Induction Year: 2018
Dr. Leah Chapman Vincent is a Minerva native through and through. She grew up on Freed Street just outside the village limits and began kindergarten at M. I. Day Elementary, attended Hazen Junior High School and graduated in 1999 as co-valedictorian from Minerva High School. Joan Hart Henninger, class of 1957, nominated Dr. Vincent to the Minerva High School Alumni Hall of Fame.
In 1999 the United States Navy awarded Leah Chapman a full-ride Navy Academic Reserve Officer Training Corp Scholarship which she used to attend Miami (Ohio) University and from which she graduated cum laude in 2003 as the top female ROTC Naval Midmanship nationwide. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa national honor fraternity. At Miami University she majored in microbiology and in 2003 received Miami University Microbiology Dept. honors and the Orton K. Stark Award for Excellence. She also traveled extensively abroad while she attended the Miami University Luxemburg campus during her junior year.
In 2004, on behalf of the Dept. of Microbiology in Miami University, Leah participated in a poster presentation at the American Society of Microbiology General Meeting in New Orleans, La., on the isolation and characterization of microorganisms from the high altitude saline lakes in northwest China.
Commissioned an Ensign in the U.S. Navy upon graduation from Miami University, in November 2004, Ensign Chapman married fellow Miami graduate Lt. Joshua Vincent, USMC in a military-style ceremony at St. Gabriel Catholic Church in Minerva. Currently, Dr. Leah Chapman Vincent and Lt. Col. Josh Vincent and their two children reside in Rockville, Maryland.
In 2004 Ensign Vincent joined the USS Mustin (DDG89) as a Gunnery Division Officer where she was a Force Protection Training Team Lead in the Northern Arabian Gulf during Operation Iraqi Enduring Freedom. Her ship received several E awards for Excellence and she received the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal.
Upon return from the Iraq war, Lt. j/g Vincent received an assignment to the USS Decatur (DDG 73) where she served as fire Control Division Officer where she was responsible for weapons support systems and worked with the U.S. Missile Defense Agency and foreign Navy components in several live-fire test exercises.
In 2006 then Lt. Vincent separated from the navy and took a position as a Combat Systems Analyst with BAE Syste
ms, Inc. in Bethesda, Md. Where she provided program management and worked on the highly classified Anti-Torpedo Torpedo Defense System.
In 2008 Lt. Vincent enrolled as a civilian doctoral candidate at the Uniformed Services of the Health Sciences (USUHS) in the Depart. of Microbiology and Immunology in Bethesda, Md. While there she conducted cutting edge research on sexually transmitted diseases, specifically, gonorrhea, which had been designated an urgent threat by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There Vincent mentored undergraduates on lab and research techniques and served as a guest lecturer at Walter Reed Military Medical Hospital, George Mason University and as a science teaching fellow for the American Society for Microbiology. She planned and organized a career seminar series that brought scientist sto USUHS to discuss non-traditional career pathways with graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.
In 2010, Leah gave birth to Olivia and in 2015 Elizabeth was born. In 2016 Josh began a year-long deployment to Pakistan for the U.S. Department of State.
At USUHS as a Post Doctoral Fellow for the Henry M. Jackson Foundation, Dr. Vincent conducted research into antibiotic resistance in gonococcal infection and in addition, provided scientific direction for graduate students in their project planning of dissertation work.