Oral History Program Melina Alexander Interviewed by Sarah Storey 25 July 2019 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Melina Alexander Interviewed by Sarah Storey 25 July 2019 Copyright © 2021 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii 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: Alexander, Melina, an oral history by Sarah Storey, 25 July 2019, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Melina Alexander Circa 2010 Melina Alexander Circa 2010 Melina Alexander in Australia Circa 2010 Melina Alexander 25 July 2019 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Dr. Melina Alexander, conducted on July 25, 2019, in her office, by Sarah Storey. Melina discusses her life, her memories at Weber State University, and the impact of the 19th Amendment. Sarah Tooker, the video technician, is also present during this interview. SS: Today is July 25, 2019. It is approximately 9:30 a.m. SS: We are here with Dr. Melina Alexander and interviewing is Sarah Storey and recording is Sarah Tooker. Okay, so if you wouldn’t mind, we’ll start with when and where were you born? MA: I was born a long time ago. I was born in 1964 in Fort Bragg, California. Which is just north of Mendocino, which is north of San Francisco about 100 miles north. SS: So what brought you to Utah? MA: My mother and father were originally from Utah. They moved to California and owned a pottery studio in Mendocino in the hippie groovy days. My mother divorced my father and moved back home to Utah to be close to her mother so she would have some form of childcare when she went back to school. SS: Would you tell a little bit about your experiences with your mom and growing up and how she went back to school and how she raised you? MA: Yeah of course. My mother started school before she got married. But being a young women of the 60’s, you were married as soon as you were asked to be 2 married. So she got married at—I’m going to say 19, but I may be lying, but I believe it was 19. And once she was married, she moved with my father to California. He was in art school in southern California. And so we moved there, they moved—we didn’t. They did, and then they had me when they moved up to Fort Bragg. My mother divorced my father. She moved back to Utah and she wanted to go back to school. However, she didn’t have any money to go back to school and being divorced in the 60’s, you had to have a man sign for a loan, even a student loan. And so, she was not allowed to get a student loan to go back to school. And her father, my grandfather had died when my mother was 10, so her mother was a single parent as well. Her mother didn’t have money to afford to send her kids to school either. So, my mother applied for a welfare loan to go to school. That’s the only way many women, at the time, could get a funding. She received a welfare loan to go to university. She came back here to Weber State and got her teaching license and then paid back the welfare loan. Which, when she did, the welfare office said, “People don’t pay these back, why are you paying this back?” And my mom said, “Because you pay back loans, that’s what you do.” So that’s how she got her degree and was able to teach school so she could support her daughter as a single parent. But, she got remarried and had my sister. SS: So after seeing your mother’s journey of going to school and going through these struggles to get a loan, how did that influence you in your decisions as far as education goes? 3 MA: That’s a good question. Well, I think—I come from a family of educated individuals. I am not a first generation college student, and so it was an expectation that you went to university. My mother’s mother went to the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and received her degree there. My father’s mother went to university and almost received her teaching license, but right before she was ready to be licensed—this is a good story, I don’t know if I’ve told you this one—right before she was ready to be licensed as a teacher, she met my grandfather and was married and they told her she shouldn’t receive her teaching license because teaching positions went to single women or men, women at the time did not get teaching positions. They [married women] were not on the list to be employed, so she might as well not get her teaching license. And so, she did not finish. I think that was a regret for her going on through life. I think, when she told me this story, she didn’t sound too pleased about the fact that she was denied the ability to teach, which is what she wanted to do. So there you go. They [my grandmothers] were both educated females. My mother received her education and it was just an expectation for her daughters to receive their education as well. It wasn’t, “If you decide to go to college.” It was, “When you go to college you will need to make sure you do this because when you go to college, this will need to happen.” And so, it just wasn’t even a question, you just went on to university when you graduated [high school]. And I think I was the exception, rather than the rule. Now, a lot of girls I grew up with, ended up going to college, but they all came back later. I was one of the few that 4 went immediately right into university from high school. Most of the boys went right into university, but most of the girls did not. SS: That’s sad. MA: I know. And you think, “Oh that was the dark ages of the 80’s.” But no, it was not that long ago. SS: So when you went to college, before that, I know that you did certificate type of program. And from what I remember, your mom did that to help you provide for college… would you mind talking about that? MA: Yes, [before] I was in high school, I remember when I was in about 6th or 7th grade, I told my mom I liked to fix hair, so, my mom ran with it and put me into cosmetology school as soon as I could attend. She had me get my certificate before I graduated high school, so I’d be able to support myself through college. Based on her experience of not being able to get loans etc. Times had changed, I could have gotten a student loan at that point in time with not problem as a female, well a little bit of a problem as a female, but it was much easier for me. But having her experience, she made sure that I had some kind of a trade that I could do to work my way through college and not have to rely on student loans and those kinds of programs. SS: Would you mind talking a little bit about your early life, or some of your historical background? MA: Oh yeah, well early life. Well, when my mother first came back to Utah, I lived right next door to my grandmother so my grandmother could help in raising me. 5 So I had two moms basically, my mother and my grandmother for my first five years of life. And it was wonderful. My grandmother spoiled me rotten and she’s a very strong woman. And it was really good to have that kind of influence, and her and her sister, both took me places and made sure I was taken care of. Her sister’s husband had kidney failure and her sister would run dialysis out of the house, for her husband, so she knew [how to run dialysis]. She was a teacher, a school teacher, so not a nurse. But she learned how to run the dialysis machine. And I remember going over to my great aunt’s house and my uncle would be laying down getting dialysis in the front room. It was the most amazing thing ever. But I think it’s part of that, “This is what we do.” Right? “We take care of our own and this is how we handle it.” And life throws you lemons and you just keep going. You just keep going. And so that’s kind of the attitude I was brought up with and it’s so amazing to me. I can’t—I don’t think I could give somebody dialysis, I don’t. I think I’d be like, “No, that’s the hospital’s job…I’m not…No. No.” But she just did it. She was an amazing woman that took care of things. And then, when my mother got remarried, we moved out to Plain City, Utah. Which was a very rural area and in the west. I’m sure everybody [here] knows where it is. And my mother and my stepfather were really committed to this self-sufficiency movement of the 70’s. I don’t know if you—you probably are way too young to remember—but a lot of people did the, “We’re going to take care of ourselves and grow our own food and have our own animals and can and make sure we know how to do things.” And the lye soap that I laughed about [with you] earlier, my mother actually did make our soap for a while. Don’t 6 recommend it. She also made her own ketchup and that’s a running joke between us because I did not like homemade ketchup, but she did a really fantastic [job]—I probably would like it now. But as a kid, I wanted, you know, the red stuff with the artificial coloring and I ended up with this reddish brown, tomato pasty, not “real” ketchup and so I always laugh with her about it. Because as soon as I moved out and went to university, she stopped canning ketchup and started buying ketchup and I said, “As soon as I leave, you got the good stuff.” So that’s a running joke at my house. SS: I love it. So what started your interest in your chosen field? MA: In my chosen field of education, actually that is not what I would have planned on doing. I watched my mother as a teacher and I watched what she did every day and I said, “That’s a lot of work. I am not going to be a teacher. There is no way I’m going to put forth that much effort.” But in my process of getting my degree, I met my husband and I was married and he was in the Air Force, he was enlisted in the Air Force, and I knew I had to have some kind of job to help out with the finances. And I didn’t know what I could do because I had a major in psychology and at the time, which I know now is not true, but at that the time they said that you couldn’t do anything with a psychology degree unless you went on to a master’s program, and I did not believe that I could go onto a master’s program without having a job and so I needed to find something to have a job. And I thought, “Oh heck, I’ll go into teaching. I know I can get a job teaching. My mother was a teacher. My aunt was a teacher. My grandmother was a piano teacher. I kind of now how this lifestyle works,” and so I went into education to 7 get a degree in psychology teaching. And then at the time one of the plethora of minors I had, one of them was health, and so I said, “Oh and I can do health.” So I went into my advisor, we had faculty advisors at the time, so I went into my faculty advisor and he said, “Now, what are you going to go into in secondary education?” and I said, “Well, psychology is my major, and I have a minor in health,” and he said, “Oh great, do you coach?” and I said, “No, I don’t coach. I have two left feet, I’m not… no, that’s not my thing.” And he said, “Well getting a job in health is very difficult unless you coach,” and I said, “Oh, well what can I do to get a job because I’m going to need to be employed,” and he said, “Hmm… my wife is a special education teacher, you should be a special education teacher,” and I said, “Okay.” And that’s what I went into. So I kind of fell into the field of special education, but I love it. I absolutely love being a special education teacher. I had really, really good experiences teaching. I taught junior high forever and ever. I taught students with behavioral challenges which is kind of my forte. I really like the—I call them my little pumpkins. I really liked my little pumpkins, unless they were bad, and then they were my little pickles, but I just loved working with them. They were sweet kids with just some challenges. It was a good job. I really enjoyed it. SS: Teaching in general is an admirable job and then special education on top of it. I know there’s challenges and I know there can be rough days so it’s very admirable position. MA: There’s rough days. But the thing I say is, the one good thing about being a special education teacher or a teacher of students with behavioral challenges is 8 you have a story every day. There’s never a boring day. You never come home and go, “Oh gol, I kind of just did this and that.” It was really fun because every day, even if it was a stressful day, you at least had a good story that you could tell. And so I really liked it. I liked it a lot. SS: What degrees and certifications do you have? MA: Okay, I have my cosmetology license. I have my bachelor’s in psychology and education—special education. I have my master’s in curriculum and instruction and math. And then I have my Ph.D. in special education and distance and online learning. And then I have my post doctorate in distance learning because I just can’t ever get enough school. I’m a perpetual student, I just love school. So I still take classes online. So. SS: Well I know you recently took an archeology class. MA: Yes, I took an archeology class for fun. And I’ve taken Chinese for fun. I just… I just love school. I think it’s important that you keep your brain learning. And I think it’s a—the benefits that we have here at Weber to be able to take classes and hear from other professionals in their field is phenomenal. So, I take advantage of it. That’s what I do. SS: So while you were obtaining your degrees, what challenges did you have to face that really stuck out? MA: I think the hardest part about my schooling was the fact that I wasn’t smart and I didn’t do it before I had children. I did it while I had children, and sometimes the pull between family and schooling is difficult. I wouldn’t not have received my 9 degrees, I never would say, “That was a bad idea.” I just, you know, have the typical mommy guilt of, “Maybe I should have spent more time with my kids.” Really who cares if I would have got a B out of that class, and I was pushing myself so hard and I should have spent more time with my kids. So the biggest challenge to getting my degree would be my own personal guilt. My husband supported me 100%. He’s the one that actually told me to, “Shut up and just go get your Ph.D. I’m tired of hearing you want it. Just go. Just go. We can handle things at home,” and he did phenomenally well. So it’s not any pressure from outside sources, it was just that internal guilt that I…I don’t know if it’s universal, but most mother’s I speak to, have that same kind of, Oh! That pressure pulling me between my kids and school and how do I make everything in my life kind of mold together okay and not have my children go on Dr. Phil and tell me how awful I am later in life. SS: And do you think that that guilt maybe stems a little bit culturally? Because I share that so I understand, but do you think the pressure of just culture and society maybe helps trigger that guilt? MA: I think especially in the era that I was raised. You were encouraged to be… to take on the traditional female roles, right? That’s just basically, you know, yes I went through junior high and high school during the women’s movement. Yes, there was a push to get ERA passed. Yes, all of that was going on, but there was still a strong pull to have you take on that traditional female role. And yes, I was told growing up that’s what you did. Not by own family, but from the culture that I grew up in. And so yeah, I would say part of it is that. And I would never 10 expect my husband to have felt guilty for going to school and getting his degree. Right? So why did I? I think it is cultural pressure, but not familial pressure. I never had familial pressure of, “Well why are you doing that? You shouldn’t be…” I never had that, never, but culturally it fed into my guilt. And my guilt is on me. Right? It’s on me. I should be better than that. SS: So once you got your degree, what were your career options? Did you go straight back to school? Or did you have anything in between? MA: Oh I was straight through school. I never stopped going to school. I did take a couple of semesters off when I was pregnant because I had severe morning sickness and I just couldn’t give 100% and be that sick. I know, I know, some people are really good at it, I on the other hand am not. I like to baby myself when I don’t feel good. So, yeah, but other than that, I went straight through school the whole entire time, I didn’t stop so I went. I did work when I was first married, waitressing, and I quit that because my husband said, “Just focus on school. You don’t really need to do that. Get your degree done. If you want to, you can, I’m not going to tell you not to work but you’re not having fun. So…” And I said, “Okay.” I’ll just go to school. I know, I know, I was really lucky, I was really lucky with that. I make a joke that says, if I would have known what a nice good person my husband was, I probably wouldn’t have married him because I wouldn’t have thought, you know, like I wouldn’t have thought, “Why would someone like that, want someone like... eventually, the gig is going to be up and he’s going to 11 leave.” So no, so I wouldn’t have married him. Luckily enough, I didn’t realize that. I know, silly. SS: Well, so once you did get through school did you have a lot of options? MA: Actually yes. In special education forever, since the passing of public law 94142, back in 19… I’m not going to give you the dates, but since then, it’s been a field of high need. There’s never been a time when special education teachers haven’t been needed. And so I didn’t have difficulty finding a job at all. As a matter of fact—this is my favorite story. So this is the 80’s, so think 80’s fashion. I bought the best purple suit with purple pumps…killer…for my interviews, and I was “Working Girl” stylin’, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that movie, but I was looking phenomenally well, ready for that interview. So, I have the purple suit all set out and we have to take our paperwork into the district office before we can get an interview. So, I put on my little pencil skirt and my little secretarial outfit, right, and I walk down to the district office of Davis County and I turn in my paperwork and the secretary looks it over and she says, “You’re special education?” I said, “Uh huh.” “You have a major in psychology.” I said, “Uh huh.” She said, “Just a minute.” She makes a phone call, she goes, “You need to go down right now to North Davis Junior High, there’s a principal there, they need a teacher for the behavioral unit. Go down and interview with him today.” And I was mad because I didn’t have on my purple suit. I wanted to be stylin’, you know. So I went down to the… I know…ridiculous…but I went down [there] and I was hired. A friend of mine that went through the program with me was actually teaching in 12 the 8th-9th grade unit and I knew her. And so she had [told the principal], “Yeah, she’d be good for the seventh grade behavioral unit. Hire her.” And so I was hired that day. So no, I never…I never had difficulty finding a job in special education. Yeah, I know, it’s a great field, it’s wonderful. If anybody ever wonders what they should go into, special education is a good choice. I’m not going to change your mind, but I know. SS: What mentors or resources did you have available to you in your program and in your career? MA: In my program… like in my college program? In my college program, all of the special education courses were taught by a woman who worked in the career field that I ended up getting my job in. She was, oh my gosh, phenomenal, and she supported you 100%, and she was always there, and she’d come in and give you the best feedback when you were teaching. She was just awesome. So, yes. I would say that she would be one in my program. And then I was allowed to student teach with a woman that was also super phenomenal, she was fantastic. I taught a—I student taught at Ogden High School. And I’m going to do another story because I just love them. So I’m student teaching at Ogden High School and in student teaching, how that works, is you work with the teacher and then eventually the teacher goes out of the classroom and you get to take the classroom over by yourself. So I’m in a unit for students with intellectual disabilities, and I’m teaching at Ogden High School, I’m doing okay, I’m okay. I’m not fantastic because I’m a student teacher, but I’m holding my own, and so she [the teacher] finally leaves, and when she leaves…there’s this new student 13 that was in our class, and he was in a proctor home, meaning he was an adjudicated youth. He used to be in youth detention and before he could move home, they put him in this proctor home to make sure they’re okay, and then they go back to their home. So this is a child that had some severe behavioral challenges, so he’s new and he’s in our classroom and she leaves…and he starts lighting papers on fire in the classroom. So he’s lighting these papers on fire and my brain, you know, I’m not a teacher yet, I’m a student teacher, and I have students with intellectual disabilities and I’ve been told, “You can’t leave them alone in the classroom.” Right? You can’t do that. So I’m freaking out. What do I do? How do I get the teacher back up here? I have no idea what to do. So then he starts throwing the papers that are on fire across the room and he’s yelling, “I am Satan’s son. You cannot stop me.” And he’s throwing these fire papers. Then he opens the window and he starts throwing them out, the third floor window. Right down to what was the parking lot, onto cars in the parking lot. These like, lighted papers. And I’m wondering what to do because I can’t restrain him. I’m not allowed to do that as a student teacher. I can’t go and leave the classroom to get somebody and my brain is freezing. And finally one of my students said, “I’m going to go next door and get the teacher.” And I went, oh, well that would have been smart. I mean, I knew I couldn’t send them down to the office which was a floor below, because these are students with intellectual disabilities and I can’t guarantee that they’ll make it to the office and make it back with an accurate story. But right across the hall was another special education teacher. And my brain had been 14 so frozen that I didn’t know to get her. So the other special education teacher walks in and she looks at him and she goes, “You knock that off right now.” And he stopped. He just stopped immediately. And the other teacher comes back from the break room and she goes, “Well Melina that’s what we call baptism by fire.” And I went, “Oh.” My thoughts were, “I’m never going to teach, I’m going to fail.” She was so kind and so nice. So that’s another mentor that I had was at, that faculty member, just looking at this giant mistake on my first day alone and saying, “Yeah, it’s okay. These things happen.” So, I was very lucky. It’s funny. It’s something that you can look back on and laugh at. At the time, you know, you’re going through it thinking, “And I’ve got a baby, and I’ve got to support my family, and I’m going to get fired before I’m even hired. It’s never going to work out.” And it all ended up okay because I had phenomenal people supporting me along the way. Yeah, baptism by fire. Literally. SS: What resistance or battles did you face as you progressed in your career? Obviously your husband, I know, has been very supportive in your family ... I know there’s a lot females in teaching, but did you have any problems because you are a woman? MA: You know actually, I was very lucky. The second job that I went to…I left for a year to go live with my husband, he ended up being stationed in Iceland and so we moved to Iceland and I lived there for a year and then came back and got a job in Weber County and I…had a phenomenal principal. She was fantastic. She was one of the most supportive wonderful individuals ever. If you ever needed anything, she was there for you. She supported you in any kind of 15 career move that you wanted to make and she’d advocate for you as well. So luckily enough, in my career, and in the choices that I have made, I haven’t faced a lot of obstacles. I mean, other than I would say you have to follow certain legalities and sometimes those legalities [are limiting], if I would just be allowed to do this, it might help them more. But you can’t because you have federal laws that restrain you for doing certain things. Other than that, there’s really not obstacles that I faced. I was very supported, I was very lucky, I’m just very, very privileged to be able to have the career that I had. I know that sounds boring, huh? I should say, “Oh, I faced a lot of obstacles.” I didn’t, and I think, you know, the career field, education is traditionally a female profession, and so I think there are a lot of females supporting females out there in that career. And so, unlike going into a traditional male role, I went into a traditional female role and I was highly supported in that endeavor. I don’t know if it would have been the same if I would have said, “I want to do something in this other [field],” especially in the era that I grew up in because I saw, you know, a lot of women struggle to try to make a name for themselves in career fields that were not… were not run by women and it took a long hard struggle for some of my friends to get to the position that they are at now. I did not have that. SS: So, this is kind of a broad question, but what positions have you held during your career? I know there’s a lot. MA: Well, when I was in K-12 education, I was a teacher, and then I moved up to being in charge of our specific behavior unit, and so I was the—and it’s going to 16 sound really really weird, unless you knew the school I worked in—but I was the pod leader for… yes. Doesn’t that sound like—what was that show… Body Snatchers. The Pod Leader. So I was in charge of our behavioral unit. And then, from there, I’ve been up here at Weber and other than being faculty, I’m also the director of women and gender studies here at Weber State. So those are basically the positions that I’ve held in my chosen career field. Not a lot. But… I like them. Well, I love what I do. SS: You obviously started working at Weber State, but how long ago? MA: I’ve worked at Weber State for 13 years. SS: And you left education. MA: I left K-12 education to come here, yes. It’s one of those things that all of us that are professors of teacher education have a difficult time with, because you have to leave, you have to leave your passion to come up here and start a new passion. And most of… we’re original at Weber State…here we are original in that almost all of our professors have had over five years’ experience in public schools before they come up here. For a while there, our average years taught were 10 years before coming up to [Weber State]. So unlike other degrees, where you go bachelors, masters, Ph.D., University—we have to do bachelor’s, teach, and then master’s and Ph.D. So it’s not a direct, one-to-one correlation there. So, we have all of this experience in K-12 education before we come here and tell people how to be K-12 educators. Well, it would be kind of hard to have 17 somebody that hadn’t been a teacher tell you what it’s like to be a teacher. They wouldn’t know. SS: So what drew you to Weber State? Why did you decide to come here and leave special education teaching? MA: This is extremely funny. When my mom was going to school up here getting her degree, I did preschool here. And then, I came back for my bachelor’s and I did my master’s here. So I’m very familiar with Weber State. Very familiar. I say, other than the 70’s I’ve been here every decade. It’s what I do. So when I was looking for a job, when I was getting close to graduating with my Ph.D., my professor, my advisor professor, he said, “Weber State has a job opening, you need to go apply so you can get some practice in applying.” He said, “You probably won’t get the job, you’re ABD and they are looking for somebody that already has their degree. They are looking for somebody with early childhood, you don’t have early childhood experience. So chances are you’ll just be one of the ones that gets the experience of putting in your resume. But go apply, anyway. Just get the practice, go apply, I would strongly suggest that you do this.” And I said, “Okay, I’ll go apply.” I’m going to listen to everything you say because I’m naive and I don’t know about this higher ed lifestyle. So I went and I applied and I knew that I didn’t have the job, so it was an experience that was very…not stressful? Very almost relaxed and so I came up and I did my business and I wasn’t that stressed out at all because I knew I didn’t have the job and when you apply for a job you know you’re not going to get, you don’t have that, “Oh my gosh, I wonder 18 if I’ll get it… I have to make sure I make the best impression ever,” and all of those nerves that go along with it. So I didn’t have as many nerves, I was still nervous of course, but not as nervous as I could have been if I thought I would have any chance of getting the job. And so I applied and a week later, I got a call from the dean and the dean came in and said, “We’ve offered the position to someone else, but we’d like to hire you on as an instructor for a year because we have one extra position that needs to be filled. Would you be willing to do that?” And I said, “Of course, of course I’d be willing to do that.” So I worked up here while I finished up my Ph.D. and then as soon as I had my Ph.D. finished, they offered me a full-time professor job and I was very happy and very pleased that I ended up coming up here. So it wasn’t initially, I didn’t think I would get a job up here. It’s not like it was in my plans…“I have to work at Weber State, this is what I’m going to do.” I’m very glad I got the job. I love the atmosphere and the collegiality that’s up here in my department. I love working with students, I just adore this environment. So I’m glad I got it, but it wasn’t something that—I can’t say, “I knew I was going to come back to Weber State.” And I knew that… I honestly didn’t think I would be allowed to come back to Weber State. So… there you go. SS: What was it like here at Weber State when you started? MA: This is a really good question. I came up to Weber State, I started here [in undergraduate] in 1982. So this is right after… and this is going to be feminist rant, and so I apologize for this beforehand because I shouldn’t be… I try not to be that person, but, sometimes I get there. So 1982, I’m coming up to university 19 as I said, I was one of the few girls at university. It was about that time when the demographic started to shift and we started to see more women coming to university than men. So a lot of professors are trying to navigate this new system of having a lot of female students. They were not used to it. And I don’t want to say anything too negative about our teacher education program at the time because it was a wonderful program academically. But there were a lot of males in positions of authority. Not very many females that were in those positions of authority. And so if you were going into secondary education, that’s a man’s field. Elementary education is a woman’s field. Secondary education is for men. And so when you come in as a female into secondary education, unless you are teaching health, right? or something that’s traditionally seen as what girl—English—what girls teach. There was kind of this feeling like you shouldn’t be there. That’s kind of not your place. And I remember a couple of times in classes feeling like, “Oh honey, you just don’t know it. Don’t bother your pretty little head. Don’t bother your pretty little head.” And it was just difficult, you know. Some of those kinds of things were difficult. There were phenomenal professors up here that were not like that. I do not want to say that was the majority. It was the overwhelming minority, but you could feel it. I remember being in one of my psychology classes…the psychology department at the time was predominantly male, but they had hired in a new female professor…so, this female professor had taught one of my classes, and in that class, I received the highest scores on some of the papers, shocking. And I remember the guys that 20 were in my class because overwhelmingly your classes in fields like psychology and anthropology were predominately male, there were a few of you girls, but mostly guys, and I remember the guys saying, “She just did that for you because you are a girl and she’s a girl and girl’s support each other.” And I thought, “I have never said that when you guys get straight A’s on your papers from the male professors. I have never ever said, ‘There’s just… you’re just going to get it because you’re a guy. You got better than me because you’re male.’” Never said that once, but they had, and I didn’t know how to respond, you know? I just went, “Oh, maybe.” Right, “Maybe. I don’t know.” And then I thought to myself, “Why didn’t I look at him and say, ‘You are full of bologna. I worked to get that A on that paper.’ It’s not like I just wrote in, ‘Hi, my name is Melina and I’m 5’ 4” and when I grow up I want to be…’” No! I wrote something of value and why didn’t I stand up for myself. But I didn’t know how to stand up for myself at the time. So yes, at the time, I came up to university, it still was predominately male, white male, let’s not kid ourselves. It was predominately that. And overwhelmingly, as a female, you felt like you needed to prove yourself over and over again that no, you aren’t just doing this to get your M.R.S. Degree. You’re not up here to find a husband. You’re actually up here to get a degree and become you know, a professional in your own right. So there was still that feeling in the 80’s. We were working for it but I can’t say that our administration at the time was too pro-women at all. At all. SS: Well it’s amazing, people don’t realize how short of a time ago that things were like that and there are still challenges obviously. 21 MA: Well no, when you look at it the ERA still hasn’t been ratified. And how many years has that been because we had women speaking out against it. Which irritates the crap out of me because I think about it, my mother and my grandmother couldn’t get loans, they couldn’t buy houses, they couldn’t do all of these things and it’s because of the women’s right movement that we have those rights. And then you get women saying, “Oh we don’t really need that. We don’t. We don’t.” Do you know where you’d be if it weren’t for this? Do you have any idea because you wouldn’t have the option to be up here taking classes it if weren’t for [the women’s movement], it would not be there for you. But go ahead. Go ahead and say that we don’t need that. Sorry. That was my political statement and I’ll back off now, off my feminist high horse. SS: How do you feel like the program, special education or just education in general has changed over the years. Obviously you said it is predominantly female right? MA: Faculty weren’t. Faculty weren’t at the time, it was predominantly male. That’s changed. Now we see more equity when it comes to that, and in fact we’ve got our first female dean over in the college of education and there’s nothing more that I can say than “Wahoo!” Because she’s going to be phenomenal and I’m so happy about that. I can’t gush enough about the fact that our new dean is phenomenal, she’s wonderful and you go girl! But our program has changed in that I think we are better equipped to help students succeed than we were then. There’s a much more of a student focus in the college of education now. And we have faculty that are really determined to help students achieve their goal of becoming a teacher. So that I would say has changed. So there you go. 22 SS: That’s a great change. So what does a typical semester look like for you? MA: For me? A typical… it’s really funny, I had a student come into me and he said, “I think I want to be a professor because you don’t do anything.” And I said, “Excuse me?” And he said, “Well you just teach your class and it’s only three days a week and then you are done.” And I thought, “Um, okay, that’s one class and none of us up here have only one class. And we do a lot more than that.” So, just to be clear for people that don’t understand what it means to be a university professor is there’s a lot of different aspects of our job that we have to take seriously. Here at Weber State, number one—our number one concern is teaching. We are a teaching institution. So we need to make sure that what we do for our students is quality. So that’s our goal, right? To put forth quality education classes and that means, planning for before the semester starts, teaching and providing feedback through the semester. And then evaluating at the end of the semester and making changes if we are going to teach the class again. So most of us up here teach at least 12 credit hours per semester. And that means that with all of the preparation and the grading and everything, it’s a little bit more than 12—quite a bit more than 12 hours of teaching a week. So for me, I haven’t been, I haven’t had a semester, fall or spring semester, up here where I haven’t taught 15-18, sometimes 21 credit hours a semester because I have different programs that I’m working in. I work in our traditional program on campus and I also work in our, what we call, alternative routes to licensure program for students who come back after their bachelor’s to get a certificate to 23 become a teacher. And so as part of that, I have extra classes that I have to teach, because that’s funded through the state board of education. It’s not funded through Weber State University and because of that, it’s not part of our faculty load. And then on top of that, we have research that we need to engage in and additionally we have our—this is going to sound so boring, we have our service that we need to provide. And so service, means that we are on different committees and in organizations to help promote positive experiences at Weber State. So for our department for our college and for the university, we are in different programs that help ensure that Weber State stays the quality program that it is. So my typical semester is divided among those three things, in addition now that I’ve taken now on the job of women and gender, I do have courses through women and gender studies…But I am allowed some load release from teacher ed, in order to complete that. So during the semester I’m extremely extremely, extremely… busy and I love every minute of it. I told my husband this summer I’m only teaching one class this summer. Which is a first for me, I have one class that I’m teaching and I’ve decided that when I retire I’m going to have to volunteer because I don’t do well with free time. I don’t. I start to find projects that my husband should do and he doesn’t appreciate it. And I look around at what I can do and it’s just… I’m not good with free time. So I’m really glad that I’m extremely busy. That’s where I function is with having things and tasks to do all day long. I know. That’s just strange. But you totally understand. SS: I do. So let me ask you a question then, with your responsibilities to women and gender studies, do you teach because you are required to teach?.... 24 MA: No. SS: Or do you teach because you are short staffed? MA: No. I teach because I want to teach. I could probably find people able to teach the classes, some of them are harder to fill than others. I teach our research methods class because that’s one that’s difficult because you need to have a feminist perspective on research, and not everybody has a background in feminist research, and so I do teach that class. We have a couple of other people that are capable of teaching that class. They are overwhelmingly busy and asking them to commit year to year to do that is difficult. But, I teach because I want to teach. There are… we have a lot of great faculty up here that support women and gender studies and that teach some of our courses for us. I don’t know what we would do without them. Yeah, they are just fantastic. SS: Yeah, that’s good to know. Yeah, well I would imagine because you just exude this light and you can just tell that you enjoy it. That’s really nice to hear that you enjoy it. What committees or organizations on campus or otherwise have you or are you currently a member of? MA: Oh my goodness. Organization… I have a lot of teacher education organizations that I am involved with. I am involved with a couple of international organizations for special education. I’m also involved in rural special education. That is an issue that a lot of people forget, rural issues. And coming from Plain City, which was very rural, Special Education is difficult. It’s difficult to find people to teach. It’s difficult to get resources in rural areas. So yeah, that’s one of the 25 organizations that I’m involved with. I’m also involved with a couple of teacher education organizations and okay… I’m just going to stop there. And on the university it varies from year to year of what I’m involved with. Currently, women and gender studies is one of the areas for which I’m involved. I’m involved in our testing and measurement. I’m also involved in our… oh goodness, I’m going to forget. I was just going to say it and then it went out of my head. So there’s a couple up here. Community wise, I used to be a very active member of our Sierra Club but I let that fall away when I went back to graduate school. I just didn’t have time to put into it. It’s something that I’ve been thinking about going back into. That, and I also want to become more actively involved in our ACLU, I think that’s an extremely important organization. I’m a member but I’m not involved other than, you know, fighting the good fight when it comes to that. Also, you and I are both on that Voterise, which is very important getting people registered to vote for our next election. And I think those are some very important things that we need to be thinking about now. Especially in our next election. I’m not going to say anything about who you should vote for, I’m just going to say, “You should vote.” That’s what I’m going to say. SS: That’s good advice. Okay, what topics have you written about because you said you engage in research… MA: Oh yes, uh huh. I have a bit of a problem in that I am extremely scattered. Most people have a research line and that’s what they follow for their whole career and that’s their area of focus. I on the other hand have gone a few different ways. I’ve published on online education, I’ve published on self-monitoring to improve 26 teacher performance, I’ve published… I have a book on working with families. That’s another thing that I’ve written, and I’ve done a couple of things in… with a colleague and it’s my colleague who’s the expert, but I’ve worked on looking at ESL issues as well. SS: And weren’t you working on…I thought we had a conversation about, students with disabilities on college campuses as well? MA: Yes, yes, that’s one of the areas that I’m looking at now in particular especially when it comes to distance education or online education with students with disabilities on campus. A lot of times we don’t think through the needs of students that have disabilities in online settings. It’s an extremely interesting field and needed. It’s a needed consideration. We’re having—this is a good thing, we have more and more students with disabilities understanding that university is an option for them. Which I think has been needed for years and years. It’s fabulous what our disabilities services do here on campus for our students. However, a lot of—those of us that are faculty aren’t fully educated in the needs of students with disabilities in a college campus setting. And so that is an area that needs more focus, and so yes, I’ve been working in some of those things as well. SS: So what recognition have you received for your accomplishments? And I’m sure that’s a long list. 27 MA: No, I haven’t. I don’t have any accomplishments. Are you kidding me? No, a couple of times when I was teaching, I got a couple of awards for teaching in K- 12. But up here, not a lot. No. SS: That’s really shocking actually. MA: No. I’m not shocked at all. There are so many fantastic people that do such phenomenal things up here. SS: I’m actually very that should be rectified. Have you mentored people in your field? Like since you’ve been here for a while and you’ve had these experiences, have you become a mentor for people? And with that being said, you were definitely my mentor. MA: I think the most opportunity we have in teacher education, other than just supporting our students through their education is we do have a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction up here. And I have had the opportunity to work with a few students going through there master’s program and oh my goodness, I can’t tell you how amazing it is what people think of doing and how they support kids and their areas of research and just, I love it. But actually, I… the term mentor I think is kind of difficult because I almost learn as much from other people as they learn from me. And so it’s… to me, it’s more like a reciprocal relationship. It’s not really a mentorship because—it’s interesting, I say this all of the time, I say the thing that I find extremely interesting, as you get older, you have an option. Youth can scare you, right? Because my gosh, we are old and we know stuff. And you young folks “don’t know nothing.” Right? So you can get 28 like that or you can think… “Oh, they have so much energy and so many ideas that I’d never even think of and it’s just so fantastic to see where they are going and what they can do, and [we can] learn from their experience of what can be put forward.” And I don’t want to be the “Get off my lawn old lady.” So I’d much rather appreciate that… so think It’s more reciprocal. So thank you for saying mentoring but, I think it’s more reciprocal. SS: So what advice would you give to students—I guess especially women because we are focusing on women—that are starting in your field? MA: Okay, in either field. The advice that I would give anybody is find somebody that will let you know what you need to do in order to get where you need to go. Because a lot of times we put things off and then it comes down to the wire and you go, “Oh I wish I would have known that. I wish I would have known, I would have done this. Or I wish I would have known and I would have done that.” And it’s very important for you to have somebody that’s been through the system, say, “This is how the system works.” Because navigating it on your own is difficult. It’s very difficult. So the number one advice that I would give to anybody, especially women, because we tend to—this is going to sound stereotypical and anti-women and gender, and I apologize for it right off the bat—But we tend to think it’s our responsibility to figure out how this works and do it. That’s the way we’ve been raised and enculturated. I understand that I am speaking from a western cultural perspective, but that is what it is. And it’s okay to ask, it’s okay to find somebody that will tell you what you need to do. It’s okay to get that help. You don’t have to do everything on your own. Don’t try to take it all on your own. 29 Seek help, seek support. Find peers that will work with you, get out there and really work with other people. That will be the number one word of advice I would give to anyone, it is, and if somebody isn’t fitting your needs, it’s always okay to move on. It really is. I remember telling one of my master’s students, when I was on a project with them, I said, “If you’re committee chair is not meeting your needs, you can find somebody else. That’s allowed.” It is, it’s allowed. If somebody is not meeting your needs, you’re allowed to find somebody else. You don’t just need to sit back and internalize and take everything on your own. Move on. Go forward. Conquer the world. SS: What are some of your favorite memories of here at Weber State? MA: My favorite memories here at Weber State. That is huge and that is a difficult thing to answer. But, there’s quite a few things. I remember going to a couple of football games when I was an undergraduate and that was really fun. I mean it was really fun to see the crowd and get all excited. That was a long time ago and I think a lot of the things that I found extremely positive when going through Weber State as an undergraduate were the friendships that were formed and the ability to work with individuals in meeting your goals. Now, if I move on to now at Weber State, I have so many positive things that happen up here. I think it’s amazing how much Weber State has changed in supporting students’ success. I think some of my favorite things that I have now are, wow the undergraduate research symposium, I think that is fantastic, getting to go around. Now they have the one [conference] for sustainability. That was so cool. I absolutely loved that one. They [also] have the one for community engagement. They have all of 30 these things, I’m a nerd, so find those extremely fascinating, and I get to see the students present their work and I think that’s wonderful. I also like the opportunities they have, like this summer, for kids to come up on campus and participate in activities and seeing the little kids up here playing and having a good time I think, it’s just, “Wow, that’s super cool.” Right? SS: It plants that seed early. MA: Yeah, yeah! And I just think it’s—most of the positive things that I see are the interactions with students and where students can get involved— and the block party is another thing I love every year because you get to see all of the students walking around and deciding what they want to do and all of the energy that’s going around and I just really like those things. SS: How do you think women receiving the right to vote, has shaped history, your community, and you personally? MA: Okay, here’s the thing that I find extremely interesting is, it’s been 100 years right? So we take it for granted that we can vote. I mean, it’s just… it’s just an “is”. Right? But I think about it and think about it, it’s changed. Because it used to be you voted how your husband voted and now it’s not. Now we see husbands and wives voting for completely different individuals. And that’s great. It’s fantastic to feel like we have a voice. It’s fantastic that I see so many women that are politically active. I think it’s very important that we are. I think it’s really easy for everybody to—I mean, I remember it the first of the last election there was this, “Oh, we want to make American great again back to what it was.” And 31 I’m thinking, well in the 1950’s, we really want to go back to the 1950’s because that was a great time if you were a white guy. But for anybody else, it was not that good. Right? You didn’t have options. You didn’t have opportunities, you had… so the fact that we as women have the right to vote is extremely important and we need to let our voice be heard. And so how has it impacted us? I think the fact that we can drive, you know, the fact that we’re allowed to pursue a career. The fact that we can get a loan, the fact that there are more women attending university than men. All of that is because we have the right to vote. That’s what I think. So that’s how it’s impacted us. Yeah, we’re not required to maintain the traditional role. I’m not saying we can’t. But we are not required to. Right? I think people should be able to do what makes them happy, male or female. So if you want to be a stay-at-home parent, that’s what you should do. I mean, go for it. But I don’t think it should be restricted to women. Or restricted for women. Did that sound okay? SS: Yeah, I like that. I actually have another question for you based on your background, women and gender studies. Because this is—we are focusing on this 100th anniversary but really that’s 100th anniversary for white women and not women of color. And so for instance, black women, I believe got the right to vote in the 1960’s… I want to say ’63, but I’m not positive, and Native American’s got the right to vote even further after that. So that being said, that wasn’t very long ago. The 60’s wasn’t very long ago, and do you think, do you think that women of color especially kind of still take for granted—they haven’t had it for very long and I feel like a lot of women of color don’t tend to vote from statistics. 32 MA: I think there’s obstacles put in place. I think we’re not very good at promoting voting for not only individuals of color but also individuals of poverty, right? And I think more needs to be done for that. I don’t think it’s necessarily—I would say I don’t think it’s necessarily on them. I don’t think it’s they take it for granted and they don’t do it. I think there are obstacles that prohibit voting for this population. For example, in Ogden City, if I want to vote by mail, I’m going to have to take my voter registration to one of the voter drop offs. Well that’s easy for me to do because I’m an old woman of middle class, right? I have the capabilities of getting there. I don’t need to have something for my kids to do while I take my vote down. I don’t need to take three hours to try to figure out what the issues are and what am I voting on, and who is this person? I have the capability of doing that. Whereas, other people, it’s very difficult for them. There’s obstacles that are in place financially, there’s obstacles that are in place—also logistically. And so I think that we need to be more cognizant of that fact and put in programs in place that aid women in the ability to vote. Both women of color and women from poverty, right? So I, you know, it seems to me that we are putting in more and more restrictions on who—you have to bring your driver’s license. If you don’t have a driver’s license you have to bring in some other form of ID. If you don’t have some other form of ID, then we can even arrest you for trying to vote when you don’t have proper ID. Yeah, and who is going to be the person without the proper ID? Who is that’s going to be that person? We are trying to minimize the vote of people that need voice. And it upsets me. So we need to figure out, how 33 do we tackle this problem? What is that we need to do? What can we do to assist people in exercising their rights? SS: Well even just more voting locations I think would help too. They just don’t have enough accommodations in general. Like they should have more locations even locally situated in downtown Ogden, there should be more options. MA: Yeah. I totally agree with you. And there should be more ways of us getting out. Our nation has become so [p]artisan, that it’s hard for us to know how to vote. I was talking with a friend the other day and I said, “The thing that really irritates me is why don’t we see the social issues bridge across both parties?” Why have we divided the social issues into two camps? There’s the universal health care camp and there’s the non-universal health care camp, and they tend to fall along party lines. Why is that? That shouldn’t be the case. That should go across. It’s the same with the abortion issue, If you want to be more divisive, and it’s the same with the LGBTQ issues. They fall along party lines and that shouldn’t be the case. We shouldn’t have parties…that the government is concerned with these social issues in a particular party? That should go across the parties. We should have more options for our votes rather than less options for our votes. Another problem with our political system is lobbying and moneys. We shouldn’t have government officials receive funding, even for campaigns, from anything that’s not a private individual donor. Because what we end up having is we have people that start out in politics with good ideas and grandiose plans and then they get sucked into the system and they start falling along the money lines instead of along the issue lines. And so 34 there’s a lot of things in our country right now that need to be changed up and unfortunately what we have happening rather than looking at some of these issues that we should be able to pay attention to, we are having to worry about things that have already been addressed, right? We are having to worry about Roe V. Wade. Why is that even an issue? That should be pulled out of this. This was decided, stop it, let’s talk about these things… But no, we don’t want to talk about political lobbies because if we talk about political lobby’s then we are maybe going to hurt our chances of being re-elected because we are not going to have enough funding to try to get ourselves voted in. No, every politician should just get “x” amount of dollars to run and that’s it. We cap it. You don’t get anymore. I’m sorry. That’s it. And that money can come from individuals, not from a huge system. And so, I know, I’m politically complaining. And I’m going down that rabbit hole that I go down. But I think there’s some things that we really need to look at. I look at it and I look at someone like my husband, who’s in finance right? So he is politically republican. He wants smaller government. Which makes sense for his career field. Socially, he’s a liberal. So where does he vote? Where does he vote? It’s hard for him to find somebody that fits his needs and I say, “I get that, I totally get that.” What do you do if you are a pro-life democrat? Where do you vote? You can’t vote. There’s nowhere for you to go. It falls the same on both lines. We need to stop that and take the social issues outside of the party system and put the social issues across all parties. So I can be a democrat 35 that’s pro-life, or I can be republican that’s pro-choice. I can do it either way. But we can’t find those people. We can’t. SS: Is there anything else that we didn’t touch on that you would like to let people know or if you have any advice for women or, really anything that falls under women and gender studies because that’s our wheelhouse. MA: I do have one more thing that I want to say as far as my feminist perspective goes and that would be, equal opportunity is a good thing. Equal opportunity is a good thing. That’s it.