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ISyE Celebrates a Century with Anne Marie Eaton

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Faculty and staff of the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE) celebrated alumna Anne Marie Eaton's 100th birthday at the school's annual holiday celebration on December 5, 2007. During the festivities, School Chair Chelsea White presented Anne Marie with a certificate of appreciation, recognizing her and her husband Paul's devoted and faithful service, steadfast dedication, and generous support to Georgia Tech and ISyE.

Anne Marie, Georgia Tech oldest living alumna, turned 100 on November 26 and has always been a lifelong friend of the Stewart School of ISyE and an advocate for education. In her words of thanks to ISyE faculty and staff, she stressed the importance of learning, stating "No one can ever take an education away from you.* She and her husband Paul learned hard lessons of resilience as they migrated to the United States from Nazi Germany in 1938. In fact, her continued learning has allowed her to reinvent herself as mother and wife, methods analyst, import/export manager, Tech faculty wife, college student, gerontology expert, and author.

In 1942, Anne Marie and Paul enrolled in Georgia Tech's evening school to study a new field called industrial engineering. Under the War Manpower Act, Anne Marie studied industrial engineering at Tech for two years while working for companies such as Sears, Lockheed, and Rich's department store. Paul joined ISyE's faculty in 1948, becoming a Fulbright professor and rising to international prominence in the field. Anne Marie later earned a master's in sociology with a minor in gerontology from Georgia State then returned to Tech in 1987 to study psychology.

Among her numerous achievements, Anne Marie helped start the nation's largest Life Enrichment Center for seniors in DeKalb County, work that led to the Georgia Senate naming her 1999's Distinguished Senior Georgian. She has represented DeKalb and Rockdale counties at a White House Council on Aging and has served as a representative on aging issues to Germany. In the 90's, she established the Paul Eaton Scholarship to support undergraduate students in the Industrial and Systems Engineering School at Georgia Tech.

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  • Workflow Status:Published
  • Created By:Ruth Gregory
  • Created:12/10/2007
  • Modified By:Fletcher Moore
  • Modified:10/07/2016