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Sheryl Mebane

DRUMSET/JEMBE/SPOKEN WORD

Sheryl's life has been marked by the ebb and flow of three main pursuits: music, writing and chemistry.

Sheryl Mebane was born and grew up in North Carolina. She has two older sisters and both her parents are retired high school science teachers. Early in school, she seized upon revelations of the mysteries of music, which gave her a sense of the power behind what she heard around her. She also explored language, expressing herself through creative writing, and was first published in a statewide collection of student writing at eight years old. She began melding her musical and literary interests in a high school project in which she composed percussion music inspired by the works of James Baldwin and performed the composition for a school assembly. Sheryl also presented a chemistry research project that systematically tested materials for drumheads to the International Science and Engineering Fair. She gave the commencement address at her NC School of Science and Mathematics high school graduation after a draft of the speech won her the honor.

In the four summers during her undergraduate career, Sheryl explored the outdoors, taught inner city Boston youth drumming and chemistry, interned in the Letters Department of Newsweek, and studied jembe drumming in West Africa, all funded by her Morehead Scholarship. During her time at UNC, she also ran an elementary school creative writing competition for an honor society, composed and premiered pieces with the UNC Percussion Ensemble, and served as section leader for the marching band's drumline. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a BS in Chemistry and Highest Honors for a thesis in her Creative Writing minor. Sheryl earned her doctorate in chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley in the fall of 2003. Her studies include work in simulating ultrafast solution dynamics of inorganic compounds using molecular dynamics as well as a project in chemistry education that chronicles and analyzes the impact of heterogeneous classes on the achievement of African American chemistry students in an inner city school. Sheryl has also presented a poster of her original research in physical and inorganic chemistry at an American Chemical Society National Meeting and attended a conference on environmentally responsible chemistry. Currently, she is working part-time on several research projects in education and is exploring various opportunities, including publishing more accessible versions of her education research.

Throughout her course of study at Berkeley she has continued to pursue writing with a passion. She completed the first Pearl Street Publishing Writing Fellowship and completed a Poetry for the People course with June Jordan. Sheryl is also a jazz musician and composer. She continues to
perform and write music with the trio the Tangria Jazz Group, which she joined a few years ago. The trio's first CD, comprised entirely of songs for Lady Bird and including two originals by Sheryl, was released in July of 2003.

Sheryl also performs with the rock band, Bunnysound.