Oral History Program Mary Ann Nielson Kristy Nielson December 1, ca. 2007 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Mary Ann Nielson Interviewed by Kristy Nielson 1 December ca. 2007 Copyright © 2015 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in University Archives. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Neilson, Mary Ann, an oral history by Kristy Nielson, 1 December ca. 2007, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Mary Ann Nielson. The interview was conducted on December 1, ca. 2007, by Kristy Nielson, in Mary Ann Nielson’s home. KN: This is Kristy Nielson interviewing Mary Ann Nielson on December 1st at Mary Ann Nielson’s home. Mary Ann, could you please tell me your birthdate and the place that you were born and the name of your parents? MN: Yes, I was born in Ogden Utah at McKay Dee Hospital; it used to be the Thomas Dee Hospital. My mother was Helen Barber and my father was Charles Richard Barber. KN: Mary Ann, what years did you attend Weber State University? MN: I attended Weber State University from the fall of 1975 until the spring of 1977. KN: What were your major and minor? MN: My major was Music, I wanted to be a high school music teacher and my minor was English. KN: What factors played into you choosing that major and minor? MN: I had always been interested in music I had always been interested in voice. I studied under Lamar Smith and Ingus Smith and actually received a scholarship to Weber State College at that time, that’s how I chose to attend it. KN: Were there any obstacles, or anything that were difficult about that major and minor? MN: The obstacle and difficult problem were that having a music minor was that you were required to take those music courses and they were every day of the week and you got one credit hour per music class. So even though you had a full 1 schedule when you took seven music classes you still in a quarter were only getting only one credit hour or a couple credit hours for every day going to a class and spending all of those hours in class. That was the draw back to that major. KN: Were you involved in any extra curricular singing activities? MN: I was part of Weber State Singers so I was involved in performing with them. It was quite expensive, especially during the holidays. But it was a lot of fun. KN: Do you have any fun stories or anything interesting happen to you while you were involved in that group? MN: We would go out and perform quite often and I remember we all became such great friends. I remember one of the students was blind but he had perfect pitch. He not only could sing his own part, but he could sing every part and one time we asked him to sing the parts of the hallelujah chorus to us. It was so funny to sit and listen to him, especially as he got to the sopranos part, but he was wonderful! He was a tenor and just had a great personality. I remember one time going up in front of Park City High School and it had just snowed the night before and the storm had just moved out. The sky was just crystal blue and it was beautiful as we went up Weber Canyon, going up to Park City. I remember he was sitting in the car with us and one of the girls said to him, “Oh Richard, you should see it, it’s just beautiful.” He asked her to describe it to him. Everything she would describe to him was in colors and we sat and laughed because he had been blind from birth. He had no idea what white was. 2 KN: You went to college during the time when gender roles were starting to change. Did you feel like that was happening at Weber State University? MN: You know, in my music classes it wasn’t a problem. There wasn’t a problem whether you were a man or a female; you were pretty much treated equally on that. I guess you were really treated according to your talent. Everyone was so talented, there didn’t seem to be a problem. One of the problems with that and I did notice with that, and I think it still exists today is that, men who go into a performing arts field are treated differently than the women are treated. That still seems to be a problem today, I don’t know why. Men should be able to share their talent just like women can. I don’t know why that makes a difference for people when a man goes into performing arts. That seemed to be the only problem. I got the impression from some of my professors that there was a problem with them and gender. Women were still kind of looked down upon and not treated equally. Especially in the Science classes, I kind of got that impression, in some of them. It was only by some professors and I never took their classes again. KN: Do you have any specific experiences? MN: I actually had taken an Environmental Science class, we had this huge paper due which ended up being part of our grade; it was a test. We had gone and taken this test and it just took forever and it was pages and pages. I had a friend that I had worked at the bank with and the two of us had taken the class together, so we became study partners. The two of us really studied for this test and worked hard on it, it was interesting because on all of the multiple choice questions I 3 didn’t miss any answers, or on the fill in the blank questions. It was just a perfect scored test, then it came to the essay and I had always been a good writer and could write essays so I felt very confident when I handed that test in that everything had gone well, as did the person that I had studied with. We had studied so hard that we felt really confident. After the Thanksgiving weekend and we went back to class he returned our tests to us. When we took a look at the tests, my partner, my friend that I had studied with, my study partner had received an A on her test. When I took a look at my test I had received a C, I couldn’t believe it, I thought “What happened?” So we looked through the test and I had not missed any on any on the multiple choices or on the fill in the blank, that portion of the test was completely scored at one hundred percent as was hers. The only difference was on the essay part, well because we had studied together, our essays were so close in the same ideas, actually mine was probably written even a little bit better, so it was just a shock to both of us. So after the class was over we went up to him and I explained to him I said, “ I just would like an explanation, I don’t understand. Because we studied together and I had her same ideas.” And his response to me was, “ I corrected these tests at various times throughout the holiday and at various times I was in various moods and when I was in various moods, various ideas struck me differently. That is the only reason Miss Barber.” I was appalled. I could not believe that he had just done that and I dropped his class. KN: Did you finish your degree at Weber State? 4 MN: I did not finish my degree at Weber State. The reason I didn’t finish my degree at Weber State is that I got married in the spring of ’77 and after that quarter was over in July we moved to Utah State so my husband could finish his schooling at Utah State. So I did not finish my degree at Weber State. KN: Overall how do you feel about your experiences that you had at weber state MN: I loved it. I thought it was great. I had great friendships I thought that the faculty was excellent, except for the case of my Environmental Science Professor, whom I would never recommend again. I thought it was great, the education I got there was wonderful. It was quality education; it was very close proximity. There is a lot to be said about being able to live at home and being able to go to school. I think that a lot of students think that they have to have the experience of living away, I actually believe that it was easier for me to study and work and still be part of my family unit and travel back and forth to Weber State. I thought it was a great experience. KN: For me as a student today, one of the greatest obstacles I have to overcome is having too many things to do. It sounds like you were working and doing things at school. How did you manage your time as you were going to college and did you feel like you had a lot of things that you were responsible for? MN: It did feel like I had a lot of things that I was responsible for. I didn’t take a class that ever went passed 12:30 at Weber State, I worked at a bank in Layton and had to be there at 1:00 pm and worked at that bank until 6:00. By the time I had balanced my cash drawer and all that, I was home by about 6:30, often times we had performances at night so I would have to back up to Weber State to do a 5 performance with Weber State Singers. That was hard, there was always a lot of homework, always a lot of practice and study because of the Fine Arts major that I was in. A lot of performance practices, so that was tough. Plus there is always the social life that you are involved with, I was heavily involved in that too. So yeah, it’s hard for young people. It amazes me that they can focus and get all the things done that they need to do. KN: Through your work I know that you have associations with Weber State still today. What are your impressions of Weber State students today? MN: I think the student population as a whole is much brighter, much more focused, much more prepared than we ever were. When I had to do a research paper, it was all done on a type writer. There were no computers, so that area took a lot longer. I also think that the quality was probably not as good as it is today. Simply because we have so many more things, and access to so much more technology that it is easier to do. So you have time versus the ability to do many things because of the technology that we have today. I would love to be able to go back and redo all of that again with the technology that I have today. I think as a whole and because I work in the education field, I think students are brighter and brighter every year. It just amazes me as they enter, even into elementary school, how much more prepared they are to do that. I see a big difference that way, so I think we can challenge our students more than we used to be able to do. KN: If you could go back and change one thing about your experience, what do you think it is that you would change? 6 MN: If I could go back and change my experience, I am not so sure I would go back into the Fine Arts field. I am not so sure I would spend all of that time with all of those classes. I don’t know that those credit hours have changed a whole lot. That is kind of sad because that is a lot of time that a person in the Performing Arts and Fine Arts field puts into those courses. I think that if I had to change it again, I would have changed probably my focus and emphasis. That was a wonderful part of my life and I have great associations with the students that I had and it actually made college wonderful and fun. It was a great experience but I think to get on with a degree would probably be more important now. So I think my focus on what I would want to do would change and I think I would focus more on a different field. KN: Have you considered going back to school and finishing a degree? If so what would you seek a degree in? MN: I would like to go back to school and finish a degree. In retrospect we sit and laugh, because as a young married couple we knew that one of us would have to work and one of us would have to go to school. Now when we take a look at it, we realize that we could have received two federal grants instead of just one. We probably couldn’t have been much poorer than we were anyway, so it was very foolish of me not to continue on and finish my degree at that point in time. So the older you get, the harder it is, it is a little intimidating because you have been away from that for so long. However, having been in education, where you know pretty much the hoops that you need to jump through, that the teachers and professors want you to jump through. I think there is an edge, and the maturity 7 has brought that edge. I think in a lot of sense that would make it a lot easier to be able to go back. If I went back to school today, I would still go into education, because I work in education and understand how important that is. I am not so sure, although I love the association with students, I have thoroughly enjoyed the technical writing part of it in writing federal grants and winning federal grants, I am not so sure that that may not be what I focus on. I would focus more on technical writing and strengthen my skills that way so that I could do that. If that happened I am not so sure I would end up in education. I would maybe end up in private business. One thing I would have an advantage in that, is that if I go into private business I certainly would make more money than I would in education. That might be a factor in what I would choose to do in the end. KN: Are there any final thoughts or feelings that you would like to express? Or anything that I haven’t asked you about that you would like to express about your college experience? MN: I don’t know that there are any final thoughts or feeling that I have. I think that if I were to express anything about college education or anything like that, I would tell my own girls this. One of the things I do with Davis School District is I am a Homeless Liaison and everyday I get phone calls from women, have yet to have one from a man, who are single parents who are homeless with children and have no skills. As I sat and listened to a mother the other day who said to me “Mary Ann, what am I going to do? What kind of job am I going to find? I have absolutely no skills.” It’s sad to think that she now has three children that she has to care for, she doesn’t have a home and she has absolutely no skills. If I were 8 ever to say anything, I am a real advocate for education for women. Whether it be a college degree, or whether it be a skill that they are trained in and learned in. It is so important for women today to be able to support a family so I am a huge advocate for education for women. I can see how devastating it can be and I see every day how devastating it is when a woman can not support her family. KN: Thank you so much for your time. MN: You’re welcome! 9