Oral History Program Gloria Z. Wurst Interviewed by Ruby Licona 17 October 2007 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Gloria Z. Wurst Interviewed by Ruby Licona Special Projects Librarian 17 October 2007 Copyright © 2007 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 Weber State University Oral History Project began conducting interviews with key Weber State University faculty, administrators, staff and students, in Fall 2007. The program focuses primarily on obtaining a historical record of the school along with important developments since the school gained university status in 1990. The interviews explore the process of achieving university status, as well as major issues including accreditation, diversity, faculty governance, changes in leadership, curricular developments, etc. ____________________________________ 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: Wurst, Gloria Z., an oral history by Ruby Licona, 17 October 2007, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Left: Gloria Z. Wurst May 2008 Below: Medicine Bow July of 2008 1 Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Gloria Z. Wurst. It was conducted October 17, 2007 by Ruby Licona. In this interview Gloria discusses her recollections and experiences with Weber State University. RL: This is an interview being held with Gloria Z. Wurst, professor emeritus at Weber State University. The interview is being held October 17, 2007 in the Waterstradt Room of the Stewart Library at Weber State University. Gloria, tell me about your background where you were born, where did you go to school and then we’ll get into your time here at Weber State. GW: I was born in central Pennsylvania and I did my undergraduate work at a small college near where I grew up in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania. It’s called Juniata College. I did my graduate work, both my masters and Ph. D. at the University of Pittsburgh. After that I moved to Colorado and worked for a time at Colorado State University and then moved on to the University of California at Berkeley, where I was employed in the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology as a researcher from 1975 to 1978 and that’s when I moved to Weber State and assumed my faculty position here in the Zoology department. RL: That was in the fall of 1978? GW: Yes. RL: What about the school attracted you? What made you come to Weber State? GW: There were a couple things that made me come to Weber State. At the time, I was married to Craig Gundy and we both loved the desert southwest and had agreed that we’d only apply for faculty positions in the Four Corner States. So we 2 were only looking at Utah, Nevada, New Mexico and Arizona. We also were looking for a position to share, a half time position for each of us. Weber was the only institution where we interviewed that was interested in us and was willing to do the half time splitting of the position. We didn’t have a formal half time split position because at that time one had to be full time to get benefits. So I assumed the faculty position, the full time faculty position, and Craig was an adjunct, but in practice we split the teaching assignment about half and half. RL: What made you want to have a split position? Did you want to have time for research, or…? GW: Well, no at the time we were considering if we were going to have a family and so we didn’t want to commit ourselves to two full time positions. We also really didn’t feel the need to have a double income. We figured a single income was plenty of money. Of course now in retrospect maybe we should have gotten two salaries, but we also were interested in it from the stand point of having free time to pursue other interests. Craig was quite interested in amateur astronomy and I liked to do all sorts of other nonacademic kinds of things. So we were interested in it from the stand point of not spending our entire time working in an individual position. RL: When you arrived here you were one of the first women in that area of the campus, in that department or in that college. GW: Yes. RL: What can you tell me about the department; in terms of what you encountered, and what the intellectual climate was in that area at the time? 3 GW: Well, when I first came to Weber in 1978 I was the second tenure track female hired in the College of Science. Helen James preceded me and she had been there at least long enough to get tenure, I’m not exactly sure how long, but she was tenured when I came. I was the first female tenure track employee in the Zoology department and I was the second non-LDS faculty member hired in the Zoology department. Carl Marti had also just gotten tenure when I was there and he was the first tenure track non-LDS faculty member in that department. RL: What about in the college? GW: In the college as a whole I know I was the second woman, but I don’t really remember too much about who was in the other departments at this point. The faculty was predominately LDS at that time, certainly, and there were maybe, I would say a handful maybe five or fewer non-LDS faculty members across the college, but I really don’t remember exactly who was on the faculty in other departments when I came in ‘78. RL: What was the intellectual climate in the department? GW: The intellectual climate was a very interesting one. I had some faculty members who were very, very supportive and the climate in the department in terms of expecting people to do research or, I don’t want to say tolerating, but having some one who was at least not opposed to idea that you do something outside of the classroom. It was generally quite supportive. Carl had already a well established research program and had gotten some extra mural funding. If he hadn’t gotten extra mural funding he’d certainly gotten support. He was very active and did a lot of presentations and was active in his discipline outside of the 4 department. So he was a good person as kind of a role model. Other faculty members in the department were not very heavily engaged in research. I sort of took a middle ground between Carl and the majority of the other faculty members, some of whom didn’t do any research at all. But then the expectation, the research expectation, was not nearly as high as it is now. I had some people who were quite supportive and other people who were, let’s just say less supportive. I don’t want to say obstructionist, but just not cooperative. RL: Was that, do you think, because they didn’t want the bar to be raised so that they’d have to go over it? GW: One’s tempted to do that and to say that and that idea that someone would be routed out of their comfortable existence certainly is not outside the realm of possibility. It wasn’t something that was really talked about. And the whole issue of why, why someone was opposed to the idea that came up was never discussed openly. It was primarily just a reverting to tradition, “you know you don’t have to do that, it’s not an expectation,” etc. RL: Without asking you to divide people into camps or anything who were some of your collogues other than Carl Marti and how would you describe their activities? GW: Carl was, as I said, the most actively involved in research. Dave Havertz was on the faculty at that time and Dave had a research program that I know existed, but I really can’t tell you much about it. I can’t tell you specifically what he was doing. I don’t think he did much in the way of publication or presentation, but he did have some research interests and he had pursued some research projects. Neil Jensen had been involved in research; primarily on mammalian 5 population genetics and he had done some research on the islands of the Great Salt Lake in the past. He still had a research lab and might have been doing some summer time research in the lab. I don’t think he did much field research although he led students on a field biology trip to Southern Utah in the springtime. Whether he incorporated any of that into his research program or not, I don’t think so. I didn’t see much evidence that he was doing a lot of presenting or publishing. Then Earl Jenne was our vertebrate zoologist at the time and Earl did a tremendous amount of service type activities in terms of providing expertise to museums and forensic investigations. He was a comparative anatomist and he would frequently be called on to tell somebody whether or not a bone that they found was human remains or something else, etc. He did a lot of preparation of skeletal material for the collection at Weber State and other places as well, so he was doing a lot of what might be scholarly activity, but it was primarily aimed at service, a service aspect rather than anything that was involved in publication. Then there was Emron Jensen. Emron was department chair when I was hired although he stepped down from that position and Earl Smart was chair during the early part of my tenure at Weber State. Emron did not do any research as far as I know. He was always involved in teaching. He was very involved in service related to his church and I know he was a singer, and was involved in some choral activities. He was a member of the Ogden Community Choir for awhile. I don’t know exactly what the status of that was when I first came, but in my early years he was very much involved in that sort of activity. 6 Let’s see, Earl Smart had done some research in the past, although he was not actively involved in research at the time. He primarily taught and did quite a bit of on campus committee work and also some service kinds of activities. Bert Winterton was heavy into teaching. He taught huge, a hundred plus sections of his introduction heredity course, so his prime commitment was teaching. I’m trying to remember if there were any other faculty members that I missed. I believe there were eight of us at the time, and I’ve gotten Carl, Earl, Earl, Emron, Neil, me and Burt that’s seven. I must have missed somebody. Dave. Dave, and I mentioned Dave as well. So I think I’ve made comments on the folks who were there when I first came. Darrell Graff was there when I was hired. He taught other sections of the human physiology course that I taught on a regular basis, as well as upper division sections of the human physiology courses. He did research on nutritional requirements, in conjunction with one or more companies in town, but I never knew exactly what it was. He wasn’t very forthcoming, at least to me, about his research. I think he had done presentations and publications on it in the past, but his level of activity was decreased in the years that we were both on the faculty. RL: What about the ambiance in general on campus? What was that like? GW: Very, very friendly, at least in terms of the kinds of superficial interactions that you have with most of your colleagues on campus, when you’re on committees etc. I don’t recall any real uncomfortable situations. In my general interactions on campus, everybody seemed to be quite friendly. Again the campus was not 7 oriented towards research as it is now. It was obviously primarily a teaching institution, and there were some people who did research but it was, I would say, probably less than a third of the faculty in general. I can’t really speak, especially in the early years, to much outside the college of science because, until I really got involved, got out of the tenure track, tenure race etc., I was primarily focused on the college of science. RL: How difficult was it being new to campus and new to Ogden to form social relationships and have people with whom to take part in social activities? GW: Well you’re talking to somebody that’s not particularly enthusiastic about those kinds of activities, so for me it wasn’t that difficult at all. I was married to Craig when I first came, and we were married for another five or so years. We divorced in ’84, so in those first years a lot of our interactions were with someone I happened to meet or somebody he happened to meet. He was also involved in astronomy, so we met some people as a result of that. Shortly after I came to campus I met Joe Dixon and Joe was a, I don’t want to say a center or anything of the social activities, but he certainly introduced me to a lot of people and as a result of the introductions that I got from Joe I had a lot of interactions with other people on campus, especially outside the College of Science. RL: You mentioned that you were one of the few people who was non-LDS and I was just wondering if that had anything to do with outside activities or the lack thereof. GW: Not really. In terms of my general lifestyle, I probably looked a lot like a LDS faculty member because I didn’t do any drinking much, a little bit here and there. I didn’t smoke and I didn’t go out much at night, so I probably looked pretty much 8 like everybody else who was surrounding me, or maybe less so, because they were probably going out to activities associated with their wards and I was just staying home. RL: How do you compare your experiences coming here to your experiences as a new person on other campuses that you arrived at? GW: My only other significantly long term interaction on a campus was when I was at Berkeley for three years. RL: And we really can’t compare Berkeley to Weber now can we? GW: We can’t, no. I mean Berkeley was an incredibly open and welcoming environment. Incredibly exciting intellectually, very stimulating research wise and so it’s a whole different world. RL: And at that time already had over 25,000 students. GW: The other thing about Berkeley was I actually chose to leave Berkeley when I did because I found myself caught up in a lifestyle that meant very long days at work everyday, pretty much everyday of the week. I didn’t want to end up heading down that road because I was either too lazy or was just interested in having other aspects to my life besides the academic. And that’s honestly one of the reasons why I didn’t want to be in an institution like Berkeley, because it is so easy to get caught up in that whole thing and just run yourself into the ground doing that sort of thing and never doing anything else. RL: Colorado State, of course, is larger than Weber State, just because of the nature of it being a state university with an agricultural college and so forth. But I think I would compare the atmosphere more with Colorado State than that at Berkeley, 9 because Berkeley was so much more international. GW: Right. My year or part of a year that I was at Colorado State was a very interrupted time period. I was there for a month and a half and then we left and went to Texas for three months because Craig had to do army officer basic training and then we came back to Colorado State. RL: So you didn’t really get to know it that well. GW: I didn’t really know it that well, although I did run into some very enthusiastic and encouraging faculty members there. And I would say that in terms of welcoming environments, the most welcoming environment was Berkeley. Then probably the second most was Colorado State, although the experience wasn’t long term and then Weber. Then my graduate work at the University of Pittsburg at least in my major professor’s lab, was quite the old fashioned academic model of the separation of the levels, so the graduate students called the major professor doctor so and so, etc. RL: It’s funny how different schools are. GW: You know, you never can dissect out the time from the place. And individuals are so different. There were other faculty at Pitt that were quite different from my major professor and so much less formal about the relationship between graduate students and faculty members. So it varies. RL: And of course Juniata was quite a bit smaller than Weber State. GW: Juniata was very small. There were just a little over a thousand students when I graduated. So it’s quite a small place. RL: Small, but powerful, because don’t they have one of the big undergraduate 10 research programs? GW: They do have a big undergraduate research program right now. That was not in existence, of course, when I was there. I also went through my undergraduate studies in three years so didn’t… RL: Didn’t pay much attention to what was around you? GW: Yeah, I was in the choir and I was in the band and orchestra but other than that I was pretty much just doing my school work. RL: You mentioned that you had a lot of outside interests other than your work and research. What other kinds of activities did you undertake while you were here at Weber? GW: I liked exploring the desert southwest. So we did quite a bit of traveling in Utah and other places as well. I just liked to be outside and I like to do photography so I did a lot of landscape kind of photography and also a lot of microphotography of flowers and things like that. Photography was a really strong interest of mine. From the time I was an undergraduate I was interested in photography. I also just enjoyed some of the typical things our generation was raised to do, like knitting and crocheting and those kinds of things, hand work sort of things. What else did I do? Canning, especially when I moved here and had access to lots of good fruits and vegetables. I did a lot of canning. And reading, always spent quite a bit of time reading. RL: You mentioned the Ogden Community Choir. When did you join that? GW: I didn’t join the Ogden Community Choir until probably sometime in the mid ‘90’s. RL: I know that you’ve been a part of the Weber State Women’s Book Club for a 11 long time. When did you join that, or were you one of the charter members? GW: Yes, I was one of the first people who was involved because I was also one of the first female faculty members. Then Women’s Study Reading Group started right about the time the program did and it started with the motivation that we were organizing a Women’s Studies program and no one in it had any formal Women’s Studies training. We thought perhaps it might be a good idea to look into the literature as a group. RL: And that was in 1991 wasn’t it? GW: Right. RL: You were part of the ad hoc committee that GW: I honestly don’t remember if I was part of the committee or just one of the people who frequently went to the meetings. I may not have been a committee member. Its just one of those things. RL: I think it was ad hoc and any one that went to the meetings was considered a member. GW: Well if that’s the case then I was a member but I didn’t consider myself to be integrally involved. RL: Were you one of the first people to teach classes in the program? GW: I was because even before the program was in existence, I taught a course in the Honors Program called Women’s Perspectives in Biology, and as a result of that, it was one of the first courses that was cross listed for Women’s Studies. It’s an obvious choice of a cross listed course that was specifically directed at looking at women’s issues and women’s history in terms of science. 12 RL: And in general your area was human biology. GW: Well my teaching area was general human biology. RL: What was your research area? GW: My research area was amphibians and reptiles. Primarily reptiles when I came here, and then amphibians. But when I came here to accept a teaching position the two meat and bread, what are they called not meat and bread, the primary courses for the position… RL: Meat and potatoes? GW: Meat and potatoes okay, whatever it is. [Laughter] Maybe I like bread better than potatoes, that’s why I said meat and bread. But anyway, the two primary courses for that position were human physiology and human anatomy. And interestingly enough, I was certainly not the only person that was a herpetologist who was teaching those courses. I actually had a couple of friends who were herpetologists whose primary teaching responsibility was human anatomy and human physiology. So there is something about herpetologists and those courses that seem to go together. But anyway that was my primary teaching responsibility. My research was primarily on reptiles when I came. But I had done a lot of work at Berkeley with amphibian population genetics, salamanders specifically, with Dave Wake. When I came here I was on a committee with (gosh I can see his face I can’t say his name. He just recently died, he was in child and family studies), but he mentioned to me that there was a cave that had salamanders in it and that cave was accessible by climbing down into it, by rappelling down into 13 it. I learned to rappel so I could go down in the cave and look for salamanders. And that got me started on a general population genetics study of tiger salamanders in Utah, mostly in this area. Then that expanded with a colleague at UC Davis, Brad Shaffer, to wider studies in Utah. Arizona would have been included, but the northern corner of Arizona didn’t have any sites that were of interest to us. So it was primarily Colorado, New Mexico and Utah that we did our studies in. RL: How did herpetology and salamanders develop into Women’s Perspectives on Biology? GW: I have no idea. Except that I was reading a lot about women scientists in the past and their contributions. I was also reading a lot of articles about, and hearing presentations, about the differences in the way women approach research versus the way men approach research. Those things were of interest to me and I had accumulated a fairly good body of literature on the topic. I proposed this course as part of the Honors Program, because I think they had a generic course at the time that had something like perspectives in the title, so I turned it into a course called Women’s Perspective in Biology and we read Ruth Hubbard and we read some of the works about Rosalind Franklin and her work with DNA. So just an assortment of things like that, and I had gathered quite a library on these, either biographies of women in science or text books that were addressing what difference it makes to be a women in science versus a man in science. That’s how the perspectives course came about. RL: And because of that you were kind of recruited into the Women’s Studies 14 program. You were what, the second coordinator? GW: I was the second coordinator. Kathryn (McKay) was the first. I took over from Kathryn. Diane (Krantz) followed me, and then Sandra (Powell), and then Maria (de Kokal), and then Becky (Johns). RL: I can remember some heated discussions at faculty senate meetings. The program’s gone on for quite awhile now hasn’t it? GW: It has. RL: Sixteen years is a pretty good record. What were your experiences as coordinator or as an administrator, a female administrator on campus? Did you run into a lot of brick walls or road blocks? GW: Again, I had different perspective on being an administrator than many people do. I did it out of a sense of duty that I felt I had to give something back since I’d been treated fairly well. I also wanted to relieve Kathryn of that burden because she was in the process of going through tenure reviews. So I said, enough is enough and somebody has to take over for you so I suppose I will. I didn’t approach it from the stand point of looking at it as a career ladder step. It was just something that I had to do for three years, because I felt it was my responsibility. I wasn’t looking to develop myself as an administrator or to make inroads in any way to higher positions. I just wanted to go back to the field, the lab and the class room as soon as it was over. RL: But it was still a fairly new program. Were there problems in trying to keep it afloat, or having it developed? GW: Yeah, one of the biggest problems with the Weber State Women’s Studies 15 Program is that it has no official faculty positions. So everyone who taught for the program had a primary responsibility to an academic department and having that primary responsibility to an academic department, especially if you were nontenured faculty member, meant that anything you did in any big way could ultimately be held against you because it took time away from what you were doing otherwise. Now did anybody actually experience that, that’s hard to know. You have to talk to other individual faculty members, because at the time I was coordinator of Women’s Studies, I was tenured so I didn’t have to do anything else, and I felt pretty secure. I think that feeling of being secure academically might have made me a little more mouthy and assertive than I would have been otherwise. If I found a situation that I thought a road block was being thrown up. I usually called the person on it and said “Let’s figure out what’s really going on and see what we can do.” I also have a tendency personally, I’ve done this since I was in high school, to not delegate and to do things myself. It was one of those positions, where that really came in handy and the position really played on that aspect of my personality. If I needed to do something I usually did it myself and that was helpful in many ways, but it also limited what I could have accomplished if I had been a better delegator. But again, as I said, its very hard to ask people who don’t have academic security to become terribly invested in something when it could be held against them later on. RL: And, it is hard to delegate to people who are essentially volunteering. GW: Right, and who are nowhere near you physically because the Women’s Studies 16 office wasn’t particularly close to faculty offices of people who were involved in the program. RL: How was your interaction with the students in Women’s Studies? GW: That interaction was, in general, fine. I can’t remember exactly how many students we had at that time, but the number of students in our courses was relatively small. We did semester conversion right after I finished, and I did a lot of the restructurings of the course. But at that point we didn’t have any courses that were Gen. Ed. and we didn’t have large enrollment in our courses. So the people who were teaching the students usually had the primary interaction with them. We would have occasional get-togethers where some students would show up. And, of course, if there were students who were graduating, then I met with those students to review course work etc. etc. But we didn’t have, again probably partly because of the lack of a unit of faculty that belonged exclusively to Women’s Studies, we didn’t have a lot of things that brought people together, either students or faculty in one place. RL: So it was a different environment, say from your interaction with the students in the Honors Program, because they do seem to have a lot of camaraderie and mentoring. GW: Yeah. Although the Honors Program was not quite that cohesive at that point either. And one of the things that really made a big difference for the Honors Program was their ability to secure some external funding that allowed them to really make themselves a home, and to have some more set activities that will support the interaction of students with each other. There was also, at that point, 17 a much larger number of Honor’s students then there were Women’s Studies students, and many of them were the same students. Many of the students who were in Women’s Studies were also Honor’s students. RL: How would assess your interaction with the Weber students in your science classes? GW: I had much more interaction with those students because I usually had them longer. When I was coordinator, except for one semester and a summer course, I really didn’t teach that much in the program; I did the administrative things and I taught my science courses, but I really didn’t teach that much in the Women’s Studies program. Whereas my science courses, because of the nature of them, I would often encounter students more than once, in more than one course. In the science building, because it’s a place where people tend to congregate I tended to see them more often both inside and outside of class than I saw the Women’s Studies students. RL: But even in the College of Science the classes were fairly small weren’t they? GW: It depends. RL: I’m thinking of my Berkeley classes where you sat in Wheeler Hall with 800 other students. GW: No, the largest science courses were a little more than a hundred students and change. Some of the rooms hold more than a hundred, but mostly the large classes were a hundred students. RL: And then the upper level courses are smaller aren’t they? GW: The upper level courses are generally twenty, thirty. Some of the upper division 18 courses that don’t get taught very often that are of less general interest may have ten or twelve students in them, something like that. RL: Is Weber the only place you’ve taught? GW: Weber is the only place I taught. RL: You didn’t have any T. A. responsibilities at Pitt? GW: Well I was a T. A. at Pitt, but that involved just doing laboratories. I didn’t really teach any. I might have done three or four lectures, filling in on occasion when someone was gone, but for the most part everything was teaching labs. I was either a teaching assistant or a research assistant. A lot of times I was a research assistant. RL: So you wouldn’t really have a way of comparing Weber students, or maybe colleagues, with an experience elsewhere? GW: No and there’s so much space and so much time in between. I would say that some of the best and brightest and most enthusiastic students I’ve encountered have been at Weber, and some of the biggest drags have also been at Weber, so it runs the gamut. RL: Soup to Nuts? GW: That’s it exactly, it’s the whole thing. And a lot of times some of the students that I met at Weber who were really, really struggling were struggling simply because they were young and inexperienced and had unrealistic expectations. And I can’t fault them for that, because when I was going through college in three years, I was young and stupid and had unrealistic expectations. I guess that’s why I can identify with those students, because I was pretty stupid myself when I was 19 eighteen. RL: Limited world views. And speaking of world views, I’m not sure where most of the international students at Weber State reside in terms of colleges. Did you have a lot of international students in science? GW: At the time that I was teaching there, especially in the middle of my teaching experience, we had a fairly large number of Middle Eastern students. I remember one zoology major in particular that I was very interested in and tried to encourage, a young Native American women, who ultimately went on to medical school at the University of Utah. Wanted to go back and be and M.D. on the reservation. I know that she graduated in her medical school class, but I’m not exactly sure what happened to her after that. Let’s see any other, the occasional Asian student. Not many African or African American students, every once in awhile you’d have one, but not many. RL: What about your recollections of Weber chief administrators? Presidents, provosts, deans, etc? Who was dean when you came here, the dean of the College of Science? GW: Garth Welch was dean at that point. He was dean for a few years, and I can’t reconstruct the exact dates. He was dean for awhile and then, I’m trying to remember if there was anybody after him and before Cy McKell came, I don’t think so. And Helen was acting, or interim dean for awhile. Oh Dennis, Dennis, Dennis, he was a botanist. He was here for a very short time and I think he preceded Cy McKell. And then I think that Helen as an interim, preceded Cy also, and then Dale Ostlie became dean after that. 20 RL: Wasn’t Ron up there? GW: Oh Ron Galli, yes he was there. RL: He was there for quite awhile wasn’t he? GW: Yes, Ron was there for awhile. Yes, he’s such a fixture. He’s been on campus since I first came here. I forgot him. Sorry Ron. [Laughter] RL: Did the atmosphere in the college change as you had different administrators? GW: It did. Although there was, I think, I don’t know if it was happening already when I came here, but it strikes me that there was, at some point not long after I came here, kind of a big change where the faculty really started to say it’s important to do research. It’s important to get students involved in research. Then began that transition to a situation where the dean may make the decision and the people who are in science now may argue with this, especially since they don’t have the history that I have. But, it seems to me that there was an environment where the dean became more of a coordinator than had been the case in the past, that there was less of hierarchical set of interactions among faculty, chairs and the dean. Maybe I’m just being optimistic and maybe I don’t remember that well since I retired almost five years ago now. RL: Well no, I think that in the late 80’s early 90’s there was big push for team organization. I think a lot of departments tended to go that way and people started to speak up a little bit more. But you’re saying that the trend towards more research was more of a grassroots kind of thing. GW: I think it was. RL: Rather than a top down kind of decision. 21 GW: It definitely was not a top down decision. It had to do with hiring increasing numbers of faculty members who were interested in pursuing research programs and the availability of intra and extra mural funding for research. Or people like me who did research projects that didn’t cost very much so you didn’t need a whole lot of funding one way or the other. So I think it was certainly not a dean saying you will do research now. It was more faculty members saying I’m doing research now somebody pay attention and make adjustments. RL: When did the faculty vitality grants and RSPG start? Was that in the 80’s? GW: RSPG was around for quite awhile. I started getting RS&PG grants, oh my goodness I would say, in the 80’s, sometime in the 80’s. The faculty vitality grants are newer. The Hemingway family made that endowment or whatever it was later on. But RS&PG was around, and one of the nice things about being involved in research was that there was not that much competition for the RS&PG money. Even though there wasn’t very much, you could be guaranteed to get some if you applied for it. RL: Was it the changing provosts that maybe had something to do with it? GW: That could have been because Bob Smith was certainly very, when he came as academic VP, enthusiastic about that. But again, I can’t remember exactly the timing. I would say that if it was not coincident with his coming it’s almost like the whole environment, the Weber State karma changed in such a way that it was more open to that kind of idea. So whether or not that had something to do with Bob’s being hired in the first place or Bob’s hiring tended to generate that kind of environment, I’m not sure. 22 RL: He was already in place when I arrived in January of 90, I don’t know how much prior to that he was in place. GW: And I really don’t remember either when he came. I tend to remember the presidents more than I remember the academic VP. So I can’t I don’t really remember when he came. RL: Nadauld was in place when I arrived and Bob was already the academic VP. GW: When I was hired, Rod Brady was hired, so we came in the same year. So he was the first president that I really knew. RL: And how long was he in place? GW: Was it seven or eight years? RL: Okay, about ‘85 or ‘86. GW: Yes something like that. RL: Was there someone between him and Nadauld? GW: I don’t know. Sorry Ruby I don’t remember. RL: No that’s quite alright, I just didn’t know if having them made a difference. GW: Would our Centennial History tell us who was president? RL: It might. But I was just curious whether the different presidents had made a difference in the environment. So you don’t feel that there was much of a difference as far as the different provosts, but did the different presidents make a change in the atmosphere. GW: Not to me in the classroom and not in my research. A lot of my research I did in collaboration with other people in labs where there was money. I would have my various sugar daddies for each project, so I would go to a lab that was doing 23 something of interest to me and do my research there and come back and teach here. In terms of what I was teaching in the classroom, the administration made very little difference. When Brady was here and I was just starting out, and he was just starting out, he had the master teacher thing, so that was inspirational to a young faculty member. RL: That’s still going isn’t it? GW: Well, he is the one that originally started it. RL: So there have been a lot of changes in the last fifty years, and there were some key events that took place while you were here on the faculty. Of course they were already on this campus when you arrived, but what about the four year school. They were just changing over, or was that already in place? GW: That preceded me, so I don’t know by how much. RL: But you were here when it changed to a University in the early ‘90’s. Did you feel that there was much of a change that came around because of that? GW: I did not feel that there was much of a change because basically, my entire academic time at Weber, I just did what I thought I should do as a faculty member and tried to take advantage of opportunities that were presented and tried to make them available to other people when I thought there was an option to do that. But the other things that were happening had very little impact. The only thing was that when we became Weber State University when I would do my posters and when I would go to meetings I would usually run out of U’s and T’s because it was Wurst, w-u-r-s-t and then it was Weber State University and University is a lot longer than college. 24 RL: So I would say the worst thing you ran into was running out of T’s and U’s for university. [Laughter] GW: Yes, the biggest problem I had when we turned from college to university was it was harder to put the institutions name on my posters when I went to meetings. And then there was always the joke, of course, of what are we gonna do with all this old letter head. You know, it seems like a waste to throw all this paper away. RL: A lot of scratch paper I guess. GW: We weren’t recycling much in those days. RL: But then we changed from regular W to a flaming W and there was more stationary gone. GW: Flaming kinds of things go on periodically. RL: Now, you mentioned earlier, semester conversion. Did you notice any change really? GW: I hate semesters. [Laughter] I fought it, you know. Well I won’t say that I fought against semesters because it was pretty obvious that it was going to happen. RL: That’s the way the legislature wanted it to go. GW: Yeah, and so there wasn’t a whole lot of use in screaming and crying and tearing your hair, but semesters was one of the reasons I decided to retire early, because I hated semesters. My mother was another major consideration in my retiring early, but I hated having to teach on the semester calendar. And when we did the semester conversion, when we were preparing for it, I was coordinator of Women’s Studies. We had to rework the Women’s Studies curriculum and do all the proposals, and go through all the committees for the coursework for 25 Women’s Studies. So that was a major hassle and then there was the paper work that was involved in converting the zoology courses over to semesters as well. The other thing that was a real bugaboo about semesters that many people disliked, and I will say that this is coming specifically from a science perspective, and that is that we were able to offer far fewer courses. We had much less freedom in terms of what we could actually offer course work wise, especially upper division courses once we went to semesters, That’s a drag because if you have a particular kind of course you like to teach and you can’t teach it any more, that’s kind of a downer for any faculty member regardless of discipline. RL: On, you teach it but you can’t get the enrollment. GW: Sometimes you can’t even teach it because there’s no time, there’s no space in the schedule for it. In other words, there were some upper division courses we taught on a fairly regular basis that had to go by the wayside when we went to semesters because there was simply no time to put them in the semester calendar. So they either had to be reworked or incorporated into other courses. RL: And now they’re talking about trimesters, how do you think that will go? GW: Pitt was on trimesters when I was a graduate student and so I taught under trimester calendar before, and that’s not so bad. It doesn’t drag on forever like semesters. It does give you a little bit more time otherwise in terms of comparing it to quarters, but I’ve always said that I’m kind of a one-night-stand kinda gal. I like things to happen fast and then not happen again. [Laughter] So I like the ten week quarters, they were really ideal for me. RL: Yes. Well it goes in and out of style though, because when I was at Berkeley we 26 went from semesters to quarters and then I think they switched back. GW: Yeah, they’re back. Most of the UC system is back, but the University of California Davis fought like crazy and they’re still on quarters. RL: It wreaks havoc with your brain once you get into a certain rhythm and things change. GW: Yes, and people who have never experienced anything but semesters are much more comfortable with semesters, but that’s just way too long of a commitment for me. RL: Now what about as a senior faculty member? I’m sure you were invited to serve on a lot of committees and groups that were necessary evils so to speak. Were you part of the big strategic planning committee? GW: No, I escaped strategic planning. I don’t remember exactly how I did that, it might have something to do with sabbatical leaves, because I took every sabbatical leave that I could when I was on the faculty. So, I might have been away from campus at the time the whole thing was starting. The only big campus wide thing beyond semester conversion was the centennial celebration. I was on the main university committee for the centennial celebration and then as part of that committee I was liaison to the College of Science Committee. RL: What kinds of positions did you hold as far as the faculty senate? GW: I was a faculty senate member. And I was on a couple of different, well I was on, the committee names have all changed. I was on the appointment, promotion and dismissal committee is what I think it was called at that point. I was on the RS&PG committee a couple of times. I just don’t remember what others, I was on 27 a few other faculty senate committees but I actually managed to hide from the faculty senate quite effectively. RL: But then you got Women’s Studies. GW: Then I got Women’s Studies. RL: That brings up a question I have regarding diversity issues. When we were talking about the different presidents, my perspective on things was that things did change when President Thompson was here in terms of diversity issues and a more openness to those kinds of things. What would be your perspective? GW: I think that’s true in terms of visibility issues. I came from a department though that, once there was a, once they opened the barn door, things changed dramatically. So, actually even before or around the time that Thompson came we had a department that had four women faculty in it, and one of the women was African American. So we were in a, we as a department were kind of a little microcosm that was gradually becoming more and more diverse with each faculty hire. RL: But didn’t that particular faculty member have a problem on campus because of her race? GW: She did. And it wasn’t with the university administration or with faculty, but workers who were on campus. RL: Construction workers, yes. But I think that that was fairly well taken care of pretty rapidly wasn’t it? GW: I think so. I never really did talk to her specifically about it, but I don’t remember any major backlash or anything of that sort, in terms of what she was doing. 28 From the standpoint of diversity, it is something that I have wanted to achieve for a long time. So, in the Zoology Department whenever there was an opportunity to ally with other people who were interested in that I would do that. I would try to push for more diversity in the Zoology Department. At one point it was this lovely little Camelot, this little eight or nine person Camelot, but it was a very nice environment. I didn’t feel that strain quite as much as some other places on campus might have felt it. RL: No, I believe that there have been changes. I think you do see more students of color on campus, more international students. I know for awhile we had that JAL, Japan Airlines, contract and we had a lot of young women here studying English. But now I see more and more Middle Eastern students. I see more things like the Muslim Student Association and their dinner. For a long time we had things like the Hispanic/Latino community having dinners and so forth, but the Ramadan, end of Ramadan dinner this year on campus was significant. And, of course, I’ve been involved with the diversity conference for several years, and those ideas change over the years. I was just wondering since you were such a trend setter in sciences. [Laughter] GW: Well the trend wasn’t always popular, but I tried. RL: Are there other particular things that you remember about your time here or things that you’d like to point out or discuss? What’s your most significant memory of your time at Weber State? GW: My most significant memory. That’s a good question. Retirement was nice. I don’t know that I can actually pick out one thing that was extremely significant in terms 29 of a Weber State event or whatever. Retirement, of course, was a very significant event. RL: You had a couple of awards while you were here, didn’t you? GW: I did have a couple of awards. I tend to forget awards. RL: But your momma was very proud of you. GW: Yes, I got a Hemingway, not a Hemingway why can’t I say it. Well I’ve had Hemingway faculty vitality awards, but I’m trying to say I was a, I forgot what it was, see how important awards are to me? RL: When they were doing the service, teaching and scholarship? GW: That’s the one I can’t remember, Hinckley. I was a Hinckley Fellow. So that was a significant award. RL: Now the Hinckley Fellow that’s on the par with the distinguished faculty award now? GW: Yeah, probably, probably. RL: I thought it was significant that in its second year we had a woman recipient of that particular award. GW: Actually it wasn’t the second year, oh you mean the recent one. RL: The recent award that was developed. GW: Yes. I think I might have been the third Hinckley Fellow. I can’t remember. Gene Sessions had one and Sam Zeveloff got one. Mine might have been the third Hinckley Fellow. And then I got the occasional teaching award here and there. RL: Recognition for your scholarship or teaching? GW: Mostly teaching. Most of them were teaching awards. And of course the 30 involvement in the Honors Program was nice. I really enjoyed my involvement in the Honors Program before the Women’s Studies program. And the women’s, actually having the Women’s Studies Program approved and developing it was significant. RL: That’s a big memory maker isn’t it? GW: A big memory maker, yeah. So that was a very significant event on campus. Also, I thought it would be good to emphasize the importance to me of the women’s groups in which I participated- the Ladies’ Libation League, including the faculty women from across campus, and Weber’s Wonderful Women of Science, including Helen James, the science secretaries and female lab managers, and me. Meeting with them occasionally gave me a chance to participate in some collective “deep breathing” in a familiar and supportive environment. RL: So those were some highs were there any lows? GW: Oh yeah. There was some of those early tenure letters that made you go “what do you mean” when you see that. And in my afternoon meditations I committed murder several times, but luckily it was only in my afternoon meditations. But it was mostly, most of those lows were simply experiences where I thought everyone was kind of behind what I was doing, and then I suddenly had to make the realization that that was not necessarily the case. That I was a little ahead of my support level. RL: Did that lead to detrimental effects on you as a researcher? GW: No I was just ticked off you know. 31 RL: So you just committed murder in your dreams. GW: Yeah, that’s right. RL: Got beyond it GW: Yeah, get rid of the offender in your dreams and then you can go on. RL: And then you come to work and they’re still here. GW: Yeah, but they have a different aura. RL: A different aura, yes okay. Any regrets about having come to Weber State? GW: No, none whatsoever. My time as a faculty member at Weber State was wonderful. In general, I would say it was wonderful. I never wanted particularly to be somewhere else because I had my involvement in regular meetings and doing research in other places during the summer. I would talk to other people who were in other kinds of positions and discover that the little niggling things about the students at Weber State were exactly the same little niggling things about students elsewhere. And I never really wanted to be a great researcher and have all this research funding. I just wanted to study my salamanders or my lizards at the moment and discover fun things about them. There was nothing about my experience at Weber State that disappointed me in terms of choosing it as a career path. I thought it was perfect for me. It was just perfect for me. RL: And, of course, Ogden is pretty much home, isn’t it? GW: It is. It is pretty much home. RL: I know that in my experience I’ve always seen you viewed as a highly respected member of the faculty here. GW: That’s good to know. 32 RL: A highly respected member of the community and I’ve certainly enjoyed my interactions with you. GW: Well that means I’ve kept the appropriate things under the table. [Laughter] RL: Then I guess we’ve done a good job of either under the table or swept them under the rug, huh? GW: Yeah. RL: Thank you for your time and we’ll be back in touch and let you review this. GW: Okay. RL: If you think of anything else you would like to add to the record just feel free to let me know. GW: And if you think, as you review it, think of anything else that you want me to respond to, I’m happy to do that as well. RL: Thank you very much, appreciate your time and energies. GW: Appreciate you so much.