Centralight

11 centralight spring '14 11 centralight spring '14 Cathy Courtney, '74 Houston Health care consultant What she was known for at CMU: Political activist The backstory: "Most people will remember me as that political girl who showed up to anything radical on campus," Courtney says. "I was at anything involving free speech, civil rights, women's liberation, social injustice, women's health. My interest in all of that goes way back to CMU." Courtney founded the campus organization WHIP – the Women's Health and Information Project. She worked to get birth control prescriptions available at the University Health Center. "There was no gynecologist on campus, no sex education," she says. "There were physicians who would not see unmarried girls for birth control. It was dismal." After Central: Just two years after graduation, in 1976, Courtney was named Feminist of the Year by the Michigan chapter of the National Organization for Women. Courtney went on to a successful career that often focused on women's health, including time as senior project coordinator at the Baylor College of Medicine's Center for Research on Women With Disabilities. She's been education coordinator at a medical school, trained community health workers and been a public health educator. She helped found the Detroit Feminist Women's Health Center. Now Courtney is an outreach coordinator for Health Care for All Texas, an all- volunteer grassroots organization working to improve health care access. Her passion was fueled at CMU, she says. "Mount P – the radical hotspot of mid-America," Courtney says, laughing. "It was a microcosm of the larger society, with all the same issues. My time there enabled my growth." > Courtney was part of a group of anti-war protesters who climbed on Gov. William Milliken's car as he was leaving CMU in 1972. 11 centralight spring '14

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