From left: Dr. Della Bell, Mrs. Simone Massingill and Ms. Zorah Taylor (Simone’s sister).
Thank you to STEM-Ma Jacqueline Brannon Giles for this post.
Grandma Got STEM is touching the lives of many young women and a former student of Dr. Della Bell can attest to this fact. Simone was taught by Dr. Bell in 1978 and Dr. Bell recalls that Simone was a dual degree student with a major in chemistry and mathematics.
Simone describes Dr. Bell as a professor who inspired her and nurtured her interest in mathematics. After a 33 year teaching career, Simone says that she never taught chemistry but taught mathematics at various levels in school districts and colleges.
Our Grandma Got STEM webmaster contacted this writer, and wonderful experiences resulted from communicating and connecting to help Simone get in touch with Dr. Bell. Dr. Bell and Prof. Giles attended Simone’s elegant retirement party at a location near Bush International Airport in Houston, Texas.
Prof. Giles likes to adapt life experiences into lessons for students at Texas Southern University since she currently teaches courses at the university located in Houston, Texas. Years ago Prof. Giles was hired by Dr. Bell who served in a leadership/administrative position at Texas Southern for about 38 years. The experiences shared by all of us demonstrate the importance of inspiring, teaching, communicating and connecting with students so that we can someday report on more outstanding and dedicated professionals similar to Simone, and Dr. Della Bell.
Grandma Got STEM 
It is really amazing to see powerful African American Women actually impacting people lives!
I am really touched by this article and I like how you wrote this article about this person.
Hopefully in 10 years or so I can come back to you and thank you for what you thought me so far because I’m in your college algebra 10 clock class and what you talk about inspires me to keep on moving forward and trying my best to become sucessful
Dear Professor Giles,
Thank you for adapting math into an understandable concept for us I am in your 133-03 9am class and math is a bad subject, but the way you explain it and teach it is actually very engaging to me and that’s why I really like this math class.