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Sandra Adams
Professor, Biology

Biology Professor Sandra Adams is the kind of mentor and instructor that students keep in touch with long after graduation. “Any achievement I have, who do I call? Dr. Adams,” says Tamara Lewis ’01, ’03 MS, an emergency medicine doctor in Houston, Texas. As does Jackie Posy ’06, ’08 MS, a virologist. When Posy and her colleagues began the first trial of a self-replicating RNA vaccine for rabies, “I called Dr. Adams before I called my husband. I said, ‘I want you to know, you did this.’ It was a continuation of everything I learned from her.”

Many lessons learned in Adams’ labs stay with her students. “Every time I run into a problem and have to start over, I think of her passion and her patience for getting it right,” says Posy. A virologist and biologist, Adams, who retires at the end of January, has taught at Montclair since 2001, continuing a career that began in 1975 as a high school science teacher in Decatur, Georgia, before she earned the first of two PhDs in 1985 and became a college professor.

She has spent her career mentoring students as well as teaching them. When a former graduate student and mentee, Ron Durso, became the science supervisor for Fair Lawn schools, she helped him and his staff, including by visiting classes to promote careers in science and to “share her experiences as a minority scientist” growing up in the South. For many, Adams’ mentoring continues throughout their careers. “She brings out the best in her students,” says Lewis, the ER doctor. “I have benefited so much from having her as a mentor and a friend, and now I’m able to emulate that because I’m a Black female who has achieved a lot and can pay it forward.”