WAUKESHA – The young woman who first came to the U.S. from India to visit her husband, who was on a sabbatical leave study at Oregon State University, in 1977 will be retiring from the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha at the end of June. Shamim Naim has taught geography here since 1985.
The 3rd of nine children, she grew up in Allahabad, which is located some 350 miles east of Delhi. Even though other family members had not attended college, she knew she would, and she dreamt of a career in medicine. One day as a student at Crosthwaite Girls College, she was studying outdoors. A monkey swooped down and grabbed her book, The Physical Elements of Geography. When she demanded it back, the monkey, who had climbed a tree out of her reach, tauntingly returned it – page by page. In reassembling the book, her interest in the subject grew.
In India, women and men were separated in their basic studies, except in the sciences. So Naim, who had started college at Crosthwaite Girls College, earned her bachelor’s degree in geography from Allahabad University in 1957 and master’s in 1959 and then began her teaching career at the same institution.
The Ph.D. took 22 more years, interrupted by raising children and lots of travel, but she became the first Muslim woman from her city to earn a doctorate from an American university. It was while she held a teaching assignment at the University of Hawaii that Oregon State University, Corvallis, conferred the degree in 1981.
When her husband, Zafar, got a research assistantship at the University of Illinois, Chicago Circle, she applied for jobs in the area, landing one in the marketing department of a pharmaceutical firm that thought it was hiring her husband, a microbiologist. In 1982, she found an assistant professor position in the department of geography at the Illinois State University, Normal, and, after three years there, became a visiting professor at UW-Waukesha. In 1986 she joined the faculty here.
Since then, she has published and presented more than 20 papers, three of them internationally, and presented workshops for her peers. In 1996 she was promoted to full professor. The next year, the Association of American Geographers recognized her as Outstanding Teacher-Scholar. She also has received a number of grants.
Awarded a summer grant in 1991, she worked with anthropology professor Gladis Kaufman and found herself studying people like herself, “South Asian Muslim Women in the Metropolitan Milwaukee Area.”
In 1994, the National Science Foundation awarded her a matching grant to establish a “Laboratory for Environmental Remote Sensing and GIS (geographic information systems).” As the lab was equipped, she developed a new course, Survey of Geographical Skills, Techniques and Applications, which brought GIS education to the freshman-sophomore campus. As she prepares to depart the university, she will offer another new course, and, as she says, “go out with a bang.” This summer she will teach Disasters – Living on the Edge.
Last year, another grant helped her and Faye Flesia, director of the campus library, set up an electronic library/GIS lab, where Naim has been teaching Survey of Geographic Information Sciences this semester.
After her son, Arif, tragically was killed in an accident in India in January 1994, she established a scholarship for UW-Waukesha students studying engineering. Later that year, her daughter, Nazmi, had a baby, Imaan, which means faith in her native tongue. She lives in England but has captured Naim’s focus.
In her retirement, Naim plans to write her memoirs for the benefit of her granddaughter and to spend more time with her. She’s also contemplating a second Ph.D., perhaps in sociology or some other social science.
Naim also has mastered the art of growing roses, sews clothing for both herself and family members, and prepares some of the most delightful dishes, occasionally for consumption by campus colleagues.
She has burrowed roots deep into Waukesha soil. “I have lived here longer than any place else in my life, and I’ve have made lots of good friends. It is like a home,” the geographer who travels the world reflects. “I don’t feel it when I get back to Milwaukee, but when I hit Brookfield, I feel like I’ve gotten home.” |
