Doris Adriana Grosh

Doris Adriana Lloyd was born in Kansas City in November 29, 1924, the middle child between 2 brothers. Doris received a bachelor's degree in math and physics from the University of Chicago in 1948. At Chicago she lived at the International House, where she made friends from around the world. She spent a year in Mexico, studying mathematics and electrical engineering. Doris went to K-State for a master's degree and then to Purdue for a PhD program, and it was there that she met and married Gene Grosh, whom she married on August 26, 1950. Her PhD was interrupted by 13 years of raising daughters, during which she kept her hand in teaching math at night school for Tulsa University. The Grosh family moved to Manhattan in 1965 so that she could complete her PhD in statistics. After graduating in 1969, she joined the Industrial Engineering department, becoming the first woman faculty member in the College of Engineering. She had a joint appointment in the Department of Statistics. She was a contributor and referee for Technometrics, the Journal of the American Statistical Society, and IEEE Transactions on Reliability. She belonged to the Society of Women Engineers, American Society for Quality Control, the American Statistical Association, the American Association of University Professors, Sigma Xi, Tau Beta Pi, and Pi Mu Epsilon. Throughout her career, she taught new courses frequently, teaching herself new material in order to be able to teach it to others. Doris was a popular teacher. She received the Hollis Award for Excellence in Teaching from the Kansas State College of Engineering in 1975, and the students voted her the best teacher in the Department of Industrial Engineering in 1981 and 1990. As she retired, the students created a special award to reflect the role she had played for so many of them; in 1990 she became the first and, so far, only recipient of the Industrial Engineering Department Mother Hen Award. When she retired, she took the opportunity to do things she'd been too busy to do before, such as taking a course in quantum mechanics. She was acting department chair and full professor when she retired. Her first book, A Primer of Reliability Theory, was published in 1988 by John Wiley & Sons. She was a consultant or co-investigator for projects funded by the Nuclear Regulatory Agency, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, and the Kansas Department of Transportation. She wrote a second book, Linear Programming for Beginners after retirement. She struggled with revisions as Alzheimer's disease began to steal her mind. She had to learn new software in order to improve the sample problems. As her vision deteriorated, she worked with a 54 inch monitor so that she could blow things up large enough to be able to read them on-screen. After retirement, Doris became very active in the community. She rejoined the League of Women Voters and served as the newsletter editor for years. She served for many years on the board of the Manhattan Arts Center and helped with the vision and fundraising which made possible the facility they have now. She helped the local Democratic Party with database work. She was a lifelong Unitarian. She is survived by three daughters, Kathy Grosh of Duluth, MN, Barbara Grosh of Pittsford, NY and Margaret Grosh of Arlington, VA; five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, and her brother, Allan Lloyd of Hawthorne, NJ. She was preceded in death by her husband Gene and her grandson Zachary Smith. The family request memorials to the Manhattan Arts Center or the Grosh Scholarship Fund in the KSU Industrial Engineering Department. A memorial service will be at 4:00pm, Sunday, June 10, 2012 at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Manhattan, 481 Zeandale Rd., Manhattan.