West Virginia University - News and Information Services
McDiarmid wins WVU Buswell Award for women's advocacy
'In Marjorie, students see a role model -- tough, dignified, committed'
Marjorie McDiarmid’s hard work and commitment don’t stop on the steps of the West Virginia University College of Law, where she’s taught for the past two decades.
If she isn’t in the classroom, she’s in the community. She gives her time as a volunteer and board member of the Morgantown-based Rape and Domestic Violence Information Center Inc., the organization she joined almost immediately after her arrival at WVU in 1986.
She is the president of the Board of Legal Aid of West Virginia. That organization provides free legal services to the poor throughout the state of West Virginia.
And as the director of WVU’s Clinical Law Program, she was instrumental in creating an Innocence Project at the law school, which provides legal help to those who have been wrongly convicted and who can prove their innocence through the use of forensic evidence.
Before Morgantown and WVU, she was a consumer advocate in New York and a public defender in Washington state.
It’s a quiet pursuit of justice that speaks loudly to her colleagues and clients.
That’s why WVU is honoring her this year with one of its highest awards for advocacy and outreach: the Mary Catherine Buswell Award for Outstanding Service to Women.
McDiarmid will be recognized during Commencement Weekend festivities May 16-18.
She’ll receive her award during the honors convocation, which will be 7 p.m. Friday in the WVU Coliseum. Visit http://commencement.wvu.edu for a complete schedule of Commencement events.
Buswell, the award’s namesake, taught English at WVU from 1947-78 and was an early proponent of women’s rights on campus and throughout the Morgantown community.
That meant, of course, encouraging and empowering the female contingent of her classes, who, more often than not, were saddled with a host of responsibilities that went well beyond fulfilling the obligations of the course syllabus.
Longtime College of Law Dean John W. Fisher II is stepping down from his post this year to return to teaching full-time. He made sure during his final tenure, though, to nominate McDiarmid for the award.
Buswell’s legacy and McDiarmid’s mission, he said, are mirror images of one another.
“Marjorie’s goal is to make a difference,” Fisher said, “and in doing so, she is more concerned with results than bringing attention to herself. She has used her talents, knowledge and skills as a lawyer to serve the most needy in our society – individuals who aren’t able to afford a lawyer to assist them with their legal needs.”
While McDiarmid is known for her soft-spoken nature, she’s anything but shy when it comes to standing up for the legal rights of others, said Adrienne Worthy, the executive director of Legal Aid of West Virginia.
“In Marjorie,” Worthy said, “law students see a role model – a tough, dignified, committed female professor who has been tested in a variety of settings as a public defender, government lawyer and law school professor.”
The dean who is replacing Fisher is a friend and College of Law colleague of McDiarmid’s who agrees with all of the above.
“It is difficult to imagine the progress made in family law in West Virginia without Marjorie,” said Joyce McConnell, the former associate dean of academic affairs at the law school. “She is a force of one on a lifelong mission for the safety and economic security of women and their children.”
McDiarmid earned a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Rochester and has law degrees from Harvard and the Columbia University School of Law.