The Helen Crow Mills and John Carroll Mills Lecture Series was established and endowed in UA’s College of Arts and Sciences by Helen Mills Pittman and her late husband, Dr. John Mills, of Birmingham, to bring successful and distinguished alumni and citizens to campus to speak as a way to motivate and inspire students.
Spring 2023 Lecture
Dr. Kathleen O’Reilly
Professor and Presidential Impact Fellow, Texas A&M University
April 13, 2023
3:00pm
2009 North Lawn Hall
Lecture Title
“If You Build It, They Won’t Come: Creating Safe Sanitation for Women and Girls in Urban India”
Speaker Bio
Dr. Kathleen O’Reilly is a professor in the Department of Geography and Texas A&M University Presidential Impact Fellow. She has more than 25 years of experience doing research on gender, water and sanitation (WASH) interventions in rural and urban India. She is trained as a feminist geographer, ethnographer, and South Asia scholar. Over the course of her career, she has sought an in-depth understanding of internal community and household dynamics as they pertain to access to resources, like water and toilets, for women and socially marginalized groups. Her research highlights the need to understand the complexities of social relations and sanitation policy as they pertain to spatial patterns of inequality in WASH. Her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, among others.
Past Mills Lectures
J. Hunter Waite
President, Waite Science, LLC
Video: “Jupiter and the Galilean Moons: The ongoing NASA Juno mission to Jupiter and future exploration of Europa by the NASA Clipper mission”
October 20, 2022
Dr. Bridget Scanlon
Senior Research Scientist, Center for Sustainable Water Resources, University of Texas at Austin
Read Dr. Scanlon’s Bio
Thomas Hubbard
Former US Ambassador to the Philippines and South Korea
Video: “Career as a Foreign Service Officer”
November 2, 2017
Doug McCraw
Video: “The Creative Entrepreneur: The Nexus of Art and Technology”
October 21, 2016
Robert Abernathy
CEO of Halyard Health
Video: “Transforming a Company”
September 24, 2015
Michael Dowe
Chief Scientist, Raytheon, Ktech
“A Career in Physics and National Security”
November 13, 2014
Gary Fowlie
“Cybersecurity or Cyberthreat? – Balancing Human Rights and Economic Growth in Our Virtual World”
October 24, 2013
Sherri Jackson
Television journalist
“TV or Not TV: Is that the question? Why Ethics Must Cross Platforms for Journalists”
April 26, 2013
William “Bud” Forster
Aviation innovator, board of Northrop Grumman
“The Principles of Leadership”
October 21, 2011
Jeffrey Levitetz
“Life 30 Years After New College: What I’ve Learned Along the Way and What You Need to Know to Have a Successful Future”
September 10, 2010
Joe McInnes
“How I Got Here From There: The Reinvention of One’s Life and Career”
February 29, 2008
Maurice Crowe (First Mills Lecture)
CEO Crowe Realty
“Lessons in Switching to Plan B”
October 19, 2007
About Helen Mills Pittman and John Mills
Helen Pittman received a bachelor’s degree from the College of Human and Environmental Sciences at UA in 1959. She is president of Crow Real Estate and Insurance Co. in Birmingham and is a longtime member of the Leadership Board of UA’s College of Arts and Sciences.
The late John Mills received his bachelor’s degree in pre-dental studies from The College of Arts and Sciences in 1955 and a dentistry degree from UA’s School of Dentistry in Birmingham in 1958. He practiced endodontics for 29 years and was a diplomat of the American Board of Endodontics.
Mills was a pioneer in endodontics in Alabama and the only board-certified endodontist in private practice in Alabama for many years. After leaving private practice, Mills became director of the endodontic program at UA’s School of Dentistry in Birmingham.