Oral History Program Dianna Abel Interviewed by Kandice Harris 18 July 2019 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Dianna Abel Interviewed by Kandice Harris 18 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: Abel, Dianna, an oral history by Kandice Harris, 18 July 2019, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Dianna Abel Circa 2019 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Dr. Dianna Abel, conducted on July 18, 2019 in her office, by Kandice Harris. Dianna discusses her life, her memories at Weber State University, and the impact of the 19th Amendment. Alexis Stokes, the video technician, is also present during this interview. KH: Today is July 18, 2019, we are interviewing Dr. Dianna Abel. Kandice Harris is conducting the interview and Alexis Stokes is filming. When and where were you born? DA: I was born in Lynwood, California, which is a suburb of Los Angeles. Almost exactly 50 years ago, July 24, 1969. KH: Happy Birthday. DA: Almost, it’s a big one. KH: The fireworks in Utah are just for you. DA: You know, I never knew about them until I came here and I’ve always worked for the state. So I always get my birthday off every year. KH: That is awesome. DA: It works for me. KH: Would you talk a little bit about your early life and some historical background? DA: Like childhood kind of stuff? I am the second of two children. I have one older brother, he is about two and a half years older than me. And I was lucky enough 2 to be raised by continuously married parents who loved each other until the day my dad died. And my mom was a stay-at-home mom. So I really had this kind of idyllic nuclear family upbringing, which I’m super grateful for. And I never stopped going to school. So I went straight from my undergraduate program actually into the doctoral program; and the agreement was, you just get your master’s degree along the way and do the work for it. So I kind of signed on for the long haul at 23 years old. And that’s what brought me to Utah. I did my undergraduate degree at Cal State Long Beach and then I went directly into doctoral program in Counseling Psychology at the University of Utah right after that. And I got married in between then. So I graduated with my undergraduate degree and got married the following month and then we moved out to Salt Lake City together. Other than a quick visit to the school, I had never been to Utah before and didn’t really know anything about it. And I started graduate school. KH: Were you encouraged to pursue an education? DA: Yes. I’m a first generation college student so neither of my parents graduated from college. My mom would say that she would not have graduated high school without my dad. My parents were high school sweethearts and my dad was the valedictorian of his high school. So I guess it was just never a question that we would go to college; and I had an older brother, so that was going to happen for sure. He also graduated from college, and in the field that I went into, there’s not really a whole lot you can do with an undergraduate degree in psychology unless you go to graduate school. So I was definitely encouraged to do that once my parents knew that’s what I wanted to do. Although, it’s not like they really knew 3 anything about graduate school or anything like that. That was a whole different culture. But definitely, always very supported. KH: What started you interest in psychology? DA: I saw that question and I was like, “What did start my interest?” It caused me to think a lot, which was kind of fun. That’s one question I did think about. Even in the early 70’s and 80’s when I was growing up, although it was much different than it is now, it was still somewhat atypical to have continuously married parents who loved each other and supported you. We had dinner together, and I took dance lessons, and my brother was in football, and all of that. Pretty idyllic nuclear family. That was pretty unusual, even then. I did have several friends who had divorced parents, and family conflict, and that kind of thing, and we were the house that my friends came to. My mom, she was sort of everybody’s mom. And so I think I was aware that there were people out there whose lives weren’t quite as easy as mine. And so I think I had a bit of a natural helper thing developing back then. But I don’t think I ever thought about being a psychologist then. The funny thing is, what I think really prompted that on an academic level was that I took a high school psychology class, which wasn’t about anything related to psychotherapy. It was really all about experimental psychology and that fascinated me. I loved the idea of doing experiments, especially behavioral experiments; and so I was really into that and enjoyed it quite a lot and thought the teacher was great. And he was really encouraging. So I ended up declaring it as my major going into college, which I never advise. I think you should go to 4 college and take your generals and sort of see where you land as you develop. But that isn’t what I did. I declared going in and I never ever changed. I just loved all of the classes I took. I loved the people I was meeting. I had a mentor—I know there’s a question coming about that. And she was really encouraging and so it just felt like a fit. During my undergraduate experience, I got some experience doing research with that mentor, which was very helpful. And then we also did practicum. I did a practicum at an adolescent crisis shelter, and that was sort of my first real world experience and that really felt like a fit. I just thought, “I think I could make a difference with these kids. And these kids need someone who can care about them and need someone who can help them in a professional way.” KH: You kind of mentioned your undergraduate, but what other degrees and certifications do you have? DA: So, I got to the U and I did my master’s degree and finished my Ph.D. so there it is [pointing to wall]. Both degrees are from the Educational Psychology department, and my program was Counseling Psychology, from the U. And then I have a state license as a Psychologist. KH: What are some of the challenges you faced while obtaining your degrees? DA: What are some of the challenges I faced? Well, I wished I had like a terrible story of how difficult everything was. You guys are like, “Where’s your challenge?” But I had a couple. I mean, we moved here—my now ex-husband and I moved here. Neither one of us had ever lived on our own before. I was raised by a stay-at- 5 home mom and so was he. And so we were not particularly good at taking care of ourselves as independent adults and we were young. I would look back on it now and say we were doing these young adult developmental experiences at the same time as I was going for a graduate degree. So there was a lot of stuff at the very beginning, living on your own, taking care of yourself, paying rent, paying your own bills, all of that stuff—happening at the same time. There was a fair amount of pressure, obviously to do well and be very, very busy and have very little money. Very, very little money. Which, if either of you is in that place of being young and having very little money, it’s so good. It’s a good growing time in your life. So don’t give it up. Well someday give it up. So yeah, I think just getting started, being young and dong a lot of early adult developmental experiences all at the same time was challenging. Obviously, the course work is challenging. Getting a degree in psychology means you’re doing a lot of internal work. So you’re looking at yourself a lot, you’re looking at your biases, you’re looking at sort of where your natural strengths lie, where you need to stretch yourself. And everything you do is on video tape. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been on video tape, but this is very weird. Although, when you are training to be a psychologist, every word you say is recorded or written down. Every session you do is videotaped. And somebody else watches it and gives you feedback, so you get feedback on everything. That’s pretty intimidating for a while and you get a little used to it, but you know, that’s intimidating. So that’s challenging, for sure that’s a challenge. When I applied for graduate programs, I applied to several. Graduate programs 6 in psychology are much more difficult actually to get into than even medical school. So depending on the program, there will be a couple of hundred applications for fewer than ten slots. My graduate class had six people in it, including me. And so I applied to a lot of programs, I got accepted to three. I knew that I had to make a decision pretty fast. And I flew out to one of them, which geographically was a terrible, terrible fit for me and quickly called my mom at home and said, “Um… we need to fly to Salt Lake City and figure out if the University of Utah is the right school for me because this one isn’t it.” We didn’t know anything about Utah or anything. So when we flew out here it was like early April, so it was beautiful out here. The sky was blue, the tulips were blooming. There were these brick homes with yellow tulips, that’s a strong memory—brick homes with yellow tulips. No homes are brick in southern California and we don’t do tulips. And so I just thought, “What a quaint little place.” And it just seemed clean and lovely. Also somewhat significant, the Los Angeles riots were going on at that time. So my area of the world was very conflicted and upset, even though there was nothing really significant going on in my immediate surroundings. But I knew people who had some damage from the rioting—this was the Rodney King rioting. And we could see smoke from the downtown area. We didn’t live very close to downtown, but you could see there was a lot of unrest. It was very ugly, it was a very challenging time. And when I came here, it kind of felt like an escape. It felt like—this is a double edged sword. But it felt like everybody was nice and everybody was happy. And it was clean and I thought, “I could do this.” 7 And the people that I met in my graduate program, most specifically, the person you interact with the most who is the department secretary. She just felt like my second mom, right out of the gate. And I was like, “I could be well taken care of, if I was here. I could get this.” DA: So there were a lot of challenges but she really helped. Stuff like how in the world do you get around in these streets when they are numbered like that? I didn’t know where I was. And, “Where’s Walmart?” All of that. So she helped like acclimate me to, “Here’s what Utah is about.” She was L.D.S. and I don’t know that I’d ever met an L.D.S. person before. I think I knew of a family that was L.D.S. but I didn’t really understand what that meant. And so she kind of gave me some of the down low of what L.D.S. culture was about, which I needed to know if was going to be helpful to these clients. So she really kind of helped ease a lot of the challenges. But definitely there were things that were hard. KH: What were your career options once you had your degree? DA: Options were pretty wide. You can do a lot with a doctorate in psychology theoretically. I could have gone academic and taught. I did not, I did not prepare myself for that. I would have done a lot more research and taken a lot more, sort of pedagogical classes, and statistics classes, and things. Not that I didn’t take plenty, because I took plenty. But I would have done that more if I wanted to go academic. I knew I did not want to do that. I had done a summer traineeship at the VA, and that was my first clinical experience. And I did not like that, so I knew I was not going to go VA, but I could have. I had also done some training with children and I really did not enjoy that. So I knew I wasn’t going to enjoy 8 that. So we did our core practicum, which is your first year practicum at the University Counseling Center at the University of Utah. And I was home. I knew it in that moment that like, “This is going to be it for me.” And so I geared the rest of my career, I did as many clinical hours and training as I could do at a counseling center. Then I did my internship at the University of Southern California Counseling Center. That was where I targeted my career. I could have done a VA, I could have gone academic, I could have gone into private practice, I could have done community mental health, those weren’t my thing. I knew I was going to be at a university as soon as I started there. KH: What mentors or resources did you have available to you in your program and career? DA: When I was an undergrad, I got connected with a professor, her name was Dr. Rhoda Lindner. We didn’t stay in touch, but I still remember her and I’m very grateful for her. And she was the one who got me involved in research, which is what you really need for applications to graduate school. And so I got involved with a research project with her and she was very influential in getting me to apply to graduate schools and what that looked like, writing me letters, and all of that stuff. So I’m super grateful for her. And then when I was in graduate school, I met Dr. Sue Morrow [holding a picture of Dr. Sue Morrow with Dianna, both dressed in their regalia on Dianna’s Ph.D. graduation day] and this picture is really special to me. Sue started being a faculty member at the University of Utah my second or third year there. And it was her first job out of graduate school. She defended her dissertation on her 50th birthday and so she came to 9 her professor-hood later in life. She did not chair my master’s thesis. I had another faculty member who chaired my master’s thesis. But she chaired my dissertation. And we became very, very close and I’ll say a little bit more about it in a minute. Here’s kind of a cool thing that I literally just put together—so the research project that I worked on with Dr. Lindner in undergraduate--this is not going to sound very interesting--but they were restandardizing a scale called, “The Attitudes Toward Women Scale.” So they were looking for new norms on that and we were collecting data from community members about what the new norms needed to be. Because here was a test about attitudes toward women that had been normed many years prior. I don’t remember how many years prior. But this was now, we are in the late 80’s, early 90’s and there was some hope that attitudes towards women had shifted. So a very feminist oriented project, which I would not in a million years have identified myself as a feminist at that time. But anyhow, we did that research because that was a research project that I could participate in; and I was interested in it. It had the right components for me and we presented it at a conference called AWP, the Association for Women in Psychology. AWP is a very strong, feminist mental health organization. Wow, I had not interacted in that kind of an environment before. That was a real learning experience for me, but I didn’t think a whole lot about it. I applied to graduate school, got in, was going along and in comes Sue. A strong feminist. Radical, lesbian feminist. You know, a came-up-in-the-women’s- movement kind of woman. And really inspiring. And so we started working together, getting close, she was involved in various ways and then I 10 ended up having her chair my dissertation. She was a person that I really admired who passed away last December. It’s just meaningful to have her here [in the photo] and to think about that. Sue was an extremely significant mentor for me in graduate school. Everything from personal stuff like being probably the first person outside of my family that I told when I found I was getting a divorce. And I wasn’t sure how that was going to impact my career and feeling concerned about that. Noticing that the names on my degrees are different than the name I have now. And what was that going to mean? And how was that going to look on my vita? And how does that look for a mental health professional to be divorced and all of that? To classic mentor things, writing letters for jobs and all of that sort of stuff. I’m confident I wouldn’t be who I am today without Sue. So thanks Sue! KH: How did your view on feminism change from when you were an undergrad to a graduate? DA: I don’t even think I really even knew what feminism was when I was an undergrad. I was just doing it without knowing it and when I got to graduate school, it had a name. And one thing that was really impactful was that I was in the first Feminist Therapy Practicum at the University of Utah’s Women’s Resource Center. Which meant that we were trained actually by Sue’s partner, Dr. Donna Hawxhurst, another psychologist, and a group of other people about how to do this thing called Feminist Therapy. Where feminism and the principles of feminism are woven into the principles of psychotherapy and psychotherapy ethics and all of that. And that’s when this like kind of started to bloom for me. 11 And so I would say from mid- to late-graduate school into early career, extremely strong. Very, very important, like central identity for me. And then I would say realistically as I graduated and got into the real world and I learned that the world doesn’t necessarily operate by these idealistic feminist standards that they can in some really controlled environments like that. And you get out into the world and you have to work with all kinds of people who may not believe in consensus the way you do. And they may not believe in all of the same things you do, but you’ve got to find a way to work together. So I feel like it’s moderated a bit, but it’s still a super important part of my identity and so I feel really grateful for it, to Sue and Donna both. KH: What resistance or battles did you face as you progressed in your career? DA: You asked the same question about undergrad or graduate school. And you know, I wish there was something that was really hard but I’ll tell you what. At that time, I chose the right graduate program. I remember very distinctly the very first day that the six of us met in grad school, our Training Director, Dr. Ted Packard, said, “Let me just make this clear right now. You guys are not here to be weeded out. You are not here to compete against each other. We want you to support each other. We want you to help each other. We want you to get through together.” And so we did, and I made some of my dearest friends in graduate school. Did I have like realistic barriers? Sure. It was hard, I had to take out loans, I was tired, I was busy, but like that’s graduate school. We didn’t have any money, I shared that with you before. No one was pushing back. I feel 12 like people wanted me to succeed and helped me in any way that they could. That’s the best answer I’ve got for that one. AS: Were there a lot of females in your graduate program? DA: So my class was me, Lisa, a woman named Sarah who dropped out after a couple of weeks, Linda, and then Brian, Shawn, and Carl. So we were even, we were three and three. And we interacted with some of the other cohorts and I’m going to say they were probably about even gender-wise as well. I never really thought about that. Great question. KH: What positions have you held in your career? DA: My very first job out of grad school was here at Weber State 21 years ago almost. My Weber State HR title was staff psychologist. I didn’t even really count professionally as psychologist then, because you can’t call yourself a psychologist until you have your license. When I started working here, I had actually not even graduated. So, I started working here in September of 1998 and I defended my dissertation in December of 1998. I got all of the paperwork done and all of the hoops jumped through in March of 1999, but I was already working at the time. I just had a supervisor overseeing all of my clinical work until I secured my license. And so I was a staff psychologist and then in in 2004, well about 2003ish, my supervisor who was the director here at the time, Dr. Jeff Hurst, got a call that he was being called up to be the interim Dean of Students. He called me on vacation and said, “Do you want to be the interim Acting Director of the Counseling Center?” And I said, “What?”, “Okay.” I thought maybe 13 I would do this in my career, but I thought it would be several years from then. And so we did that and I was the Acting Director for a while, and then Jeff applied for his job and got it. Then they did a national search for my job and I was selected. I became the real Director in 2004. Then in about 2017, they said, “How about if you also direct the Student Health Center?” And my original response was, “No, the Student Health Center needs a Director. I’ll help you search for one.” Because the director had retired. And so we engaged in a search, or a couple of them, and they failed. And they presented the idea again and I thought about it some more, and decided that I could do that. We negotiated salary—we are going to talk about that a little bit later. So I started doing that additional role in about 2017. Now, my official title is Executive Director of Counseling,, Health and Wellness, which means I supervise the Counseling and Psychological Services Center, the Student Health Center, and that includes the Student Wellness Program. KH: What do the jobs as director entail? DA: Far too much. So I have been, since 2004, 2003ish, directing the Counseling Center. And for most of that time, there were no other leadership positions in the Counseling Center. It was just me. So that meant I was doing everything administrative, all performance evaluations, all goal setting and progress, all hiring, any training that was being done, planning all of the clinical calendars and schedules, and all of that. Over the years, now for about the past 5 years, I’ve been bringing in new leadership positions and that has helped a lot. Now I have 14 a Training Director who deals with all things training. I have a Clinical Director for about the past year, which is really, really helpful to deal with all of the clinical management here. We have a Group Coordinator, and an Outreach Coordinator, and a Coordinator of Mental Health Initiatives that runs a grant that she got. Now my role at the Counseling Center is very administrative. I do the goals and the performance evaluations, and the budgeting, and I even delegate a fair amount of the hiring now. And I go to a lot of meetings. I serve on a lot of committees and I have a lot of one-on-one meetings because I supervise a lot of people. I don’t see any psychotherapy clients anymore, which is a real shift for me and that was a hard one. And then at the Health Center, the same thing. The Health Center has a Medical Director and we will be shifting those roles around too because there will be a retirement coming up there. So, the goals, the hiring, the performance evaluations, all of that stuff is still mine there. Obviously I’m not a medical provider. And so I don’t supervise anything medical. The Medical Director does that. And the Student Wellness program, I also serve as her supervisor. She has a one person office—soon to be two. We are thankful for that. But all of those kinds of things like rallying for new positions, getting new money, getting space, getting resources, that’s on me for all three areas. KH: What drew you to Weber State? DA: Truthfully, I was getting a divorce and I needed a job, bad. A dear friend of mine, who is also a Counseling Center Director to this day, was leaving her position here. I knew it and I wanted to be in a Counseling Center, and I was in a place where I would have done any job to make money because I was getting ready to 15 be on my own. So I was just grateful to have a University Counseling Center, and then when I came here, it was just great. I had done my training at the University of Utah, I did my internship at the University of Southern California, both very large schools. Both pretty high achieving, especially USC. Very high achieving, lots of students extremely wealthy, most students expected to go to school, to go to college, from the time they are born. Many of them with parents and grandparents and great-grandparents who graduated from USC and this sort of legacy thing going on. And I loved the fact that Weber State was different. It was open enrollment, it was designed for students who might not otherwise get the opportunity for higher education. I thought that was really cool and very inspiring and I thought when I first came here, “I’ll stay for a few years. I’ll get the supervision I need for licensure and then I’ll go onto a bigger school. A bigger, better, school.” But I’ve always been so happy here. I love the people. And my work/life balance is pretty easy here and I really appreciate that a lot. I like my job, but I don’t want to do it 80 hours a week. So it feels really important for me to go home and that’s possible here. So, I stayed. KH: Okay, what was Weber State like when you started? DA: One thing I remember, it was a little smaller. We were on quarters and I think it was the semester I got here, or else the semester after, we shifted to semesters. And that was a big shift, there was a lot of hoopla about that. I went to a presentation that was about the transition, they had to do a lot to get faculty and staff on board. And Dr. Kathleen Lukken, I don’t know if you are interviewing her for this project, but she’s cool. She was one of the people that was presenting 16 and I don’t remember the other people. I’m assuming they were like the President and a Vice President, but I was super new at the time. I remember they all had sunglasses on and they were being cool. Just trying to get people on board with this major transition. And I just thought, “Well these people are really down to earth and they are including everybody on this big shift.” They recognized that this big shift is not going to be successful if everybody is not on board. And you could feel that in the audience and I didn’t know any of these people. I was one of probably 200 in the room. So I liked that a lot. One of the other things I remember early on is that we didn’t used to have to pay anything for our health insurance. I don’t imagine you were here then. But literally our contribution was zero. Then at some point that had to change. The health care system changed and that had to change. We still contribute a very reasonable low amount, but it used to be zero. The administration really recognized that moving people from paying nothing to paying something could be really hard. And it could be especially hard for people whose salaries are pretty low. So I really appreciated how the university went about that in a very a mindful way. It was like people got a one-time stipend or something like that. Which as a single person at that time, I think it covered my whole year of premium contributions or whatever. They just made it really easy, but the message that was really important for me at that time was, “We care about you, we get that this is a big deal and it probably bites into one of the things that you say is a major perk about our institution, and we want to do what we can to help offset that.” And that 17 made me feel like, we are not just a number here, they care about us. That’s what I remember. KH: How has psychology and counseling changed over time? DA: Like the center? Or the field? KH: Let’s do both. DA: The field, well that’s easy, but I could do that for two whole hours. The field of Counseling Psychology is heavily rooted in normal developmental populations. Heavily rooted in career counseling. Heavily rooted in veterans—post war, veterans’ readjustment stuff. And heavily rooted in University Counseling Centers. So it used to be that it was seen—and this is to some extent true, even when I was training, that working at a University Counseling Center environment, you were going to see easier clients. You were going to see less severe mental health concerns. You were going to see more developmental concerns, home sickness, relationship troubles, that sort of thing. And I think that was true for at least a brief period of time. It is not true at all now. It is very different. We are seeing severe mental health issues. We are seeing long standing mental health issues. When we get the rare student who is struggling with something purely developmental, some personal growth, or self-enhancement, it’s like this unicorn. It’s a very rare thing. So that’s really different and it is nationwide. Probably you guys have heard about the college mental health crisis—at Weber State and across the country, there is far more need than there are resources. 18 So we can’t see all of the students who want help. We can’t see them often enough, we can’t see them soon enough. We don’t advertise. And we are booked weeks in advance most of the time. So the tone of the work is really different than it used to be. So, there’s that. And as a field, one of the things that makes me most proud to be a Counseling Psychologist is that Counseling Psychology has always been very mindful of diversity, and I feel like the rest of the world is starting to catch up. And the other fields are starting to catch up. My specialization was in multicultural counseling. We were talking about this, I think, a long time before the general public was recognizing the importance of understanding the nuances of sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, etc. And that’s become more and more important over the years. So I appreciate that a lot. KH: What does a typical semester look like for you? DA: A typical semester? For me personally now, they all look relatively similar because I don’t see students anymore. It’s a very boring section of the interview. I go to a lot of meetings, I serve on a lot of committees. I do a lot of presentations, that doesn’t change a whole lot over the course of the year. If I saw students, it would be different in the fall and the spring than it is in the summer. But that’s not true for me anymore. DA: You had asked how the Counseling Center has changed. We talked about how the field had changed, how has the Counseling Center changed? It’s gotten bigger by a lot because the demand has gotten so high. I feel like most of the time, I’m begging for money. Most of the time, I’m begging for salary, I’m 19 begging for space. Most of the time, I am trying to figure out a way for our wait list to be not so long. For our wait time to be not so long. And that’s hard. But one of the other things that has changed here that I really like, is that we have become very multi-disciplinary which really fits with the way I think. When I first came here, just about everybody who worked here was a Psychologist. And now we have a few Psychologists. We have two Marriage and Family Therapists. We have two Clinical Mental Health Counselors. And we have three Licensed Clinical Social Workers. And that has been a really intentional shift over the years. Those are all licensed mental health professionals but they all have just a slightly different training background, and that diversity—which is just another aspect of diversity that feels important that has really I think, enriched our communication and the way we treat clients, the way we collaborate with each other, and so I like that a lot. I’m glad I remembered to put that in. KH: What committees and organizations are you involved with? DA: This is related to how the field has changed and how the Counseling Center has changed. A little over a decade ago, the Virginia Tech campus shooting occurred and that really changed a lot. And it meant that we had to start paying much better attention to this concept of threat assessment. So as a function of that, I serve on a committee, we call it the STAR team; it stands for Strategic Threat Assessment and Response. And it’s very much about bringing together certain people on campus, including me, over the Counseling Center, somebody who represents HR, somebody who represents University Legal, the Dean of Students, the Chief of Police, and a representative from Equal Opportunity/ 20 Affirmative Action—to come together on troubling cases concerning faculty, staff, and students at the institution that could lead to a violent event. In a million years, I never thought that’s something I’d be doing, and consulting on cases like that, but it’s a requirement. It’s an expectation now that all universities have teams like that. And the more we move into this age of mass shootings and mass violence—some of which take place on college campuses, the more important it becomes to understand that. So that’s a pretty significant commitment that I have, is serving on the STAR team. I used to serve on a lower-level committee called SAIT, or the Student Assessment and Intervention Team. I’ve since delegated my Clinical Director to attend that meeting. That one is also about troubling cases on campus, but not involving threats of violence. So students who are struggling with lots of different things short of violence. STAR team is an important one, I would say the other one that feels really important to me is not on campus, and it’s a community-based committee called, NUHOPE; and that stands for Northern Utah Hold On Persuade Empower and it’s a community-based suicide prevention task force. We do all kinds of things, there are various subcommittees in that group. And the one that I work on, I was very influential in saying, ‘We’ve got to get a standardized suicide prevention curriculum that we train, and we need to train it. We need to train it in the schools, we need to train it in our churches, we need to train it in our work places, and we need to train it on campus. And so with the collaboration with that committee, we were able to get some funding, and we bought into a curriculum called QPR, which hopefully you’ve heard of. 21 KH: I recognize the acronym. DA: There you go. It stands for question, persuade, and refer. And it’s a suicide prevention curriculum that’s designed for lay-people. So anybody can learn QPR and our belief is that it’s like CPR. If you know what to do when somebody that you know is in a suicidal crisis, you can help save their life. And it goes through what you can do to make that happen. So that feels really important to me. It’s been a really effective connection between Weber State and this community committee, which is based out of McKay-Dee Hospital and we have some foundation support there. It’s allowed me to train several hundred faculty and staff members, and students over the years in QPR. And I feel like it’s becoming a bit of a language, that even if you haven’t taken the training, you might have heard about it. So our athletes are all trained, our Resident Assistants are all trained, and handfuls of student groups get trained every year. I just had to send that data in, I think we did 23 QPR presentations last year. So that movement feels really important to me. Suicide prevention is a movement. KH: What do you feel the threat assessment is for Weber with violent situations? Do you feel like it’s high, low? DA: Like our level of threat? KH: Yeah. DA: If there was like a great way to predict that, we would be all in much better shape. I think we have the right people on this team and I think we are doing a good job of keeping our eyes on situations that are brewing. And we are doing 22 the best we can to prevent violent events. But, honestly, I think some of the places where mass violence has happened, are those places that you would never predict. But then who would predict? Right? Or we might predict, “Oh it’s always going to happen in Los Angeles or New York City.” But look at the places where it’s happened. We are doing our very best. KH: What topics have you written about? DA: I have not written significantly since I was in grad school. Well, I can’t say that’s totally true but, no after I got out of graduate school, I was pretty convinced that I wasn’t going to read anything of substance for like ten years because I felt like I had done nothing but read and write for so long. So I haven’t written or published much professionally. DA: There’s a boring answer for you. KH: What recognition have you received for your accomplishments? DA: I got the Presidential Outstanding Professional Staff award in 2013. It was President Chuck White’s first year. So that was very, very special. I can tell you a story about that. I don’t know that I really knew much about that award. I’m sure I knew that it was a thing. But I was on the STAR team. I was relatively new on the STAR team. And I was clear that we needed some training on threat assessment. I know people because some Counseling Center Directors have moved into that as a specialty. So there’s real training available and I felt like we needed it. And it’s very expensive. So I was pushing for us to get training. That meant bringing some consultants here, it meant campus wide stuff. It meant 23 them consulting with people far outside the STAR team, including the President and all of that. It was big. And I was pushing relatively hard for it and didn’t know if that was appropriate for me to do or not. Anyhow, so then I got a message that I needed to go meet with our University President at the time, Dr. Ann Millner. And I thought, “Oh no, she knows that I’m pushing for all of this money, for this training, and she’s going to want me to justify all of that.” Even though I wasn’t the one asking for the money. Whatever it was, in my head, I thought, “She wants more information about why I’m saying we need this.” And so I collect up this folder full of stuff, I take notes, I do my research, I have readings to give her, I got all this stuff prepared. And I got to her office, and she tells me that I won the presidential award. And I was like [shocked face]… and here I have all of this stuff with me because I think I’m going to have to defend this decision. It wasn’t even my decision, it was a desire, it was a proposal. Anyhow, so that was really cool. And then I’m sure I cried and all of that. That was very meaningful. It was cool because Ann was the one who let me know that I had won it and then when it was actually given to me, Chuck had come on. So that was kind of like my first little introduction to him was when he gave me this award. And that was really neat. So I appreciate that. KH: How have you become a mentor to others in your field? DA: I have hired most of the people who work here. Not all of them. And most of them, but not all of them, are younger than me by quite a lot these days. So I feel like I sort of defacto became a mentor to them. In my role as supervisor, not clinical supervisor, but administrative supervisor and Director. I have worked 24 here for 21 years so I have a lot of friends. And I have a lot of friends that are women. It seems that when I have friends that are struggling with being compensated fairly for what they do, or recognized appropriately with titles and things like that, we talk about it. We end up in conversations about that, and I end up being the person who nudges them to talk with their supervisors about getting the compensation that they deserve. Talk with HR, talk with EEO, or whatever needs to happen in order for them to get… particularly salary situations and position situations straightened out. It sort of feels like we’ve got a little bit of a women’s support club going on that if it feels like you’re not getting what you need, let’s talk about it. Let’s not push touchy subjects like money under the table. Because if we continue to do that, we are never going to advance to where we need to be. And it’s not okay when women are treated less fairly than they ought to be. And I think we have to stick together on that because, to me, it doesn’t matter what level you are at. Or what department you work in, if you need someone to consult with around something that’s not going right in your career, then let’s talk. Because I don’t like that happening. I feel good about being in that role if I can be. Being a mentor, I guess in the larger field of University Counseling Centers—University Counseling Center Directors have their own organization. And it’s like a nine hundred person support group. Because this job can be really lonely. There’s only one person doing this job on campus. And it can be heavy. And so in our organization across the country, there are way more than 500 people. But about 500 come to our annual conference every year. And I think 25 we do a great job of mentoring in new directors because it’s very overwhelming. It’s very lonely, your relationships change. Especially if you’ve come up from within, like I did. You were previously working there and you were everybody’s peer, and now you are everybody’s boss. You have to do things like budgeting and spread sheets—I didn’t learn a thing about that in graduate school, way in over my head. And it’s so cool to be connected to other people who are doing that same thing. So I was elected to be a member of kind of like a think tank group within our organization, which is called the Association of University and College Counseling Center Directors, or AUCCCD. So there is a smaller group that that you get elected into called the Elements of Excellence Task Force and one of our charges is to make sure that we’re bringing in, training, and supporting new directors. And that’s an initiative that I’ve been involved in. Then we have leadership training and other kinds of training that we make sure there are opportunities for at the conference. But there’s a New Directors’ Institute at every conference, which is a full day, pre-conference session that’s put on by E of E, Elements of Excellence. So I’ve been involved in that. And that’s just fun because I remember it like it was yesterday, being the brand new director and being in super over my head, and overwhelmed and all of that. I love training those folks, and some of them over the years remember me as part of that training. And then I see them, two years later and they’re still in the organization and that’s cool. KH: What advice would you give to students and women starting in your field? 26 DA: Starting in my field? Go to graduate school. Go to a good graduate program, don’t be afraid to take out student loans. Do research that you like. And negotiate your salary, your first salary, with gusto. I really believe that people underestimate the importance of your first salary because it is the salary that everything will be based on forever. And it’s really easy to just accept because you’re super happy to have a job and not negotiate. I think that as women, we are taught, particularly, not to talk about money. And not to sell ourselves high. We are taught to sell ourselves short and settle, and that’s not okay. I’ve gone through it in my career too, and it’s hard. It is hard to say that, “I am worth more than that.” It’s hard to say, “This is my career.” It’s hard to say, “Ultimately, this dollar figure will have impact on my retirement funding.” But that’s all extremely significant. And I think that men are trained to do that and women are not, particularly when they are negotiating with men about money. So we have to get very comfortable with talking about money. And when I talked with you about being a mentor for women in the organization and the struggles they are going through, I would say, 75% of the time, it’s about money. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’ve said this in many forums now, we need to get better about talking about money. Young women, we need to talk about money. It’s important and we deserve more. We are still at, I think, not even 80 cents on the dollar for men. That’s unacceptable in 2019, or whatever year you are watching this, 2086 or something like that. It better be fixed by 2086. Talk with people that you trust before you accept a job. Always negotiate, even if there is not a dollar of wiggle 27 room on the salary, and there always is. Negotiate things like training, negotiate vacation days, negotiate certification payments, negotiate continuing education. There are lots of things you can negotiate. Negotiate promotions, negotiate titles, supervision responsibilities. There are lots of things you can do. But don’t be afraid to do that. There’s my soapbox. What advice would I give? Go to graduate school, get a job, negotiate your salary. Students, I would say, don’t really do what I did. I love my career, I’m super grateful, I think I got really lucky. I don’t think you should declare a major until you’ve done at least one year of college because it’s okay. You don’t have to know what you want to do when you first go to college. Let yourself explore and figure out what really makes your heart sing. I think that’s it. KH: What are some of your favorite memories at Weber State University? DA: My favorite memories at Weber State University. It’s always going to be about the people. I already told you about the session where they were talking about shifting from quarters to semesters, and I thought, “Oh these people are cool, and really down to earth, and they care about us.” So that was neat. A specific memory about Weber State. Graduation, I always go to graduation. Sue Morrow, my dissertation chair and mentor, would appreciate that because I was smack dab in the middle of my divorce when it was time for me to graduate with my Ph.D. I was pretty depressed, and resentful that this one very negative event in my life was coinciding with this very positive event. I was definitely going to go to the convocations, which is where you got hooded. When you get your Ph.D., you 28 get an academic hood, and your chair does that. It’s an important ritual. And there was no way I was not going to do that, of course I was going to do that. But the big graduation, the commencement ceremony, was at like 8 o’clock in the morning. And I was like, “I’m not going to do that, it’s too early and…” My family was coming into town. “I’m not going to rally them all up to go there at 8 o’clock in the morning or whatever.” And Sue, my chair, was like, “Dianna, I just…I really want you to reconsider that. You need this. This is the event where the orchestra plays and the president speaks, and the flowers are there and it’s triumphant. And there’s hundreds and hundreds of people. And I really think you need that.” So I went. I grumped a little bit, but you know who our graduation speaker was that year? Mitt Romney. And I don’t think I’d ever been to a graduation like that before. I didn’t know that the doctoral students, the people receiving their Ph.D.’s in all fields, sit in the very, very front on the floor. So a friend from graduate school and I, were in the second row, or something like that. And although his politics are really different than mine, he was a very handsome man back then. And I remember that, and I was like, “This guy…” I had no idea who he was, but he was working with the Olympics at the time. Very smart, and very handsome–that’s what I thought at the time. Anyhow, it was triumphant and I did need it and I have super strong memories about that to this day. So I’m not an academic, my name isn’t on the floor when I line up at the Dee Events Center to go to graduation. But I always put on my regalia that’s hanging on the back of that door, and it’s lived there for 21 years. I always go to graduation if I’m here. I generally sit next to one of my dear friends and we cry at 29 the video just about every time. She’s also not an academic. But how do you not cry at those videos? These people who have overcome major odds and had major losses and no one ever expected them to graduate from college and now they are. It’s way cool. Very inspiring and so I love it. I don’t sing, I don’t know the school song, she does. She’s like a five generation alum. Are you interviewing Nancy Collinwood? KH: Oh, I love Nancy. DA: You should. My dear friend who I always sit next to at graduation. So those are really good memories. We always find each other there, sit together, and cry. KH: She is a fifth generation. DA: Yeah. So she knows the fight song. She knows the school song. She can sing it. I can’t do any of that. I just stand there politely. But, I wouldn’t miss it. Anyhow, that’s a positive memory of Weber State. KH: What are you memories about the Olympics? DA: You know what’s funny, I was thinking about that not too long ago for some reason. I remember we were closed for like three weeks or something like that. And that was cool. I don’t really have any memory of what I did. Did we actually stay home? I think we did. I think the campus was closed. But I really don’t remember. I remember they did curling at the Ice Sheet, and I didn’t know what curling was. And I remember that I did not get involved. The Utah Psychological Association was volunteering and I didn’t do that because, I’m a California girl and I’m not super into really cold weather. But I’m a big figure skating fan and so 30 that was really fun. A friend and I went down and enjoyed the Olympic Village but that’s it. Do you remember the Olympics when they were here? KH: I lived in Washington when it was here. I was a little sad. DA: Did other people have like memories of how that went? KH: Yeah, I’m trying to remember who all I’ve asked about this. Oh, I talked to June Phillips, she was the Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities. She said that she was considered essential personnel so she had to be on campus. She talked about the Alumni House and how that was kind of a reception area for all of the curlers to go hang out. But most of the people are like, “Yeah, the school was closed for three weeks. It was great.” DA: Yeah, and I don’t remember how we worked that out. If we started late and just extended farther into the summer. I really don’t recall. KH: One of the weeks was Spring Break. I can’t remember if they extended it at the beginning and the end, but they did extend it to make up the lost time. DA: Okay. What a historic thing to have here. And I think if we get them back, I would probably get more involved just because, I think at the time, I was probably a little more impacted by the fact that it was going to be really cold. And it was really cold as I recall that year. Not a lot of snow, and very cold. But I think I would get more involved. Just because, why would you not do that? KH: How do you think women receiving the right to vote, shaped or influenced history, your community, and you personally? 31 DA: Wow. That’s a big one. It’s hard to believe that women at one time didn’t have the right to vote. But, obviously we know that that’s true. It is 2019 and Donald Trump is our president and it’s very troubling. I’m concerned that the influence of our women suffragettes is being limited right now. And that’s very upsetting. So, if you’re watching this in 2098, know that this is a troubling time in our political life in the United States. I don’t think that our government would be run the way that it is today if not for the influence of women in our government and in the Supreme Court. For instance, I’m extremely upset by the way women are being treated. We are at a very troubling time this week where our president is saying very rude things to women of color who are in our government, participating as active elected members of their state governments. And that’s extremely inappropriate and I absolutely do not want the influence of women to decline as a function of that. So I think it’s on all of us to make sure that we are aware of that. I have a 17 year old step daughter and we were talking about some things that are being said, for instance, right now about Planned Parenthood. And I said, “You know, not that it’s my job to influence your politics at this young age,” and she knows who I am. I just said, “Just be aware as you understand the way people are talking about what Planned Parenthood does. And the importance of women having a right to choose what’s right for their bodies. Pay attention to that as you build your political awareness and the way you feel about that, wherever that stands.” That’s an important issue. And something else came up around health care and she said something about insurance and I said, “A really good time to 32 be aware, what a gift it is that you have health insurance. And what a gift it is that you know, you don’t have to worry about a lot of things. Can you imagine going through something really traumatic like a car accident or whatever and not having health insurance? And having to make the decision between paying for health care and paying for something like food or rent?” I think it’s our obligation to pass that along, especially to the young women in our lives. I think it had a huge influence on me when my most significant mentor, Sue Morrow was coming up in the world. This was the women’s movement, this was women’ equality, and so she was in the thick of that. And she knew that she was training and mentoring people who don’t have any memory of women being anything other than perceived as equals. Then you kind of have to come up a little bit in the world before you realize that we are still not—we are still making anything less than a dollar, on the dollar that men make, which is unacceptable. So I feel like we are working in that direction. Obviously, the suffragettes were early feminists, before that was probably even a word. or anyone knew what it meant or had all of their misperceptions about what it means. So I feel very influenced by that movement and that philosophy. I was divorced right at the end of graduate school, and then I nurtured my independence for a handful of years. Then I decided I’d like to start dating again, or whatever. And so like a lot of people in this day and age, I took to the internet. Although, it was relatively new back then, this was in 2006. What an opportunity to decide what you’re looking for and put it out there, and what’s not acceptable to you, and make those determinations and turn those people off pretty quickly. 33 So the man that is now my husband, on his original profile on match.com, it said that he was a republican. And that wasn’t one of my like “go-to turn them off fast” qualities, like smoking. That’s just an immediate no. So I just remember asking him, “You described yourself as a republican, tell me what that means to you?” And it turns out, that that was not a strong identity for him, and he’s actually a better democrat than I am now. But it was just one of those things where I felt like, out of all of the things that I need to make sure that we are on the same page about, this is probably not going to work if we don’t sort of play in the same ball park, politically. And I’m very grateful that we do. He’s a very good democrat. Anyhow, I think women having the right to vote, influenced that. I love my mom dearly, but she’s not political at all. And in fact, I remember when I was a kid, the way voting happened, was the form came in the mail, daddy took it, and filled it out. It was a sample, and mom took that form to the polls and voted the way daddy indicated should be voted. They were very traditional, very traditional, gender roles. My life is very different than my mom’s life at this stage. And I don’t know that her way of voting didn’t feel okay with me at the time. It was just the way things were done in our house. And that is not the way we do things now. It’s really important I think, that we know getting the right to vote is essential to our equality. And so there should be no men influencing the way we think and the way we vote. And we vote with our feet and our fingers when the polls come around, but we vote with our feet all of the time, in terms of the kinds 34 of businesses that we patronize and the kinds of causes that we champion and that sort of thing. KH: Anything else you’d like to share? DA: I don’t think so. KH: Okay great, thank you for your time.