The Kitty Dickerson MURA (MU Retirees Association) Scholarship Fund was created to honor the past president of MURA. Kitty Gardner Dickerson was a professor and chair of textile and apparel management at the University of Missouri. For a decade, she was the first and only woman on the board of directors of Kellwood Co., a multinational Fortune 700 apparel and softgoods firm with sales of $2.2 billion. She served as chair of the board’s Corporate Governance Committee and on its Audit and Executive committees. Nationwide, she was one of fewer than 1,000 women on major corporate boards. She was invited to speak to industry, government and academic groups worldwide, and she authored two leading textbooks. Yet Dickerson never forgot what it felt like to be a first-generation college student from a small town in Virginia. She focused on the growth of her students, generating scholarships and other financial support. Long after they left MU, students looked to her as a mentor. She used her industry connections to obtain support for the program and to help students find jobs and internships. She published extensively in both academic and trade journals. Her research has been published in the Congressional Record. Dickerson is a fellow and a past president of the International Textile and Apparel Association, which named her Educator of the Year in 1996. She was named to Textile World’s “Top 10 Leaders” list. She won a Faculty-Alumni Award in 1989, the Provost’s Award for Leadership in International Education in 2000, Distinguished Faculty Award in 2002, and the Greek Week Outstanding Faculty Member Award in 2002. Dickerson was a member of the Jefferson Club, the Vanguard Society in the College of Human Environmental Sciences, the MU Council on International Initiatives and MU’s United Way team. Please join us in honoring Kitty Dickerson’s legacy and memory with your gift to this fund.
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