User:Deirdre botany/Mildred E Faust

Mildred E. Faust of Syracuse, a noted botanist, died Saturday at University Hospital after a brief illness. Born in Emporia, Kansas she was 89.

Miss Faust was an instructor, assistant professor and associate professor of botany at Syracuse University from 1926 until her retirement in 1965. Since 1970 she was adjunct professor of botany at State University College of Environmental Science and Forestry, which holds the Mildred E. Faust Herbarium, the scientist's lifelong collection of plant specimens.

She was an authority on the flora of New York State and Onondaga County. An ecologist and palynologist, she would take students to bogs, drill down 15 to 20 feet, collect the pollen and from that be able to associate the plants that grew locally 5,000 to 7,000 years ago, said her longtime associate and fellow botanist, Knowlton Foote.

Miss Faust served many local, regional and national organizations in the environmental and biological sciences including a stint as the President of the American Fern Society. For more than 40 years she was vice president of the Syracuse Botany Club, was a board member of the Onondaga County Environmental Management Council since 1971, a member of the state Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner's Advisory Committee on Rare and Endangered Plants since 1973, a member and former vice president of the Onondaga Primrose Society, and a member of the Onondaga Historical Society, the Syracuse Weavers Guild, Canal Society of New York State, Adirondack Mountain Club, Bergen Swamp Preservation Society and United Nations Association of Central New York.

Miss Faust earned several awards of distinction for her work. In 1985 in recognition of her contribution to science and education in botany, the Centers for Nature Education and Save the County created the Mildred E. Faust Wildflower Garden at the Baltimore Woods Historic Land Use Center in Marcellus. She helped to organize and establish Baltimore Woods as well as Beaver Lake Nature Center in Baldwinsville.

She received the first Friend of the Land Award from the Central New York Nature Conservancy in 1978 and was named a Post-Standard Woman of Achievement in 1982.

On the national level, Miss Faust was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, was listed in the National Register of Science and Technology Personnel and Who's Who of American Women, and was a past president of the American Fern Society. She was a member of numerous other professional organizations including the American Institute of Biological Sciences, the Ecological Society of America, the Botanical Society of America, the American Association of Stratigraphic Palynologists, and Sigma Xi.

She received an honorary degree of Doctor of Science from St. Lawrence University.

Publications:

http://www.jstor.org/stable/2471529