West initially turned down the job, because she didn't have a car and couldn't find Dahlgren on a map. In 1956, West was hired to work at the Naval Proving Ground in Dahlgren, Virginia, (now called the Naval Surface Warfare Center), where she was the second black woman ever hired and one of only four black employees. ![]() CareerÄata processing report for GeoSat by Gladys West Afterward, she briefly took another teaching position in Martinsville, Virginia. West then returned to VSU to complete her Master of Mathematics degree, graduating in 1955. After graduating, she taught math and science for two years in Waverly, Virginia. West graduated in 1952 with a Bachelor of Science in mathematics. She also became a member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. She was encouraged to major in science or mathematics because of their difficulty, and West ultimately chose to study mathematics, a subject mostly studied at her college by men. She was initially unsure what college major to pursue at VSU, as she had excelled in all her subjects in high school. West graduated as valedictorian in 1948, and received the much needed scholarship. At West's high school, the top two students of each graduating class received full scholarships to Virginia State College (now formally University), a historically black public university. ![]() Her parents tried to save but supporting an entire family on a sharecropper's wage did not leave much left for West's education. When West was on her way to graduate high school, but the family did nnot have enough money to send her to university.
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