April 9, 2015

Dr. Mona Hersh Cochran

Mona Hersh Cochran was born in Philadelphia in 1934 and moved as a toddler to Atlantic City, New Jersey, where her father worked as a professional photographer. She recalled an easy childhood of the beach and boardwalk, unlocked doors, and roller skating in the streets, along with wartime memories of ration coupons and saving stamps for war bonds. Her parents divorced when she was nine, and she was raised by her mother, who ran a photographic shop, and her grandmother, a strong woman who had immigrated from Russia while pregnant and raised seven children. Determined to make her way, Mona graduated with honors from Atlantic City High and won a state scholarship. Barred as a woman from attending Rutgers alongside male students, she enrolled at Camden Rutgers, worked part-time, and earned her degree in economics, later pursuing a master's at Temple University at night.

Mona began her career in the pioneering days of computing, turning down offers from IBM and others to work for Remington Rand Univac, where she programmed the Univac I in machine language under the brilliant mathematician Dr. Grace Hopper. She later joined a computer consulting division that moved from Philadelphia to New York. When her first husband, a podiatric surgeon, chose to practice in Dallas, she moved there in 1960 and continued consulting while starting a family. With three children born in about two and a half years, she approached SMU, the only Ph.D. program in the region, and negotiated a scholarship and assistantship. Facing considerable resistance as the only mother on campus, she persevered through incompletes and unhelpful professors, earning a master's along the way and, in 1966, becoming the first woman to receive a Ph.D. in any field at SMU.

In Dallas, Mona and her family first belonged to Congregation Sherith Israel, where Rabbi Nissim Wernick served, and later joined Temple Emanu-El. When she wished to marry Ken Cochran, a non-Jewish professor of economics and chairman at North Texas, Rabbi Jack Bemporad officiated after she obtained a Jewish divorce. She described her 32-year marriage to Ken as the best time of her life, crediting his stability with helping raise her three teenagers. She taught computing and economics at Texas Woman's University for 35 years and later endowed a scholarship for part-time women graduate students in economics. She witnessed the Kennedy assassination while at SMU, watched Jack Ruby shoot Oswald on television, and remained a lifelong student of the events. Deeply proud of her three accomplished children and her grandchildren, she urged the next generation to pursue whatever they do with passion.

Read Full Transcript