She was a lecturer at the University of Lagos from 1965 to 1985 and spent a decade directing the Institute of Education, which introduced innovative non-degree programmes, with many of the certificate recipients being older women working as elementary school teachers.
10. In 1985, she was appointed vice chancellor of the University of Benin, making her the first female vice chancellor of a Nigerian university, a position she held until 1992.
11. Alele-Williams was a member of the governing council, UNESCO Institute of Education. She was also a consultant to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the Institute of International Education Planning.
12. In her lifetime, she won many awards, some of which include
- Order of the Niger in 1987
- Fellow of the Mathematical Association of Nigeria
- Fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Education.
- Merit award of Bendel State in Nigeria
- Regional vice-president for Africa of the Third World Organization for Women in Science
- First President of the African Mathematical Union Commission for Women in Mathematics
- Centenary award (2014)
13. She was married to Babatunde Abraham Williams, a former senior lecturer at the University of Ife, Osun State, and they were blessed with five children and ten grandchildren.
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