Oral History Program Dr. Michelle Arnold Interviewed by Kandice Harris 12 March 2019 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Dr. Michelle Arnold Interviewed by Kandice Harris 12 March 2019 Copyright © 2021 by Weber State University, Stewart Library 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. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Beyond Suffrage Project was initiated to examine the impact women have had on northern Utah. Weber State University explored and documented women past and present who have influenced the history of the community, the development of education, and are bringing the area forward for the next generation. The project looked at how the 19th Amendment gave women a voice and representation, and was the catalyst for the way women became involved in the progress of the local area. The project examines the 50 years (1870-1920) before the amendment, the decades to follow and how women are making history today. ____________________________________ 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 This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Arnold, Michelle, an oral history by Kandice Harris, 12 March 2019, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Michelle Arnold 12 March 2019 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Dr. Michelle Arnold, conducted on March 12, 2019 in the Tracy Hall conference room, by Kandice Harris. Michelle discusses her life, her memories at Weber State University, and the impact of the 19th Amendment. Tanner Flinders, the video technician, is also present during this interview. KH: The following is an oral history interview with Dr. Michelle Arnold, it is being conducted on March 12, 2019 in the Tracy Hall conference room, and the interviewer is Kandice Harris. The subject of this interview is Michelle’s time spent at Weber State University as a faculty member from 2002 to present. Also present is Tanner Flinders, our video technician. Would you take a little bit of time and tell us about your early life and some historical background? MA: I grew up in Canada, a family of four kids. I was second oldest. It went boy, girl, girl, boy. I lived in central Canada—Winnipeg, Manitoba. I’m trying to think of other relevant things. I don’t see that well, so that was also a part of my childhood. I went on to university after high school. I did competitive swimming in high school too and all through elementary school. I don’t know exactly what you’re looking for. KH: Anything you want to share. MA: After high school, I went on to university. I stayed in Winnipeg for four years living at home with my parents while I did my undergraduate. I then went on to graduate school and moved out when I was 21 to go to graduate school by 2 Toronto in Canada, in a city called Hamilton. Went to McMaster University and did my Ph.D. there. After that, I went to California for a year and worked at Lawrence Livermore National Lab, which is about an hour away from San Francisco. Then I came here to Weber State in 2002. KH: Were you encouraged to pursue an education? MA: I think it was always assumed in my house. I don’t think anybody ever said. I don’t even think that was an option. I guess if that means encouraged, yeah, I guess so. My father had not gone to university, my mom had. Most of my mom’s family had. I think we all assumed that for a long time while we were little that we would grow up and go to college and that was just what we would do. KH: What started your interest in Physics? MA: Originally, I really loved teaching and I knew that I wanted to do something that involved teaching. My original aspirations were probably to teach animals. My father pointed out that there weren’t a lot of careers in teaching dolphins to swim or chimpanzees sign language, and all of the other stuff that I thought would be really cool. “I think there’s ten jobs in North America, what are you going to do?” I decided maybe I would teach people, because there seemed to be a lot of teaching jobs, and so I originally thought I would teach high school is where my plans were. I really enjoyed math and I really enjoyed physics. I thought as a female teacher of math and physics I’d probably have an easier time finding a job because everybody is always looking for math and physics teachers anyway, and especially because there were hardly any females. 3 The Canada environment was very much to encourage women in STEM fields. I thought I would probably have an easier time finding a job. I thought, “I’ll teach high school physics and math” is where I was at. I then went on to university and started that, and did some student teaching and found out that high school teachers do a little bit of teaching and a whole lot of student management. I liked teaching and not so much student management. I was really enjoying my physics classes at the university where I was taking higher level physics and I thought, “Maybe I’ll go on and teach physics at the university level.” And that’s kind of where I went. KH: Okay, what degrees and certifications do you have? MA: I have my bachelor’s degree major in mathematics and physics—I did a double major. Then when I went to graduate school, I had started in a master’s program, but a year into the program there was an option that if you were doing well and there was enough research on your project to constitute a Ph.D. you could apply and kind of do a small talk and presentation as to why you thought you should be able to progress straight to Ph.D. I didn’t ever finish the master’s degree, I went straight to the Ph.D. and finished that four years later. So Bachelor’s and then Ph.D. in Physics with an emphasis on medical physics. KH: Where did you do you undergraduate? MA: Winnipeg Manitoba, so University of Winnipeg. When I went there 20 years ago it was a smallish university. Probably smaller than Weber State, but it was an undergraduate only university, like Weber State. So a very similar climate in 4 terms of students knowing their professors and students being able to get involved in research. It was just beginning that. I think that they do that a lot more now, it was in the 90’s that they were just starting to do research. So yeah, similar to Weber State, maybe a little bit smaller. KH: What were so of the challenges you faced while obtaining your degrees? MA: I think I was actually very fortunate that my undergraduate degree I did well. I was at home, so I still had parents—predominately my mom that was buying groceries, making dinners, even during finals week she’d say, “Don’t worry about laundry, I’ve got it covered.” I had a whole lot of time to study in my undergraduate. Graduate school I was out on my own and taking care of those things, and moderately poor like most graduate students. I wouldn’t say I was overly poor. I was fortunate enough to get some scholarship money and so I felt like I was rich. It was more money than I had ever had. I was very fortunate, I feel like on my way through. I had good supervisors, I had good friends, I had good family that was supporting me. Probably the biggest difficulties I had was just with my own—every so often I’d get certain things. Like my introduction into quantum mechanics and I’d look at it and I’d think, “Maybe physics isn’t for me. This is really hard. Maybe I should do something else.” Similar in graduate school. I think by middle of September of graduate school, I had just got there, I was a month in and I remember thinking, “I think everybody here is a lot smarter than I am, and I don’t know why I’m here at graduate school.” Probably more internal conversations with me deciding that actually I could probably do it. So those were probably the 5 biggest challenges I had. Going through graduate school in general, I think is a challenging environment, you’re self-directed with some moderate supervision, but very self-directed. That’s a difficult climate to be in the first time for any graduate student I think. But, no I don’t think I ran into too many unusual challenges. KH: Were there very many women in your program? MA: Undergraduate, no. I think I was the only one in physics. There were a couple of extras in math, maybe. But mostly, no, I was the only girl. I had one female instructor, she was part-time I think? She was, I think an adjunct or something. So she taught for one semester—my thermodynamics. But other than that all of my instructors were male. I was young, I think I was like 18, 19, 20… I don’t think I really noticed the gender gap. I had come from a family where both of my parents worked. There was two boys, two girls. In retrospect I think I’d look and say, “Yeah, I was the only girl.” At the time, I don’t think that it really bothered me. I don’t’ think I noticed. I was busy with other 18 and 19 year old things like dating, you know? I don’t think I really noticed. So that was my undergraduate where there was not very many females. My graduate program was medical physics and there were a lot of girls in the medical physics, maybe because it was medical physics. I think medical physics tends to have more females than physics as a whole does. I had lots of my best friends from graduate school were other women. My direct supervisor was a female—Fionna McNeil. No, I don’t think I noticed it a lot. When I went to Livermore, I was also in a medical physics group at Lawrence Livermore and my 6 supervisor there—Rosemary was her name—she was a female as well. There was other females in the research group. I remember when I applied for the job here at Weber State, I went to the webpage and I looked through at what all of the faculty were doing before I came for my interview. I was working at Livermore at the time, and somebody mentioned—they knew I was coming for the interview and they said, “Are there other women in the department.” I think that was the first time that ever kind of hit my radar. I was like, “I don’t think so.” And I had to double check the webpage. And I was like, “No, there are no other women in that physics department.” I remember they were like, “Are you going to be okay being the only female in the department?” I hadn’t really even considered it. I’m guessing it will be okay. Then when Dale Ostlie was chair of the physics department at the time. When Dale Ostlie later called to give me the job offer, the same conversation where he made the job offer he also informed me that they decided to do two job offers. They were hiring myself and Stacy Palen at the same time. So the two of us would be starting at the same time. Maybe I’ve just been very fortunate, I know a lot of other women that have had different experiences especially in physics. I’ve been fairly fortunate to be surrounded by nice, encouraging, good people. Even when I came here and Stacy and I were the first women, I still don’t think I noticed. The only thing that I probably noticed being a woman, was our accelerator building in graduate school, we had a nuclear accelerator building that had no female bathrooms when the building was built in the 60’s. So what 7 the guys had done, we divided the bathrooms in half. There’s only like four, so we picked two of them, and just pasted signs that said, “Girls.” And I don’t know when that had been done. It was before I had got there. But I remember that was kind of historically funny. I guess they didn’t anticipate any women working in this building. Then the nuclear reactor building on McMaster’s campus as well, also it had six bathrooms, only one of which was a women’s. So all of the women had to go down to the first floor. So when the renovated the building, I kind of had two supervisors, Fiona McNeil was one and David Chettal was the other. David Chettal had been Fiona’s supervisor, when she was in graduate school. She then got hired at the same institution. But the two of them did similar research and so I kind of say that they were co-supervisors. Fiona was my official supervisor but he was. Anyways… when they were renovating the building they surveyed all of the faculty and asked what they thought the building needed. David Chettal wrote down that he thought that the building needed more female bathrooms because I think two-thirds of his research group was women. He said, “We need more girl bathrooms.” So when they redid the building, it turns out that the plumbing went right past his office. So they moved him and changed his office into a girl’s bathroom, and we laughed and thought, “It teaches you to ask for more girl bathrooms.” There were some… but it seemed historical to me, it seemed like, “Oh yeah, a long time ago…” It was the 90’s, I was young, the 60’s seemed forever ago when it was in the 90’s and I was young. I remember I thought, “Oh I guess a 8 long time ago they didn’t think girls were going to do science.” But no, I didn’t directly have too many hurdles because of that. KH: What mentors or resources did you have in your program? MA: Mentors were mostly in undergraduate. It was the professors, it was like Weber State where you could just go sit in their office and ask them questions. It was actually one of my professors who suggested that I go onto graduate school. I wasn’t sure if I was going to for sure. I was like, “I’m don’t know for sure.” And he said, “You should go to graduate school, you should apply for this.” So he was really really good. Then in graduate school, mostly direct supervisors and fellow graduate students is what we had. Fiona and David, which were kind of my two supervisors, they had been very good mentors over the years. There’s been many times that I’ve called them, even still. I’ll call and ask them, “How would you handle this situation? What would you do?” I bug my parents with that all of the time too. KH: What positions have you held in your career? MA: So in undergraduate I did TA’ing as a lot of undergraduate’s do. I helped supervise some of the labs, helped grading of labs, helped grading in the math department. I had a weekend job working at a museum that also had a science center. They did hands on science demonstrations and they did tours and stuff like that for the public. It was just a weekend job. So that was my undergraduate. In graduate school, predominantly doing my research as well as we had to TA every year where we got paid to do stuff—helping students, 9 occasional lecturing, grading, that kind of stuff. Then when I went to Livermore, I did a post doc for a year. It was extendable up to three years, but the position at Weber State came open and I applied for that and left Livermore after only a year. I originally thought that I would probably stay longer. I hadn’t anticipated the Weber State position opening. Then I’ve been here since 2002, I was 27 when I came here, so mostly here. KH: Hey, that’s great. What type of work did you do while you were in Livermore? MA: At Livermore we were working on—it was 2001ish—and so they were just starting to do some of the programs. Computer capacity got to a point where you could, let’s say a patient who had a cancer that needed radiation therapy. It used to be done kind of paper or with quick calculations as to kind of guestimate how should the radiation beam be set up, what should we do. They were in the middle of transitioning from that type of old school calculation to we can actually take an image of this person in CT or MRI and put the image into the computer so that now we have a 3D person in the computer. We know exactly where the bladder is, we know exactly where the kidneys are, we know exactly where the liver is. Then the radiation planning can be done specific to that person, in their anatomy. I was involved with a software program called, Paragrim which was being used to model how well radiation transport through human tissue. We were in the beginning stages of comparing, how does the program predict comparing to what we were comparing—water standards and making sure that the modeling and the computer program matched what actually happens when the radiation transports through materials. 10 KH: Oh wow. MA: That’s what it was. It was in conjunction with UC Davis—University of California Davis Clinic would allow us to come in and use their accelerator beams that generate the radiation. We would go there and collect data with the beams on and then we would go model the beams and try and make sure that our modeling of the beams matched what we were measuring in clinic. That was what I was involved in. It was a fairly large group working on that project and I was involved with that group. KH: What drew you to Weber State? MA: So a few things, my husband is originally from Utah. We were engaged at the time and living a part. I was in California and he was in Utah. When I first got the job in California, we had kind of agreed that he would look for jobs in California and I would look for jobs in Utah and we would see who moved first. I lived in California maybe about four months before I looked at jobs in California, because we were right by San Francisco. We figured there’s probably okay job opportunities. After about four months, I thought, “You know, we don’t want to live in California. There’s too many people and it’s too expensive.” It’s really nice weather, but it’s not worth the people or the money. I thought, “I’m never going to be able to afford a house.” And that was 16 years ago, I don’t even want to know what it’s like now. So that’s one reason, so then I started watching for jobs in Utah and that’s when Weber State was hiring a Physics professor. They put an advertisement out. 11 Second, teaching as I mentioned, teaching is where I wanted to start. Teaching is what I liked, teaching is my passion, it’s who I am. Since I couldn’t teach dolphins, right? I had spent a year in Livermore doing just research and it was the first time I think in about ten years that I was not teaching. I missed it horribly. They were like, “You could go be an adjunct and teach in the evenings.” I thought, “No, I don’t think I want to work all day and then go teach in the evenings. I think I actually want teaching to be me.” Weber State is very similar to the undergraduate university that I went to. I loved it, that’s where I started, that’s how I kind of started on my path to physics. The chance of coming back somewhere similar and being able to teach to people, and do what I really love, it was easy. I just applied for it and thought, “I know a lot of faculty apply for lots of different jobs.” I was in my post doc position at that time. I still had up to three years of post doc if I wanted. I was on my first year, the position here came open, I sent out the single application, and just thought, “We will see how that works out. It looks like a place I’d really like to be. I’d like to teach.” And then it worked out. KH: What was Weber State like when you started? MA: Probably more of the same than not the same, in my opinion. You know, Weber State was a place where students worked with their professors. 2002 they had kind of just come off of making the transition from quarters to semesters. I got here when it was already semesters. They had already started doing research, like I know in the 80’s maybe not as much. But when I got here, most people were already doing research. Maybe there’s more research going on now— 12 that’s probably true than there was. I think it was fairly similar. You know, a little bit less of technology. A little bit more paper stuff. Students would go down to the registrars office to do like overrides and stuff like that, which now it’s all done on computers. We still had scantrons, there were scantrons that were still occasionally used. A lot of that was already going away. There was probably a little more overhead projectors being used than there is now. But the transition had already been made to power point. Most people were already making that transition. There’s definitely less blackboards on campus than what there used to be. I miss blackboards, they are way better than white boards. But anyways… KH: How has the physics program changed over time? MA: Physics… we’ve… well there was a group of us that were all hired very close together. Colin Inglefield and Adam Johnston were hired around the year 2000ish, I think they were a year a part from each other. Then Stacy Palen and myself were hired in 2002, so that’s four of us within a couple of years. Then John Armstrong was hired in 2004, so there was about five of us that were all hired. We were all young, there were obviously more mature and experienced people in the department who knew what they were doing. But the group of us, I think were a lot younger and still figuring things out. I think we’re older and we are still figuring things out. But I think we are a lot more confident with—at least that group of us, I won’t speak for the people that were already here before that. At least that young group of us, I think we were a lot more experienced, a lot more competent, maybe a little bit less energy. It happens when you age. So 13 that’s in terms of faculty, we’ve hired another women in the department, Kristin Rabosky as faculty. We’ve hired another women as an instructor position who predominantly helps with our introductory labs, Kylie Spirito. So now there is a lot of women in our department, right? If people look at the webpage, they won’t be thinking, “Not that many women.” Our department has probably shrunk a little bit. That group of us that were all hired—and those were all hired to replace for various retirements at that time. Since then, we’ve had Dale Ostlie has retired, Ron Galli, Farhang Amiri, Brad Carroll, and who am I missing? Oh Shane Larsen left to go to Chicago because his wife runs the planetarium out there—the Adler Planetarium. So we’ve had five people leave and only one tenure tract position that is filled out. We also have the instructor position, but it’s shrunk a little bit, there’s a little bit less of us. So that’s made it a little bit more interesting in terms of things that we juggle. I think that the physics department used to be able to take on more extras, whereas now, with the less people and more classes, we probably take on a little bit less extras. People are still very motivated and excited and work really hard, there’s just only so many hours in the day. Physics used to have an honors class that was always taught, and we had to drop that because we didn’t have the faculty to teach it. We still have faculty that will teach it on overload and stuff. It’s no longer under the department. So various things like that. We’ve shrunk a little bit. KH: How has the curriculum changed over the years? 14 MA: Physics used to be two tracts. Just either kind of theoretical and a way to graduate school, or experimental. I think I’ll get my bachelor’s degree in inner industry. Since, I’ve been here, we’ve changed that and now there’s multiple tracts. There’s confrontational physics, material physics, astrophysics, and still your regular going to graduate school kind of physics. So we now have several tracts of physics. But, other than that, the curriculum has been updated. Computer programming is probably using new languages now and that kind of stuff. A little bit more technology in the classroom and a little bit more of being able to give students modeling stuff. We added math—I’m going to get the number wrong, math 1200 I think is the Mathematica class. So that students can take that and now how to do modeling and stuff before they take their physics classes. So probably a little bit more computational stuff that we can count on students being able to sort out. Our introductory labs have moved to using IPads to video things. So you know, technology upgrades. KH: What type of courses do you teach? MA: I teach all levels. So from Gen Ed classes to our introductory physics for scientists and engineers or for pre-professionals. All of the labs for introductory stuff. Upper division classes like modern physics, mechanics, nuclear and particle physics, advanced lab… so the whole range. Both in lecture and lab introductory level to senior level classes. KH: What committees and organizations are you a part of either on campus or off campus? 15 MA: Oh the exciting question—committees. Oh Boy! Oh Boy! Committees sign me up! I’ve been involved in curriculum of all levels. I’ve been chair of the college curriculum committee forever, chair of the physics curriculum for a very long time. I was on the university curriculum committee for a short time. That committee does a lot. They get a lot done. So I’ve done that, as well as hiring committees and things like that. I’m the university radiation safety officer, so I manage all radioactive materials on campus and our radioactive materials license. Any time the division comes for inspections, I’m the one that gets to do that. They usually show up five minutes before I’m supposed to teach. That’s usually how that works. Yeah, all levels of things, on campus. Off campus—you know various professional things like grant reviews and manuscript reviews and that kind of stuff. I’m also on a school board for a charter school in Riverdale—Good Foundations Academy, it’s an elementary school that my kids go to. I’m on the school board for that. Yeah, that’s about it. I’m trying to think of other stuff. Amanda Dixon down in Salt Lake has a women’s view—it’s a radio station that’s on Sunday mornings—and about every six months I’m a guest on a women’s view with her. It’s not really an organization or a committee but something that is done outside of Weber State. KH: Is there a particular organization that you feel is best for your career and your degree? MA: APM is the American Association of Physicists in Medicine. That’s kind of the group that medical physicists belong to. They have annual conferences which I go to when I can depending on where it is in the country. APS is the American 16 Physics Society, so APS is kind of the general physics group. APM is medical physics. APS has the four corners, the four states. We’ve divided up two different ways depending on whether we are talking teachers or whether we are talking physics. So Physics APS has divided us into the four corners as a regional section. We also have the American Physics Teaching group which Utah and Idaho are kind of grouped together for that. There’s a conference that alternates back and forth between Utah and Idaho each year. So probably those are the most relevant for my… my profession is probably APS for physics and now I’m going to get the American Association of Physics Teachers—APT, is the physics teachers one. KH: What topics have you written about? MA: Mostly it falls under medical physics. Toxic element research is what I do. So I measure in trace amounts toxic elements in people. My graduate work focused on Manganese which is toxic for a variety of reasons and they were looking for a way to kind of monitor people. Predominantly here at Weber State, I focused on lead levels and we’ve measured lead in people and lead levels in all sorts of other things. Some of which have been published and some of which haven’t. We have measured eagle bones in Utah. So some eagle carcasses that were found we measured the lead levels in the bones, and they were high. We’ve measured things from children’s jewelry to faculty coffee mugs because lead would be used in paint. So a variety of different things. Rocks is the most recent, I have a student working on measuring elemental levels in rocks and looking at different levels of the rock and try to sort out what elements were 17 present when the rock was made at different times. Its nice layered rocks that we can get some kind of information. KH: What recognition have you received for you accomplishments? MA: Yes, this is the brag about yourself time. I don’t know how far back you want me to go, so in undergraduate I received the gold medal in math and physics. So when I got my degree I had the highest average in both math and physics for the university. I got the silver medal in science. So the second highest average overall for science. I received, in Canada, there’s NSERC, The National Science of Engineering and Research council. NSERC is equivalent to NSF here in the United States. When I went on to graduate school I had scholarships from NSERC that paid for my four years of graduate work, and so that’s why I wasn’t as poor as some graduate students. Here at Weber State, I’ve had a collaborative research award a few years ago, which was done for the physics department and some work that was being done. KH: What mentors have you had in your career? MA: So most of my mentors have probably either been family members or professors on campus as well as, well I guess some colleagues too. I’ve got some colleagues that I stay in touch with really well. I’d say we probably help to mentor each other. Then here at Weber State. So previously, it would have been my undergraduate professors, my graduate supervisors, as well as fellow graduate students. Here at Weber State, I’ve used a lot of the people’s stuff that came before me. I’ve looked at things that they’ve done, asked them to help, asked 18 them for ideas, and shown them different assignments. Here at Weber State it would probably be people like Brad Carroll and Colin Inglefield and Farhang Amiri and Ron Galli helped me out quite a bit. Kind of the group of people in the physics department that were here before me. KH: How have you become a mentor to others in your field? MA: That’s something that you should ask my students, right? Ask them how I do it. Yeah, that’s something that I think here at Weber State we do daily without even thinking about it. Every time we walk in to the classroom we are a mentor of some kind. Every time a student walks into our office with a question. Every time we interact with the public, which is a fair a bit in our job. I think you are by definition a mentor. Especially as a woman in science, I was quite pleased that my—so I have two daughters and they’re in fourth and fifth grade right now. I’ve been fairly active in their elementary school coming with various demonstrations and doing various things. This year when my daughter started fifth grade, a lot of the kids at the school they just call me, “The Science Lady”. Or they’ll run up to me and be like, “Remember when you came to my class in second grade?” Or “Remember this?” I don’t think anybody really knows my name, which is fine. My daughter when she entered fifth grade this year, she had a new teacher to the school. So she had never seen me and didn’t know who I was, and that’s fine. She came in with what I think is kind of traditional assignment which is: have the kids draw a picture of what they think a scientist is. She was the fifth grade science teacher. So she had all of fifth grade—which is like 75 of them 19 and probably about 55 of them know me. So probably a few new here and there. She had them all draw a picture of a scientist, and the typical thing is you put up the pictures and all of the kids have drawn, boys. Nobody has drawn a girl, not even the girls draw girls, they all draw boys. You can do this with lots of fields. Like they’ll be like, “What’s a fireman look like? What’s a police officer look like?” There’s videos where the teacher then brings in a female of each of those and says, “I just brought some of these people to show you.” And the kids are like, “Oh.” Anyways when this science teacher asked the fifth grade to draw pictures of what a scientist would look like my daughter came home and she was like, “Hey mom, a third of the class drew you.” So you know we are indirectly mentors all of the time when we are out doing things and saying things like, “Hey, look, you can do this.” I don’t think there’s a single girl in that elementary school of 500 people who don’t think that a girl can do science. It’s not because they’ve ever thought about it, it’s just something that has been—they have seen since the time that they were six. So they don’t even think about it. They are like, “Well of course women can do science. There’s the science lady.” But then, more directly, I supervise individual students on research, like when I’m consciously… so I think we are indirectly a mentor a lot of the time. When we lecture, when we visit with students, when we work with the public. Then more directly, and probably more intentionally, is when we take on research students and we take on a student into our lab and say, “Okay, now I’m going to mentor you in terms of what is research and what is being scientific.” 20 We do that a lot in our upper-division lab classes as well. We teach students, you know, keep a lab notebook, this is what goes in it. Here’s an experiment, which maybe we haven’t given you full instructions for on purpose. Go and sort out how to science and how to do this and what questions to ask and when to ask for help. So I think we do that a lot intentionally as well unintentionally. So I don’t know if that’s exactly what you’re… KH: No, that’s great thank you. What are some of your favorite memories at Weber State? MA: Oh that’s a hard one. Lots. So probably my absolute favorite memory of Weber State is the physics department years and years ago—this project was led by John Armstrong. John Armstrong had the idea, he said, “Let’s do an open lecture.” And he said, “Let’s do a lecture that’s intended for the public and do something that they’ll think is fun. To bring them in, to show them physics.” And so he talked to Adam Johnston and Colin Inglefield, and said that they would put together what they called the, “The Circus of Physics”. And they said, “Well put this together.” And John Armstrong was like, “We’ll advertise this to the public and we’ll see if people will come and see this for free.” Right? So he advertises this on Friday night, it’s going to be free, come see physics. And we put it in Lind Lecture room 121 which sits 100 people if you really squish. Maybe a 105 if we let some people stand in the back. They thought, “Oh I hope that room’s not too big.” And I think they ordered 90 cookies because afterwards they were going to do that, after the Circus of Physics, they were going to have some cookies and maybe show people a few hands-on demonstrations and let them do a few things 21 for about an hour and then send them home. So that was the planned event. It was scheduled to start at six, and I remember at 5:30, we went to room 121 and it was empty. There was nobody there. So we were like, “Is anybody going to come from the public to see this?” And then it was like 5:45 and there was like four people in 121. And we were like, “Oh this is going to be interesting.” And then at about 5:56 maybe there was no more than 10 people in the room and we were like, “Oh this is going to be a bust.” At 5:56, in Lind Lecture there’s kind of the high parking lot up above. You just started seeing people come down the hill. And so we opened the door and we let them all in and we were looking, and the room filled. Like it was filled to capacity. So we started a line outside. And we were like, “Well, we will just run the Circus a second time,” because they people had come to see it. And so we started a line and the line started to wrap around Lind Lecture, the circle building and the line started to wrap around. And it was like 6:10 and we’ve got this line of, I don’t know, probably 80 people now, waiting for the second show. And we were like, “Oh!” So Stacy Palen ran up to the second floor. She was like, “I’ll go start the planetarium.” She was like, “It has a half-hour show, send some people out to the planetarium and I’ll put on a show.” We said, “Okay.” So off they went up-stairs. We sent about 60 of them, we counted, we were like, and “You go up to the planetarium.” Then John Sohl was like, “Well I just gave a laser talk about a week ago, I’ll go get the slides for that and the demos that I have on my desk.” 22 So he ran to his office and grabbed a bunch of stuff and he set up in the room next to 121 and started a different lecture that he had not even planned, and we sent a bunch of people in there. Then we had a bunch of students that went into kind of the middle of 121 and started the hands-on demonstrations for the kids and started all of this stuff. People just kept coming and coming and when the Circus of Physics was ended, I remember I opened the back door behind 121 and I whispered out to Colin and Adam and I was like, “You guys have to do this show again. We’ve promised everybody that you’re going to do a second showing.” And so they handed…. There’s all of these disposables, like liquid nitrogen. I ran over and got new liquid nitrogen and everybody in the department was just frantically running trying to figure out how to handle—there was probably about 500 people that came. KH: That’s great. MA: I didn’t even see the cookies. I remember I was like, “Did the cookies ever come?” I didn’t even see them because there was only like 90 that were ordered. I think that they were inhaled. But, there was probably about 500-600 people that all came on a Friday night to see physics. It was just one of those times. And so since then, every year now—the next year we were smarter with that. We thought, “Maybe we should plan…” The first year, it was meant to just be a talk and the second year, we were like, “Okay, we are going to call this ‘Physics Open House.’” John Armstrong has been the lead on it, and a number of other people have done it while he’s been on sabbatical, but he’s been the main 23 person. We were like, “Okay, we are going to set up and we are going to have five talks going and then we are going to have hands-on demonstrations here and here. People can go outside and make rockets and launch them. We have the planetarium running for four hours.” Every year now that we do it, it ranges from probably about 800-1,400 people that come. It used to fill up all of Lind Lecture in the old science building. Now we have it mostly here with signs telling people where the planetarium is up the hill. 800-1,400 people from the public who just come to do science and that night, it is still one of my most favorite nights of the year. Because you leave and you’re just like, “That’s cool. That’s what it’s all about.” Like all of the physics faculty come together, everybody is doing stuff, all of the students are volunteering and doing stuff. The students see how fun it is to teach to people. People see how fun it is to do physics. It’s just one of those—it’s exhausting, but by the end of the night it’s spectacular every year. So the first one was probably my favorite memory here at Weber State. Other fun memories, dropping pumpkins off the old science building. KH: What’s the story of that? MA: The physics club would do it often as an annual event. It was usually done the week after Halloween, when people have their old hollowed out jack-o-lanterns. Originally, I think it was done to show that all objects fall at the same rate. So you can drop a big pumpkin and a little pumpkin and they both fall and splat at the same time. But they would lay tarps out at the base of the old science building and then they would go up to the top roof and we would drop pumpkins 24 down and my kids came and dropped their pumpkins down. Then you would have the tarp at the bottom just covered in pumpkin guts and wrap it up at the end. I think it was originally done to show that all objects fall at the same rate. Various people have videoed the pumpkins as they are falling and that’s kind of a fun memory. Moving to this building, that was a project and a half. Especially moving the large radiation barrel in the basement, it was like a five gallon drum— bright yellow. We came on a Sunday morning and did that. So we had people from the environmental health and safety—Richard Sandow who has since passed away a couple of years ago. Which is super sad, he was head of environmental health and safety. He was there, and John Sohl was there, and myself. Moving this barrel onto a truck and wheeling it down to this building and moving it in. That was fun. Fun memories. But, yeah, just a lot of personal memories with students. Students showing up at my office in tears and leaving with smiles. You know, friend memories and you know, it’s the people. It’s the people that are here. But a lot of those I’ll keep private. KH: What advice would you give to women starting in your field? MA: So in general I’d give advice to all of my students and then maybe address women specifically after. But my main piece of advice for any student here at Weber State or any student anywhere who is starting out is to find something that 25 you enjoy. Money is nice, but after a certain amount, money doesn’t really make a lot of difference if you have enough money to eat, you are going to be okay. Find something that you like, because you are going to be doing it a lot. You don’t want to wake up in the morning saying, “Wow, I’ve got to go to work but I guess I’ve got to pay the bills.” It’s much more enjoyable to wake up and say, “Well, maybe I’d rather go for a hike in the mountains, but going to work is okay too.” If you enjoy coming to work and you enjoy the task that you decided to do for your career, it will make your life overall a lot happier. Money is still useful, as long as you are not broke. But, kind of once—I don’t know about the research shows, but once you hit about $50,000, I think it doesn’t really matter how much you make, you’re going to make enough to be okay. So, yeah, find something that you enjoy. Do that, because you are going to be doing that for many years. So that’s my main piece of advice for anybody. Specific advice to women—find women as a support network for yourself. That’s probably an advice for women in science as well as anything, right? I think that women sometimes communicate a little bit different than men do, and I think it’s useful to have women to communicate in whatever field. So if you end up—even when I was an undergraduate where maybe all of physics was all men. I was friends with all of them and they were great. But I also still had my really close girlfriends that maybe were in different fields. I think that’s very helpful in terms of keeping centered and keeping people to talk to and bounce ideas off of and get advice from. It’s not difficult now in our department. It’s got four of us and so it’s not hard to find women in my department to talk with and 26 share ideas and ask for advice. But if there aren’t women directly in your field, find some close or some that might understand. I still talk to several of the women from graduate school. That we went to graduate school together, which I said was an interesting stressful time of your life. We still talk and some of which are working in clinics, because medical physicists do not always end up at a university. They usually end up more at a hospital setting. But some of them are at other universities. Some of them are in medical clinics, and I will still call them for advice. “This happened, what should I do?” Professional advice as well as personal. That would be my specific advice to women as to keep some close girlfriends that can help you relate through your career. Especially relate through your career. That can be hard if you are in physics and you don’t have any women that are in physics, go meet some chemists or something. KH: How do you think women receiving the right to vote shaped or influenced history, your community, and you personally? MA: That’s definitely right? No, not at all. I think it was a huge step on our road of kind of evening the playing field for women. I think that if you go back, you know, 200 years women were very limited in their choices for a lot of things. The right to vote, was a huge step on kind of equalizing that. I don’t think my life would be the way it has, and I know it probably just that event. That event was a big one though. That was a big one. But there was a lot of other things that happened along the way. Like the first woman who went on to become a doctor, and the first woman who… and a lot of those people weren’t allowed in the university classes. Like some of them sat outside to listen and went through a lot more. 27 You know, you asked what struggles I had in my program. I think that if you went back 100 years ago and asked women that same question, you would have a really different answer than what I’m giving. Which was, “I didn’t notice a whole lot.” I think it’s because of all of those women who came before. The right to vote is huge, but I think also the women who put up with that and did that and said, “I’m going to be the first woman for NASA.” “I’m going to be the first woman to be a vet.” “I’m going to…” Those people paved the way to make easier for my generation. We are not there yet, but we are getting a lot better. You know, I’ve got two little girls who are growing up and they don’t even think that their life is limited or their options are limited. At this point, anyways their nine and eleven so. At this point, I don’t even think it would enter their minds that they couldn’t do something because they were a girl. I’m interested to see how high school goes for them, because I think just based on data when you see women who come out of high school and you interview and talk to them, a lot of them have already dismissed a number of careers. I’m not sure where that happens, so I’ll watch with mine and see where they go and where their friends go and stuff. I’m not really sure how that happens in our society right now. So, we will see. But no, I’m personally grateful for the women that came 100 years ago and the women before that even and the women since that have paved the way so that I can say that personally I have not had a whole lot of struggle because of being a woman. I know that’s not true for all women now-a-days. I feel fortunate because I have not. I know a lot of women still have difficulties. Probably the one place 28 where I personally think women still have… you know we say we are on the move to equality. I think that—I often tease, and it’s totally teasing where I’m like, “I don’t know about this whole women working thing too. Because now I get to do all of the women working thing as well as the women home thing. Now I get to do twice as much, this is a great idea.” I tease my husband, who he is actually very supportive and does all of the things, the laundry and helps with dishes, and he probably doesn’t cook more than twice a year, but the rest he helps with a lot. I think in general, as a society women do still carry most of that burden. Like if I was to—and probably even in my own household, I probably carry more of it than my husband does even though he is helpful and he will do whatever I ask and stuff. I don’t know if it’s because women… I often think, “Well, it’s because I personally take ownership of it.” I want to cook the meals, I want to make sure they are healthy, I want to… I take that on myself, I think if I was to say, “Hey we are splitting this half and half. You’re doing these nights and I’m doing these nights.” He’d probably be like, “Okay.” But, I think… I don’t know if it’s because of how we are raised or if it’s because of who we are that women tend to be like, “I want to pick up the kids clothes. I want to make sure the school supplies are ready. I want to be there for the field trips. I want to be there for the science fair stuff. I want to…” You know, I don’t know if it’s because I personally take ownership of it all or if it is as a society we still kind of say, “This is mostly what women do.” I don’t know if it’s because of who women are, or because who society is. But, I do think that there is some inequity that way a little bit. Because 29 of that you often will hear, “Well women doing this maybe don’t have the same pay as men doing this.” Often, I would guess if you would look into it, it’s because women will often make career choices like, “Well, I’m not going to apply for that promotion.” or “I’m going to take this time off to be with my kids.” I think women tend to put their family first more than men do. Not that guys don’t, right? I think that many men are fantastic fathers too, but I think women are often the ones who will sacrifice their career if there is a family situation where that is needed. They’ll be the ones who will say, “Okay, I will stay home and cover this.” Or they will say, “You go apply for that promotion and that will mean that you travel a bunch, so I won’t do this.” I’m not sure that’s part of why we have the inequity in salaries often between men and women is because women either from society or through self-choice have often chosen to put their family first. Me included, I’m probably one of the few faculty members at Weber State that has been here 16 years and is still at the Associate Professor level as opposed to full. But, I became full professor in 2008, I had one daughter in 2008 and another daughter in 2009, my husband had thyroid cancer, I had a pancreas tumor that took me out for a semester. My mom then got cancer and spent three years dealing with that. So within the last 10 years there have been a lot of other family things going on. Like knock on wood, life has been quiet for a few years. The kids are bigger and stuff, but I think that women will often find themselves… To answer your question in terms of how has it impacted my life hugely, but I don’t want to give the impression that I think that we are totally done sorting out the whole playing field 30 issue and how to make things equal. But I think that we have come a really long way and I’m grateful for those people. KH: Is there anything else you’d like to share? MA: No, is there any other questions that you would like to follow-up on? Like anything that I shared that you would like more information? TF: Out of pure curiosity, do you miss the old building? MA: No, not at all. So the old building had no windows—well that’s not true, the offices on the north side of the building, you could look north. You never saw the sun, but you could look north. But often if I was teaching labs and things like that and I was busy all day, I wouldn’t have any idea what was happening outside of the building. I would look up, and be like, “Oh look at that, it’s blizzarding.” I had no idea. Nope, the old building was dark. It was—my basement lab was a bit of a dungeon. We one time had—this is a fun memory for Weber State memories. We came in one day and there was a drip on the ceiling by Dr. Palen and Dr. Schroeder’s office at the end of the hall in the old building. It was dripping and it’s dripping. So they did the logical thing of calling Facilities Management. Facilities Management came out and I don’t know what they did, but the drip turned into water flowing from the ceiling. The whole floor—we learned that the building was on an angle, because all of the water went one way. Dr. Shroeder and Dr. Palen’s room were… it went under the doors, it was all over their stuff. I remember them picking books up and the rest of us… you could obviously see as the water coming, “Yep, this building is slanted.” Not even just a little bit, it’s 31 way slanted. You know, we had asbestos and various other fun creatures. Probably the only thing that I miss about the old building, is location. Because now when I go to teach—so it used to be I didn’t even need a jacket. I would just go down, under the breezeway and over to Lind Lecture, because it’s covered. So even if it was blizzarding, you didn’t really need a jacket because they had the breezeway covered. You would just go over to Lind Lecture. Or if you got to Lind Lecture and you were like, “I forgot your assignments I was going to hand back.” You could just run to your office and run back. Now, it’s about six minutes, maybe five minutes up the hill. So if you get there and you’ve forgotten something, it’s going to be ten minutes for you to come back. The location I miss, but not the building. This building is beautiful, it’s awesome. It’s not perfect, there’s some things to fix, but it’s beautiful and you get big beautiful windows. When you are in lab you can see outside. The basement I can see outside, it’s awesome. I really like the new building, and it’s closer to the student union building, it’s closer to administration, and closer to restaurants. We have Tim Horton’s in the basement, you know. Awesome building, can’t complain. KH: Do you teach your classes in Tracy Hall or up at Lind Lecture? MA: About half and half. I have had semesters where I’ve taught one up there, an 8:30 up there a 10:30 here, and an 11:30 there. I’ve done that, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. We’ve also had several of us who have had an 8:30 up there and then none at 9:30 and then a 10:30 up there, let’s say. So you have an hour break, and the thought of coming back down here, which to get to your 32 office, set up, and then leave at about 10:15 to go back. So we’ve actually set up behind the main lecture hall, we’ve set up a computer and a spot if people want to grade in their break, they can just stay up there. We’ve done that on occasionally there too. But no, I miss location, but the building is… not even in comparison. I miss being able to drop pumpkins, and the students did all sorts of different drops off the roof up there, but yeah. KH: Is there anything that you used to do on campus when you first started or when you did ten years ago that you can no longer do because of safety issues? MA: Safety Issues. KH: Or because the climate has changed, like I’m trying to think of a good example. MA: Because of safety issues I can’t think of. There’s a lot of technology stuff that I used to do that I don’t. Like I definitely don’t do scantrons. I did use scantrons when I first got here once in a while. So there’s some technology stuff that I don’t do. Yeah, so you guys—hopefully there is an interview of Dr. Galli, I think there probably is. KH: There is. MA: Yeah, because he would have way better… I think in the 60’s the radiation regulations were basically nothing. Then the regulations started coming and they just kind of grandfathered. You didn’t have to fix whatever you had done, so if you dug a hole and dumped a bunch of radiation into it, and that was okay in the 60’s, you don’t have to fix it. Yeah, they kind of grandfathered in stuff. Rondo Jeffery was the radiation safety officer before me and he had a story of where 33 they had—I think you can probably still do this though. But they had some rats I think that had some exposure to radiation for some various research that someone was doing. Then when they went to dispose of it, they went to sort out how much it was going to cost and to get rid of organic radioactive material was going to be super expensive. But when he checked the radiation levels, the radiation levels and the material levels were low enough that apparently you could put them down the drain. That was before my time, but I heard stories… and I’m like, “I don’t want to know how that happens.” I think radiation regulations haven’t changed a whole lot since I’ve been here, other than there’s been some stricter regulations with the plutonium that we have in the basement. It’s 32 grams of plutonium. 32 grams, which is like (holds fingers short distance apart). The amount of effort that that 32 grams of plutonium is, we have to fill out databases every year. They come and do inspections. It’s a lot for 32 grams. But we use it for some really cool stuff. But no, I’m trying to think in terms of safety things. KH: Like, dropping the pumpkins off of the old science building, is it not done here because the building is new or…? MA: Probably a little bit of that, a little bit because it’s new. It’s not as high I don’t think, like with a straight drop because we are on a bit of a hill side. I think we are probably about half of the height maybe. It would be less spectacular. When you can get out on the roof of various spots, but I don’t know, I can see if we have a better spot. I think you would still be allowed to do that. I remember I had students come to me that they—there’s a famous physics demonstration where 34 you drop a tennis ball and a basketball and you put the basketball on top of the tennis ball like that. And I’ve done it in the planetarium. And you drop them, and as they fall they pick up a bunch of energy. The basketball is a lot bigger, because of its mass it gets a lot more energy as it falls. Excuse, I have it the wrong way. Basketball on the bottom, tennis ball on top, there we go. When the basketball hits, it bounces back and smacks into the tennis ball, transferring its energy into the tennis ball. The tennis ball—I dropped it from maybe four feet off the ground in the planetarium and the tennis ball hit the roof of the planetarium. Don’t show this to Dr. Palen. It did not make a hole in the roof. But, it launched and you know it was my first—I was like teaching for one year and I read about it. And I was like, “This sounds cool.” And I went to the planetarium and did it, and I was like, “Wow, didn’t expect that to happen.” I had students who came to me and they were like, “Hey, what if we developed a contraption so that we could drop the basketball and the tennis ball off the roof of the science lab building? Then think of how much energy they’d pick up along the way and when the basketball bounced and gave its energy to the tennis ball, just think of where it would go.” And so I sent them off, because they are physics majors, and I was like, “I think you should go calculate how fast that tennis ball will be going when it comes back to the ground.” And I said, “You can ignore air resistance, just assume… like let’s do worst case scenario. Go figure out how fast that tennis ball is going.” And they went away, and they came back about two hours later, and they were like, “Never mind, I don’t think we should do that.” Because it would go and hit somebody! Yeah, no, we didn’t do 35 that because that was unsafe. We don’t do unsafe things. Yeah, no it’s not the same where like in the 70’s where you could pipette by mouth and do different things like… My mom started in a lab where she worked with blood and she worked in a lab as a lab tech doing blood tests and stuff. When she got there in the early 70’s, they did their pipetting by mouth. KH: Yikes. MA: Yeah, I was like, “Eww. That would not be allowed now, Mom.” That would not be okay. But, I can’t think of anything that I did. We still shoot b.b.’s across the room, we still—yeah, no, until you guys come and tell us, right? Until somebody comes and tells us we can’t do it. But, no, I can’t think of anything that… other than the technology things like scantrons and all of the other stuff. Student grades is all done different and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. KH: Okay, great. Well thank you for your time. MA: No problem, thank you. Good luck