Janet McCoy (mccoyjl@mail.auburn.edu)

AU POLITICAL SCIENCE PROFESSOR DORIS FORD DIES FOLLOWING ILLNESS

AUBURN -- Funeral services are scheduled for Tuesday for Doris Dinkins Ford, an associate professor in Auburn University's Department of Political Science who died Thursday following a recent illness. She was 50.

The funeral will be at 11 a.m., at Greenwood Missionary Baptist Church in Tuskegee.

Ford, a Tuskegee resident, was one of five faculty members who taught in the department's health administration program and had been on medical leave since the start of the 1996-97 academic year, said Robert Bernstein, head of the Department of Political Science.

"I've been looking through an array of letters from students who came through the health administration program who wrote about the positive experiences they had because of Doris," Bernstein said. "She coordinated our intern program and was responsible for placing students in hospitals all over the country."

Gordon Bond, dean of the College of Liberal Arts, said Ford "was a excellent faculty member. She was a awfully good colleague and she was a volunteer. She prided herself in wanting to be helpful, and she was."

Ford, who joined AU in 1984, was a graduate of Howard University, where she earned a bachelor's and master's degree, and George Washington University, where she earned another master's degree and the doctoral degree.

Before coming to AU, Ford owned her own health research consultant business in Tuskegee, and prior to that worked at the Veteran's Administration Medical Center in Tuskegee, the Tuskegee Area Health Education Center, AU Montgomery as an adjunct assistant professor, the Department of Interior and the Smithsonian Institution.

Keenan Grenell, an assistant professor of political science, said he had a close relationship with Ford. "Doris was not only a friend but a mentor to me," he said. "One thing that I remember when we served on a the West Alabama Project Planning Committee, formed by Dr. Muse, is that Doris was a person who made sure that in our discussions about planning that we not forget that the individuals that needed to be a part of the planning process were the individuals that we were trying to help. She wasn't caught up in 'Ivory Tower' remedies. She was grass roots in her philosophies and in her deliveries."

Donna Sollie, director of the Women's Studies Program at AU where Ford taught a class, said she "was very much a strong supporter of the Women's Studies Program. She felt it was very important for women to learn about health issues and she taught a class on that subject within the program. She will be missed."

Visitation has been scheduled for Monday, March 3, at 6 p.m., at McKenzie's Funeral Home in Tuskegee.

She is survived by her husband, Judge Aubrey Ford Jr. , and three children, a daughter, Audrey, who is a sophomore at the University of Alabama; and two sons, Winston and Rimik.