Mary Dery had an introduction to her future in education at age five. “My parents presented me with a blackboard and a box of yellow chalk for Christmas,” the Putnam Valley resident recalls. “I immediately started playing ”˜school”™ with my three-year-old brother, who didn”™t appreciate being forced to sit at a desk while I taught him to read, add and subtract. By age five, he could multiply and read.
“My parents didn”™t realize how much calcium carbonate (chalk) they would buy over the next ten years.”
Raised in North Tonawanda, N.Y., Dery earned a bachelor”™s degree in chemistry from Clarkson University, Potsdam; a master”™s degree and doctorate, both in chemistry, from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy. She is studying for a master”™s degree in adolescent education at Mercy College in Yorktown Heights.
Newly named an assistant professor of freshman chemistry at the U. S. Military Academy at West Point, she was most recently an honors chemistry teacher at Our Lady of Lourdes High School in Poughkeepsie.
Dery is disappointed that public schools do not put more emphasis on science and mathematics.
“Science teaches individuals to think objectively, not emotionally,” she said. She regrets that schools are rated on the numbers of graduates entering four-year colleges. “The data is poor, as they ask in the fall of senior year, not June 30.”
Actually, Dery started out in industry, moving into educational consulting before becoming an adjunct professor at Marist College. It was while directing a research project at Texaco that she encountered the consequences of an employee”™s lack of basic background. The effort involved testing automotive lubricants.
“The particular test was to run a week at a cost of $50,000. The machine was to be turned off if it registered above or below a certain count. That happened during the second day, but the machine ran for the full week because a worker failed to read a graph. It needlessly cost Texaco $40,000.”
She recounts an upbeat story from her presidency of ITERI (Integrated Technical and Education Resources Inc.), a youth leadership and work readiness program
which she presently pursues in cooperation with schools, civic and business organizations in Beacon, Spackenkill and Wappingers, with a new unit starting in Mahopac and Carmel.
“A youth was pushed into the program by his parents and was sarcastic and negative,” she recalls. “The second year of the program involved Junior Achievement. He wanted to start his own lawn-cutting business and lacked capital to purchase equipment. I helped him devise a letter to ten individuals seeking capital with a promise to pay back within five years.
“Three responded. With $1,000, he was in business. He went on to purchase a dump truck and equipment and within three months made enough money to repay his benefactors. While still in school, he hired two helpers and decided to continue his education to learn about the business end. Ultimately, he became a physics major and is working in that field while still running his lawn business.”
Dery observes that many young people have a sense of entitlement conveyed by parents.
“Each generation wishes more for its children. My grandfather had eight kids and poured cement for a living.”
A single mother, she has two daughters, Madeline, 15, an eleventh-grader with perfect chemistry grades at Mahopac High School, and Meryl, 13, an eighth-grader at Mahopac Middle School who plays the cello and is active in sports. A dog, two cats and a parakeet round out the household. Dery, an avid cyclist and a triathlete, is recovering after hospitalization from a horrendous bicycle accident.
Challenging Careers focuses on the exciting and unusual business lives of Hudson Valley residents. Comments or suggestions may be e-mailed to Catherine Portman-Laux at cplaux@optonline.net.
