Name June Bacon-Bercey | ||
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June Esther Bacon-Bercey (née Griffin, born October 23, 1932) is an international expert on weather and aviation who has worked for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Weather Service and the Atomic Energy Commission.
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Early life and education
Bacon-Bercey was born and raised in Wichita. She earned her bachelor's degree in 1954 from the University of Kansas and her master's degree in 1955 from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She earned a Masters of Public Administration (MPA) from the University of Southern California in 1979.
Career
Bacon-Bercey began her career as an engineer, when she worked for the Sperry Corporation, then worked for a variety of federal organizations including the United States Atomic Energy Commission (as a consultant), the National Weather Service Aviation Branch, and the National Meteorological Center.
Beginning in 1979, Bacon-Bercey spent nearly ten years as the chief administrator for Television Weather Activities at NOAA and worked on a number of other projects.
Increasing the participation of African-American women in metereology and geophysical science has been a major focus for Bacon-Bercey. In 1978, she published an analysis of African-American meteorologists in the US. She had won $64,000 on a TV quiz show in 1977, which she used to establish a scholarship fund for young women interested in atmospheric sciences, administered by the American Geophysical Union (AGU). Bacon-Bercey served on the AGU's Committee on Women and Minorities in Atmospheric Sciences, and co-founded the American Metereological Society's Board on Women in Minorities.
In 2006, Bacon-Bercey featured in a book for young people, June Bacon-Bercey: a meteorologist talks about the weather.
Honors
Bacon-Bercey was the first woman, as well as the first African-American, to be awarded the American Meteorological Society's Seal of Approval for excellence in television weathercasting when she was working in Buffalo, New York in the 1970s.
In 2000, she was honored during a three-day conference at Howard University for her contributions including: helping to establish a meteorology lab at Jackson State University in Mississippi, her endowment of the scholarship, and her work in California's public schools. Bacon-Bercey was also named a Minority Pioneer for Achievement in Atmospheric Sciences by NASA.