Flora Dorsey Young, 83, retired professor

Flora Dorsey Young, 83, of Lawnside, a retired sociology professor at Rowan University who encouraged young people to pursue their education, died of cancer Thursday, Feb. 9, at home.

In 1968, Dr. Young was among the first black faculty members hired at what was then Glassboro State College. She helped establish the sociology department and, in a career that spanned 27 years, influenced more than 4,500 students, her daughter, Marie Young-Robinson, said.

Julie Mallory Church, assistant director for counseling and psychological services at Rowan, called Dr. Young a "trailblazer" and wrote in a tribute: "Her light shone very brightly, touching generations of students."

Dr. Young challenged her students with a no-nonsense, no-excuses, tough-love teaching approach, her daughter said.

In 1990, she established the Hollybush Institute at Glassboro. The federally funded program was designed to help minority college students prepare for graduate school. Students enrolled in the program took classes in grammar, research, and computer literacy, received advice on graduate exams and tuition funding, and went on field trips.

Dr. Young received research grants and published articles in professional journals. She was the recipient of numerous honors, including a Women of Achievement award from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women.

A native of South Philadelphia, Dr. Young graduated from Philadelphia High School for Girls in 1946. She earned a bachelor's degree in sociology from Howard University, where she met a medical student, William P. Young.

In 1950, the year she graduated, they married, and in the mid-1950s, they built a home with a medical office in Lawnside.

Dr. Young was a substitute teacher in Lawnside before earning a master's degree in sociology from Howard University in 1968. She earned a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania in 1978.

She and her husband organized a youth group to expose children in the community to their culture and heritage.

"We felt that our young people did not have a clue as to how proud they could be of the various ones that had gone before them," she told the Lawnside Historical Society in 2006.

Dr. Young and her husband encouraged youngsters to attend college, tutored students, organized bus trips to historically black colleges, and in some cases paid their tuition, their daughter said.