Oral History Program Wendy Farley Interviewed by Jared Farley 19 June 2008 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Wendy Farley Interviewed by Jared Farley 19 June 2008 Copyright © 2012 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in University Archives. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Farley, Wendy, an oral history by Jared Farley, 19 June 2008, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Wendy Farley. It is being conducted on June 19, 2008 at the home of Wendy Farley and concerns the non-traditional student at Weber State University. The interviewer is Jared Farley. JF: My name is Jared Farley. I am the interviewer and the person who I will be interviewing is Wendy Farley. She is my mother. Today is June 19, 2008. The location is at my mother's house in Layton, Utah. The purpose of this interview is to learn about nontraditional students. Can we begin by having you state your name, where you were born, and where you were raised? WF: My name is Wendy Farley. I was born in Rexburg, Idaho. I was raised in Sugar City, Idaho except for three years when we lived in Tremonton, Utah. JF: When did you move back? WF: We moved back in 1963. We moved from Sugar City in the fall of 1959 and moved back to Sugar City in the summer of 1963. JF: Growing up in Sugar City, was college education stressed in the community in which you lived at the time that you grew up? WF: College education was an option at that time. Ricks College was just three miles away in Rexburg. In my day and age, the emphasis for females was not as high to get the education. Usually you became a nurse, a teacher, an educator, if you went to college as a female. But as I got older, the emphasis, by the time I became a senior, everyone was going to college. That was just the next step in life. You graduated from high school and went to college. JF: So it was very popular in your community? 1 WF: Yes. JF: So have you ever had any post-secondary education before attending Weber State University? WF: Yes, I attended Ricks College right out of high school for one year and then I got married. After being married for many, many years I tried to go back to school. I started at Weber State at one time but family issues took more precedence than my education and I had to drop out. JF: What was your program of study when you were at Ricks and then also when you went to Weber State for that small period? WF: My focus, when I started at Ricks College, was to become a special education teacher. Because Ricks at that time was only a two year institution, basically it was just getting your associates and then I would have had to have transferred to BYU or some other college to finish it out. But of course I got married the year after my first year and didn't have the time or the money to go back to college. When I started at Weber State again in, I think it was 1989, my focus was on becoming an elementary education teacher. But that, again, didn't pan out. JF: Why was it again that you quit going in 1989? WF: The reason for dropping out in 1989 was family time, my family was too young for me to be in college and there was no other support system to take care of the family so I had to focus on my responsibilities at the time. JF: So what made you consider going back to school now? WF: When I started back to Weber State, there were several things that influenced my beginning. First of all, I realized I was not marketable at all, that my skills lay in 2 unprofessional type skills, which you can make a living at, but you are not capable of really supporting yourself completely. I always said I wanted a college education. Almost all of my family have degrees or have focused on college type degrees. I wanted a degree and I always had told my father that I would go to college with my children. My children are in college and so I decided to go to college when I started back in 2001. JF: So, when you started what was your chosen major? You obviously had decided that you wanted to come back, did you have an idea then of what you wanted to study and if so, uh, what was that? WF: When I started back in 2001, I had decided that I was going to become a logistics major. That decision came by working with the forest service and dealing with a little bit of logistics, in dealing with the program that I was working for—the movement of documents and the tracking of items and shipping and amounts of things going here and there. So I looked into the possibility for jobs while I was at the forest service. Logistics was a high requested field and so I had decided that that would be my major. Then they changed the name of the major to supply chain management. JF: So, you have selected your major and being inspired by the forestry service, what do you see this degree meaning to you in the future? Do you see yourself using this degree to actually go to other jobs or do you just want the degree for the sake of having an education to fall back on? WF: I started out with kind of a feeling that by getting this degree I would have something to fall back on. But with the economy turning and life situations, I have decided that this degree is going to be my ability to overcome debt load within the household, give me a little more self-esteem as I go out into the workforce and actually make a difference in a 3 lot of people's lives. I'm not just doing simple everyday tasks that, to me, anyone can do. But I am doing something that I have been specially trained in and I can make a difference in this field. I can succeed at something. JF: With that drive, that energy, knowing that you can succeed, how do you feel Weber State is helping you with this skill set, with this learning? Do you feel that they will be able to help you to get that desired position? WF: Yes. The people that I am learning from, my teachers, my instructors, have mainly been the type of people that I wanted to see come out of that field and have an understanding from them what the field is like. The ones that I have met so far are very knowledgeable, have been very good. I've had one professor that I was not impressed with, but he also was not focused in this area. He was, not exactly one of the best professors that I have met. I have only had one or two in my whole experience that have been that way. Most of them have been very professional and have shown me steps to better myself in education and it’s been a good experience that way. JF: With these professors that you struggled with, were they full-time faculty members or were they adjunct, or—? WF: They were adjunct. They were adjunct instructors that had been called in, one of them last minute. I think he was glad to get into the adjunct field. He expressed that he wanted to do something like that, but had expected more pay and more prestige and his attitude just kind of leaked over into the class and it was kind of a downer. JF: You are a non-traditional student? WF: Yes. 4 JF: Would you mind stating your age and what challenges this has presented to you as a student of Weber State University? WF: I am fifty-two years old. When I started back to school in 2001, I was forty-five years old. It has created quite an interesting, set of problems and advantages. Because as I have taken these classes I have had real life learning and I can apply what I am learning to what I have experienced. It’s kind of like, "Oh yeah, this is why that's happened," or "I understand that better," or, and “That's been an advantage in my part.” Plus, I also am very focused on my studies. I don't have to be the social person as a non-trad student. I have a family and I want to be part of the family and still do my studies, so that's been a little bit of a conflict which it is for any non-trad that got other responsibilities. The hardest part has been, keeping things in my mind as I'm older and I have got so many things pulling at me in different directions—to remember everything that I have been taught. Ha. I think the younger students have an advantage over me on that part. I have to work quite hard to remember everything, and I have to study harder to get my grades where I want them to be, because of age and time constraints. JF: What are some of those time constraints that you feel put more pressure on you as a student? WF: The time constraints that I feel are within my own family because I want to be very, very active with my family. I want to be involved with my children, my grandchildren, my mother, my sister, and my extended family members. I would love to travel. I would love to go other places but I can't do that because I have homework to do and then I've got church responsibilities. I have got things that I should be doing that way. I feel that I neglect a lot of things that way. I need to watch my health better. Staying up late nights 5 and studying long and hard takes a toll. Worrying about passing a test, my nerves get upset and then I have problems that way. I have found that I have lost my testing ability. It used to be I could read a book and walk in and ace the test and now I have to read the book three times, and practice tests, and regurgitate everything that I have thought about and then go back in and try to focus in that testing center or in the class where we were being tested. Testing has really been a struggle for me, coming back to school. It hasn't been as easy as it was when I was first in college. JF: Do you feel that could be partially because of the types of classes you have to take in conjunction with that question—I guess I should ask you too, when do you mostly attend school? Is it in the evenings, or in the daytime? Does that affect the way the class is presented to you and the way you are able to take it in and use it and then try to access that information for the test? WF: Yes, it does make a difference. Most of my classes, up until this point, in my education have been at night which means I have worked all day. Then I go to school at night. The classes are three hour blocks and some of the professors have been, "It’s okay, let’s do it, if we can do it in an hour and a half, let’s do it in an hour and a half and get out," which has been great. Other professors were, "No. It's a three hour block or a two hour and fifty minute block, you are doing two hours and fifty minutes worth of learning," which is fine, but, there is an old saying of, "The mind can only absorb what the seat can endure." Sometimes sitting in those chairs you just get so tired that what they are saying just does not sink in and especially in harder courses like math and economics. It’s been really hard to focus on what's being taught in those hours. Some of the classes that I am going to start taking in the fall will be during the day so it’s going to be quite an 6 interesting shift to see. They are only an hour and fifty minutes. It’s going to be interesting to see the shift in how the information is absorbed into my brain. Whether it stays there easier or just how it works. JF: You mentioned that you work during the day and then you go to school. Do you feel that your work, in some way exhausts you or do you feel like, by the time you are done with work and you go to school at night that you have the energy and the attentiveness to learn? WF: No. Going to school at night after working—when I first started school I was working full time and traveling from the airport in Salt Lake to Weber State. Then I changed jobs and went to 45th South and had to travel from 45th South and make it up to Weber State on time to attend class. That was very exhausting. I found that I was getting to school and I had to eat dinner on the road or make time to eat dinner by the time I got to the college. I was just exhausted by the time I started class. But then most of the instructors were very energizing and I would get into the topic. I would get energized but by and by I could always tell when eight o'clock came. My body just stopped. It was like my internal clock turned off and there was not another thing that I could learn. I could sit there and they were talking to me and I know I was absorbing something but I wasn't quite exactly sure what. So it's been quite a struggle to remember everything and overcome that exhaustion. I come home and I just want to crawl into bed. I'm just exhausted. JF: Do you try to attempt homework after coming home from school and being in this exhausted state? What do your nights consist of after you return home? WF: If I know that the work load is heavy in the homework, I have come home and sat down after class and I have done an hour to two hours of homework. I was extremely 7 exhausted. It's like my brain couldn't add two and two anymore and I would have to quit because I couldn't, physically think. JF: Well with all that learning in the classroom, have you tried taking courses from any of the various other styles that Weber State offers such as Internet courses or distance learning courses? Have you tried any of those? WF: I have. For the first couple of summers I did online courses during that time, which I found that for some of the courses was great. I'm more of an audio learner. I need to hear it. I need to see it. I thought I would never be able to succeed at an online course, but the online courses that I have taken I have done quite well in. When I did have a question I was able to contact the professor and have clarification, which was good. It was nice to be at home, but I found I also had to block my time. To say, "Okay, I'm at home and all my other interests that I want to do have to be put off to the side until my schoolwork is done," and I had to block my time and say, "These hours," or, "This day," or, "This night, this is my homework day," and I would focus on that schooling and do it. I actually did quite well on the online courses. JF: Would you like to see more online courses offered in your particular major or would you like to see more accessible classes in the day time? Which method do you prefer? WF: Actually, because I still have to work, I would like to see more evening classes in my area of study. Right now most of my classes are offered only in the daytime. As I start this fall I have to go to day classes which meant I had to have my employer agree to allow me that time off to attend those classes which they are very supportive of and I am very lucky that way. Most students have had to either quit or change jobs or do something to make those hours work. They do offer some of my courses on online 8 classes, but again I am an audio-visual learner I need to see what they are doing, I need to see the examples, I need to hear their method of doing this process so that I can understand it better rather than just reading it and saying, "Oh, I get that." I like to hear the correlation, the examples, and see it from a physical point of view rather than read it off the computer. JF: Those are some very good suggestions. What other improvements would you like to see done to Weber State as a school or to your program of study? WF: This one's a little difficult to—like I said, I would like to see some more evening courses. Basically, I have had a very good experience with Weber fitting in and following their guidelines, their rules. The opportunity for scholarships I would like to see improved. It would be nice if the cost of the education would go down, but that's probably something that's not going to happen. The availability for scholarships for the non-traditional student really needs to be looked at. They need to look at the married couple that makes ‘x’ amount of dollars which is just above that cut-off line for support—the wife returning to school who, yes, her husband has a good wage, but she's still having to take that money out of the budget to pay for college and she can't qualify for a scholarship, she can't qualify for federal grants, or any, financial help at all. That needs to be across the board for every department in that school. The education department, the business, the history, every department on that college needs to offer some substantial scholarships to help the non-trad student. I am planning, when I graduate and get into a position, I am going to set up at least one to two scholarships in a couple of the different schools in the college because there is a need out there and it needs to be addressed. 9 JF: That's a great goal. How do you create new scholarships? What kind of criteria would you look for in qualifiers? You mentioned that you need, that Weber State could use more for the non-trad student, how would you set up the criteria for that to be rewarded? WF: I have talked to a couple of people that work for Weber State and have set up scholarships or know how to set up scholarships. The criteria that I would be looking at is either male or female, carrying at least a 2.5 to 3.0 grade point average, they can be married or single but if their income is at the break off point for federal grants or federal aid, then that's the point to receive the scholarship, and all they'd have to do is apply. It would cover at least two semesters, one full year of education. So that they know that if they receive this scholarship, they've got one full year that they're not going to have to worry about books or tuition. They can focus on that education and get in there and get it started. Then after that next year they can reapply and see if they can qualify again. There needs to be some help out there for those who are just on that borderline that nothing seems to be available for them. It stops many from going back to college and either changing their majors or upping their education to help themselves to get into a better job, whatever they need to do. So, those are some of the criteria that I am looking at. JF: You mentioned that you would place that in the school of business or in other schools at Weber State. Have you thought about what other schools that they are placing those in? WF: Yes, definitely in the school of business and also in education. Those are two areas that I feel they are not getting any help at all. The history department, languages, possibly even mathematics and sciences. The basics need to be helped. I think there are a lot of science scholarships out there that are available and people can get those. But those 10 are just a couple of the areas that I'd like to look at and see if they have scholarships available that are under this type of criteria or if they need scholarships set up under this criteria. JF: Having offered a little bit of critiquing about Weber State and how they need to help with scholarships. Then actually positioning yourself through goals to do that in the future, being a solution to the very problem that you critiqued—what other things has Weber State done to help you as a student to have that good experience? Obviously you've had a good experience at Weber State. WF: I think it's the professors. I think most of them have been adjunct because I have been taking night classes. Some have just had such an excitement when they teach their courses. The first class I ever took at Weber State, starting back, was a music course. The professor was just so animated, he was so alive with his love for music, which I love anyway, but it just added to that excitement of being in school and learning again. I think that if a student starts back or comes to college, they need to take for the first semester at least, two classes that are in areas that they love. No matter what it is, sciences, music. They need to start out in something that they love and get that love for learning started again and then go forward. I had a mathematics professor, college algebra professor, that it's not his main job. He was an adjunct but he cared that I understood everything I was learning. He put it into everyday context and the next, the 1050 course, it's a tough course, but the instructor that I had was a high school instructor, and she put everything down on our level. She made sure that we understood the concepts. She worked with us. She was available for help after classes. I think that also indicates that the professor is interested in the fact that you are learning. 11 I had one professor in the math courses, he reminded me of my high school geometry teacher because he would throw out the information and then sit back and talk about fishing or something else. He wasn't interested whether we learned it or not. He was just drawing in the adjunct pay. I was glad to see that he didn't teach the next semester because that's not teaching. Anybody can stand up there and throw out information. But whether you're concerned that the student understands it and can grasp it at their level and the instructor is available afterwards for clarification or problems or anything that comes up, I think those are what has made education and especially at Weber State enjoyable for me. JF: You have mentioned a couple of times that as a female at Weber State and your age making you a non-traditional student, but women needed more scholarships. Have you found that being a woman at the university, have they treated you any different in the school or in your course of study as compared to the male students? WF: There was one teacher that presented that image. In fact there has been two that have basically put down women as, "Oh well. It's okay if you don't pass this with a high grade. You are doing your best as a female." I took great offense at that and even complained to the supervisors of the teachers. I don't know if anything's changed. I know both teachers are still teaching and I am hoping that maybe they are going to be talked to a little bit about their presentation. I don't know if it is a male ego thing that they see a woman in a class, and especially an older woman. I have been treated sometimes like the grandma type of, "Oh, you poor dear thing," and, "Let me help you through this course." Its like, "No, get out of my way, I am here to learn and I want to be taught." Like anybody else, I don't want to be ‘kick- loved.’ I want to be taught and that's what I am 12 paying for. I was quite upset with these two teachers and was glad to get out of the course when I finished it. I finished both with fairly good grades but it was very frustrating as a female. JF: Do you feel that your grades were diminished because of their biases toward you as a female or did they grade you fairly? WF: They graded me fairly but the comments within the class and the expectations when I would talk with the professor about a concern was kind of the, "Oh, that's okay, you're an older person, we'll let you pass with that." That was quite insulting. JF: Very patronizing statements, obviously belittling and inappropriate. Do you feel that there is anything that the school can do? You mentioned that you had made your complaints, but the fact that the teachers are still there—do you believe that there is anything that the school can do to either protect women in those class type situations or prevent such discussions from occurring? WF: There's several things that any instructor should be instructed that people in their class are paying them to teach. It doesn't matter their age, their color, their sex, their religious beliefs. They are there to present information for a paying public, for a customer. They need to present that with no bias. If they cannot do it without then they should not be offered those positions. If they cannot walk and teach no matter whose sitting in those seats and give the information they have been asked to present then they should not be hired by the college. They should not be in that position. JF: How do you think the university can look for that in the hiring process? WF: It's tough in the hiring process but I believe if you've got a first-time adjunct or a firsttime faculty member, that the supervisor should randomly sit in on their classes and 13 listen to their teaching style, or maybe even if it sounds a little old-school, stand outside the door and listen to how they're presenting their information. They should have a first year score sheet basically, on their evaluations that they receive, and whether they have presented the information correctly and without any bias towards any other levels of students. They need to be critiqued by their fellow peers as an educator and followed up on. JF: Very good advice. Just in conclusion, what advice would you give to other nontraditional students in continuing with their education and then to further help the school? WF: Advice for non-trads is just hang on. I know it's tough. There's times I've wanted to quit and I've thought, "Okay, if I quit—yeah, I've got some education but I am still not as marketable as I want to be." So hang on. Work through the tough times. Work with your professors. Work with your family and do it. Just keep that goal in sight that you can complete this degree. You are capable of doing it. You can do this. The college needs to keep saying, "Yes, you can do this," and encouraging non-trad students to come back, get your education, change your degrees if you have to. Just keep working at it and then you'll make it. JF: Thank you Wendy. I want to thank you for your time and your comments and thank you very much. WF: You're welcome. 14