Millie L. B. Russell

Millie Louise Bown Russell (October 29, 1926 – November 1, 2021) was an American health educator and college administrator based in Seattle. Much of her work as an administrator at the University of Washington involved expanding opportunities for minority students in the STEM pipeline.

Early life and education Millie Bown was raised in the Seattle area, the daughter of Augustus Bown and Edith Ruth Cahill Bown. Her parents were politically active, and welcomed Paul Robeson and Marian Anderson as guests in their home. One of her sisters was jazz pianist Patti Bown.

Bown was an athletic young woman, and especially excelled at archery and dance in her teens. She earned a bachelor's degree in medical technology from Seattle University in 1948. She was the second Black student to enroll, after Sam Smith, and the first to graduate. In 1971 Russell earned a teaching certificate from the same school. She earned a master's degree in kinesiology in 1978 from the University of Washington, and completed doctoral studies in education at the University of Washington when she was 62 years old, in 1988.

Bown became a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha in 1945. She represented the Seattle Youth Council of the NAACP at a national meeting in New Orleans in 1946. "Civil rights was important, and that was my volunteer work," she recalled later, "but I also liked health care and I liked making precise decisions about what is important for a person’s health care needs." "The factors for an effective school are well-known," she said in a newspaper interview that year. "We just have to be willing to design it. If we don't really invest in that, we're not really caring about America." October 29, 2001, her 75th birthday, was declared Dr. Millie Russell Day by the Mayor of Seattle. She retired from the university in 2007. The Dr. Millie Russell Endowed Scholarship aat the University of Washington is named in her honor, and it "benefits underrepresented, low-income, first-generation students interested in studying science". Her daughter Pat Russell is Executive Dean of the Healthcare and Human Services division at Seattle Central College.