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Greenburgh Author Earns Lifetime Achievement Award

This story has been updated to clarify Vicki Cobb’s role in professional development at Lanza Learning Center.

GREENBURGH, N.Y. – Greenburgh resident and author Vicki Cobb will soon receive a lifetime achievement award for her work.

Cobb will travel to Vancouver on Feb. 16 to receive the award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The author of dozens of children’s science books was humbled when she learned of the award and prepared her husband for the trip.

“I told him, ‘It looks like we’re going to have to be dressed in black tie,’” Cobb said.

“Science Experiments You Can Eat,” published in 1972, is perhaps Cobb’s best-known book. Her work has led to her reputation and nickname as the “Julia Child of kids’ hands-on science.”

The Greenburgh resident has done more than simply author books. She is the president and founder of Ink Think Tank, a website that helps teachers retrieve nonfiction books for their classes.

She also writes a blog for Education Update and works in professional development at the Lanza Learning Center, an organization in Yonkers that works with children. Cobb said her efforts keep her at the forefront of science education.

“Times are changing,” said Cobb, who has lived in Greenburgh for 20 years. “I’m at the vanguard of what’s happening.”

Cobb moved to Greenburgh in 1992. She has written books for decades but still said that the lifetime achievement award “came out of the blue.”

Recently, Cobb has reflected on the words of former Penn State football coach, the late Joe Paterno, who drew a distinction between excellence and success. Excellence, she said, is what a person does but success is how others perceive that person.

After all these years, she seems to have acquired both.

“I have always driven for excellence in my work,” Cobb said. “Sooner or later, people are going to notice you. That’s not what drives you.”

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