Oral History Program Heather Wokurka Interviewed by Kandice Harris 20 September 2019 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Heather Wokurka Interviewed by Kandice Harris 20 September 2019 Copyright © 2022 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: Wokurka, Heather, an oral history by Kandice Harris, 20 September 2019, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Heather Wokurka Circa 2015 Heather Wokurka 20 September 2019 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Heather Wokurka, conducted on September 20, 2019 in the Stewart Library’s Archives Conference Room, by Kandice Harris. Heather 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: I understand. Today is September 20, 2019, we are doing an interview with Heather Wokurka. Kandice Harris is doing the interview and Alexis Stokes is filming. When and where were you born? HW: I was born in 1972 on a U.S. airbase in Okinawa, Japan. KH: Would you talk a little bit about your early life and some historical background? HW: Sure. I’m a military brat. Both of my parents were in the Air force. My mother was required to get out of the Air force once she became pregnant with me, but she still holds on to that thought process. So we’ve traveled quite a bit actually, my father didn’t retire from the Air force until my senior year in high school. And so I’ve been all over the place. I’ve been to many different schools and many different countries. I think it’s where I got my interest in history and traveling. So I’ve managed to make it to five of the seven continents so far. I’ve been to a lot of different places, from the pyramids in Egypt to the London Tower and from the Middle East to Alaska. So yeah. KH: Wow. 2 HW: Yeah, so that kind of gives me a different perspective on a lot of things. Having to move around quite a bit, I needed to learn to adjust my thinking because everywhere I went to was slightly different than the place that I had been to before. Everybody is going to be able to understand me if I say this or if I do this. That’s not how that works when you go to a completely separate country. So I did learn to adjust a bit more, I think, as well as just the history and the traveling. Being able to visit different places. KH: Are you an only child? Do you have a lot of siblings? HW: I’m the eldest of three. I have a younger brother and sister. KH: Were you encouraged to pursue an education? HW: I’ll say that I wasn’t discouraged. I think the fact that I already had that sort of thing as a personality trait, that I enjoyed learning. Which is part of the history and the traveling, right? So I think maybe my parents didn’t consider it necessary to actually explicitly say, “Hey, you need to be going.” Right? Until, I got out of high school and then it was, “Okay, what are you going to do now? Maybe you should go to college.” But no, in general they just kind of went along with whatever it was I was already doing. KH: Why did you choose to attend Weber State University? HW: A couple of reasons, mainly though, for the people. I had visited a couple of different campuses when I decided to go to college. And my interactions with the people there at the other campuses were not as… how to put this? It just didn’t feel right, I guess. Let’s go with that. And I came to Weber and it was like, “Hi, 3 how are you?” You know, and I was like, “Oh okay, yeah, I can deal with this.” While the other campuses were kind of more aloof and standoffish. But also Weber State was willing to take a lot of my military credits. After high school I did do a little bit of college but then decided to join the Air Force on active duty, and that’s actually what brought me out to Utah, was the Air Force. And so once I decided to leave the Air Force and go to college, Weber State took some of the college credits that the Air Force had given me. And so it was easier to start in the program and finish. But it mostly was the people. KH: How long were you in the Air Force? HW: Technically I’m still in. I did 8 ½ years of active duty. When I decided to go to school, I got off of active duty and joined the reserves. And so I am still in a reserve squadron here at Hill Air Force Base. KH: What is it like being a woman in the military? HW: My opinion is obviously going to be slightly different than everyone else’s because I’ve been in the military technically since my birth. But it’s still very much a culture shock I think. There aren’t a lot of women in the armed services. I think the Air Force and the Navy had the most, in terms of percentage. But it’s still somewhere around 20% of the Air Force. And so my interactions are primarily with men, right? So it’s a different way of talking, it’s a different way of thinking. It’s a different way of explaining yourself as to what you’re trying to do. But I think the military has an advantage in that—at least if you think about it from the pure aspect of what the military is designed to do. Military is all about 4 uniformity. It’s about getting a job done, and as long as you don’t bring in personal preferences in the stereotypes of, “Well a woman can’t do this and a woman can’t do that.” The military is actually, I think, better set up, than the civilian community in terms of being able to equalize. Right? A senior airman should be a senior airman, should be a senior airman, whether or not their male or female, black, white, brown, yellow, orange, purple, whatever. As long as they meet the criteria of being a senior airman, they should be able to be accepted as a senior airman. And so I think the military has a little bit of a step up in terms of that over the civilian population. I’m not sure that answered the question or not actually now that I think about it, but okay. If you’re willing to go for it. KH: What did you do in the Air Force? HW: My active duty time was based out of the Utah Test and Training Range out on the other side of the Great Salt Lake. I was an electronics technician and I static tested rocket motors. So I would install gauges, I would record data, I pushed the button to light them off. Not just the little ones like the ones that come off of airplanes. But the big ones, the intercontinental ballistic missiles, the ICBM’s. And so for the first 8 ½ years, that’s what I was doing. When I decided to go to school, I needed a military career field that was a little more flexible in its training. What I chose was a field called aerial porter. And basically an aerial porter is everything you see and most of the things you don’t see at an airport, right? So you go to the airport and somebody gives you a ticket. They take your bags, they scan you for metal, you go to the gate, you hand over the tickets, you get on the plane. All of that stuff is something I would do. I’m also the person who puts 5 your baggage on the plane. Puts the snacks on the plane, right? So that’s the, as I call it, “The Delta” side of us. The other side of us is FedEx. So the military has its own way of getting all of its equipment where it needs to be, right? You can’t just have civilian planes showing up in some of these locations. So the other side of my job is to make sure that the cargo that we are shipping, whether it be a small vile of medicine or a tank or a helicopter, is all prepared and adequately documented in order to go on a plane. And then I would prepare what we would call a load plan. Which is literally a planning of where the cargo goes on the aircraft in order to not crash the aircraft. And so that’s the other side of my job is doing that. KH: What were your interactions with the other people in your unit, department, whatever it is called? HW: In terms of? KH: In the Air Force working with rockets, did you have any problems working with the other people that you worked with? Did they accept your experience, your knowledge, direction? HW: Okay, there’s not a lot of difference in terms of the Air Force and the military versus civilian side in terms of working with people. You get all types, right? Some people are going to be easier to work with than others. Some are going to never want to really accept what you’re doing no matter who you are. Yes, the very beginning of my career, when I was low ranking, there was some friction between myself and the supervisor. I do remember there being certain—how do 6 we call that? Male oriented publications… that were in the workplace that would not normally have ever been there … you know, that’s just not something you normally see, right? But I was the first girl to show up in I don’t know how long. Right? So they were just like, “Well you’re here, so we’ll make you one of the guys and you’re just going to have deal…” Okay. I was young, I was like, Okay, I have to go along with this, right? As I progressed in rank, right? I would like to think anyway, that my intelligence and my knowledge and my experience allowed folks to listen to me with a better clarity. Right? Instead of looking at me and seeing a young kid just out of school or something like that. Here I am with several years of experience in doing things. And that experience I carried over into my reserves side as I went up in the ranks there. Right? The reserves side was actually easier in terms of interactions between myself and my male coworkers. I don’t know whether or not that was because I had already worked with male coworkers and so I already had kind of a flavor of how I was supposed to go about doing things, or it was just the fact that at that point I didn’t care. I was going to do my job, I was going to do it well. And if they decided to see that, then all the better. And if they didn’t, well it was their problem, not mine. People are people. Personalities will show up no matter what. Some people are easier to work with than others. KH: What were the different ranks that you’ve held in the Air Force? Or do hold? HW: Structurally there are nine different enlisted ranks in the Air Force. They start out with Airman Basic which is an E-1 and they go up the Chief Master Sargent, which is an E-9. Due to the fact that I had had a little bit of college before I 7 entered the Air Force, I actually started out at an Airman, which is an E-2. So from E-2, I went through the ranks and I’m currently at an E-8. Which is a Senior Master Sargent. KH: Do you ever feel like your promotions didn’t come as quickly as they should have? HW: Excellent question. The basis of your questions, right? From the very basic way that you asked that, yes. I will caveat that with the fact that it was not my sex that was the problem. There were certain criteria that were being used unofficially to promote people. And I didn’t meet some of those criteria and it wasn’t because I was female it just… it was certain circumstances that kept me from meeting them. KH: What started your interest in electronics engineering? HW: I had had that since I was kid. I always liked getting in and breaking things. Pulling them a part and seeing if I could put them back together and still have them work. Or if they weren’t working, you know, can I find a way to make them work type of thing. When I was on active duty, my job was electronics. But one of the things that I noticed was that a lot of the engineers that would come while we were doing tests, would be what I call, “paper engineers.” Their response to a question would be, “Well it says on the paper that it works this way.” And a lot of the time that answer didn’t hold water with the actual reality. Right? So when the Air Force decided to make some changes in my first career field, I decided to go to school instead. I decided that engineering might be the way to go because 8 I’m pretty sure that I could be a better engineer than the paper engineers that I had been involved with. So from the electronics standpoint, early on. Engineering? Only after active duty. KH: When did you start at Weber State and what was it like? HW: I started in the summer semester of 2001. I don’t know, it was different than the college experience that I had before. Before I had gone to a small little local college. They were very specific to the types of degrees that they were doing. It wasn’t a university per se. And so I guess I was a little surprised by how big the campus was, how many people were there, that kind of thing. But all of the instructors were really great. If you had a question, they always answered it. You know, they didn’t mind staying after to help you out with a homework question, or just a question about the lecture in general. We did still have the four buildings— building 1, 2, 3, and 4. All of my classes were basically out of building 4. And so it was a little weird to walk into that building and see some of the surroundings be a little more updated. And then to think about the fact that those other buildings were like business or English or something like that which… maybe I’m just … you know in Layman’s terms, English hasn’t changed all that much. Well electronics has, right? But yeah, I mean, for the majority of the campus I think the Union Building has changed quite a bit and the new technology building. Right? I think that’s—I want to say they did something with the physics building too between then and now. 9 KH: Well they tore down buildings three and four and replaced it with Tracy Hall. Which is where all science and math are now. And they tore down the old science building. I don’t know if… HW: It was either the planetarium or something. They were doing something over there with the physics building, but I don’t remember what it was. But at least I thought they were. But no, in general there were less people actually I guess you could say that. KH: Who were some of your favorite professors? HW: The two people that stand out from the first time I was here, because I’ve been here twice. The first time I was here were Dr. Clapp and Professor Vern Hansen. Dr. Clapp was the advisor over the EET department before we had an engineering department. And I enjoyed, I enjoyed his sense of humor. I think he and I got along quite well on a personal basis, not just as, you know, an advisor-student basis. Vern Hansen though, he surprised me with all of the things he was doing on the outside, you know. So a lot of times you get kind of caught up as a student in your academic world. Right? And you forget that you know, the teachers don’t live here. They’ve got other things that they’re doing. And so I found it very interesting that Professor Hansen was a member of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. KH: Oh. HW: So that was… I wouldn’t have thought that. Right? From just seeing him in lectures. And so that kind of you know… and he’s also a nice guy. But that the 10 idea that he had such a different life outside than school, was kind of a surprise to me. So. KH: So were classes ever cancelled because he was traveling abroad. HW: I don’t remember having any classes cancelled. But there may have been a few substitutes. But as far as I know, nobody ever actually said, you know, “This is the reason why he’s not here.” KH: Who were some of your favorite professors when you were going through the electrical engineering program? HW: That’s a difficult question to answer because I whizzed through that part of it. Dr. Jackson, Justin Jackson, I think was probably the person that I remember the most going through that process. He was very hands on with the changes that were being made in the new program. He was also very easy to talk to, and he seemed to have a really good way of—sometimes when you ask a question or you give an answer to a question that you’ve been asked, the other person doesn’t quite get it, and you can tell that they don’t quite get it. And so what you need to do is you need to be able to switch your point of view around a little bit and see whether you can come out with the same answer from a different way. And I think Dr. Jackson does that very well. There are some people who just keep trying to beat the answer into your head—the same answer over and over again. And that doesn’t work a lot of the time, you know, you need to tweak it a little bit to say, “Well, okay so maybe it’s not capital ‘A’ but it’s little ‘a’.” Right? Or, “It’s italicized ‘a’.” Right? And I think he did that very well. 11 KH: When you had your electronics engineering technology degree, when did you finish that? HW: That is a good question. So I was actually doing two programs at the same time. I was doing the EET for the bachelor’s, but I was doing the mechanical engineering technology degree as an associate’s degree. I graduated in December of 2004 with the mechanical and that would make the electrical degree May of 2005. KH: When did you come back to work on your fourth degree? HW: Well so technically I have two with the Air Force as well. KH: Oh wow. HW: So, for the EE degree, let’s see. I graduated in… I want to say December of 2011. So that would have been fall of 2009 to start. KH: Okay. Between your two careers at Weber, did you attend any events? Were you part of any organizations? HW: While I was here, yes. So not necessarily the second time around so much. I was working full-time as well then. There really wasn’t any time to be involved with student activities. But the first time around, I was… my only job was the reserves, and so I was a full-time student the first time around. I was a member of the student IEEE association. KH: What does that stand for? 12 HW: Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. But we had a chapter here, and at one point I was treasurer of the chapter. I just remember setting up the snack bar quite a bit. So let’s see. I think there was a couple of Society of Women Engineer activities that I participated in while I was here. And I know that we went to several of the hockey games. KH: Were there a lot of women in the program when you were going through? HW: No. No, the first time around there was—I want to say that there was like five of us. But maybe that was just because those were the only other people that I saw. You know, there could have been people in lower classes that I wasn’t seeing on a day-to-day basis. But, I want to say that there was only like five of us. KH: Did you participate with the winter Olympics at all in 2002? HW: Yes and no. I was not a direct participant in anything with the winter Olympics in 2002. What I did with my time off was I volunteered with the Air Force to work full-time for them for 3-4 weeks in something outside of my normal military career field. I went in to help as augmentee in another department entirely. KH: We have some scrapbooks from the engineering technology program I think and they did a lot of activities like water balloon catapults. Did you do anything like that? HW: I don’t remember doing any of that. I know that the mechanical engineering technology side had for the introductory class, they made catapults as their final project. They did that every year. I don’t remember them having any water 13 balloons in particular, but they could have. Dr. Hagen could have done it that way, I’m not sure. KH: Did your program do anything fun with your focus? HW: I don’t remember anything in particular that I was getting involved in. You know, each of the senior projects had their own ways to go about doing things. It seems like we were trying to get involved in some of the robotics competitions that were just starting up. I don’t remember anybody getting involved in rockets per se. I think there was… I don’t remember whether or not it was during the first time or the second time, but I think there was a group that was doing some high speed trials out at—and now I’m drawing a blank. KH: The salt flats? HW: Salt flats, thank you. Solar cars or something like that. I’m not quite sure. But I do know that the mechanical engineering technology side seemed to be very into the competitions that the mechanical folks could get into. KH: What was your senior project? HW: My senior project, myself and another student, we built a testing apparatus for plotting magnetic fields around doughnut magnets. One of the instructors—and I’m afraid that I don’t remember his name at the moment, had a company down in Salt Lake that was all about magnets doing all kinds of things, and one of the things that they didn’t have was a way to be able to really plot what the magnetic fields were doing. Our senior project was to be able to put a magnet into an environmentally stabilized box. And by running currents through the magnet or 14 around the magnet, we could figure out what that material was going to do with the fields by collecting data using a LabView program. KH: What’s the difference between the electronics engineering technology degree and the electronics engineering—well the programs rather than the degrees? HW: At Weber, it’s primarily the math. So the EE degree has a lot more, a lot higher math that you have to go through than the EET. One of the other things that is a little bit different about the programs is the amount of hands on you get. You get a lot more hands on in the EET than you do in the EE because the EE is more theory based, right? Although, Weber State does seem to have a better idea of the fact that you do need the hands on to be able to understand some of these things. So I have taken some classes at some other universities and they weren’t quite as interested in having people do the hands on as they were [Lights go out in the room]… KH: We don’t move enough, sorry. HW: Apparently. Here I was trying to keep my hands from floating all over the place because I do a lot of talking with my hands usually. Anyway, I think Weber State does a good job of making sure that the students are actually getting into the hands on portion of things in order to be able to understand what it is that the theory is trying to tell them. KH: What degrees and certifications do you have? HW: Okay, well like I said earlier, I’ve got two degrees from the Air Force—two associate’s degrees from the Air Force. One in my first career field with the 15 electronics. And one in my second career field with the transportation. I earned both an associate’s degree in the MET and the EET and then went on to earn the bachelor’s degree in the EET. And then that flowed into the EE degree later on. I also have about half of the master’s degree in engineering from Utah State, credit wise taken care of. KH: Are you hoping to finish? HW: I am uncertain. If I finish, it will probably not be with Utah State. Yeah, let’s leave it at that. KH: What were some of the challenges you faced while obtaining your degrees? HW: The first time around, it was getting back into school. Being a full-time student… you know I had been out of school for ten years and so the first year of school, it took me a little bit of time to get back into the rhythm of going to class and doing homework and that kind of thing. But I think because I was full-time, and my husband was kind enough to keep up his full-time job so we could keep the house, I think that it probably went pretty smoothly for me the first time around. The second time around I was working full-time. And so I would, you know, work 40, 50, 60 hours sometimes a week and still have to show up to class and do homework and all of that as well as the reserves. So when I was thinking that I was going to have a weekend to be able to catch up on any homework that I might have, the reserves would say, “Well you know, actually you’ve got to work that weekend.” So yeah, the second time around was much harder. But it was nice to have the in-class courses. Right? 16 At night, I went to the Davis campus and took the classes from there and since that’s just down the street from my house, it was very convenient for me to pop in… you know right after work, I’d go to school and then I could go home. And it wasn’t a very long travel day and so that was nice. But had I tried to do that as a distance learning, or had I tried to do that from up here, it wouldn’t have worked. I wouldn’t have been able to finish. KH: What did you do after you left Weber the first time? HW: Actually right before I left, right before I graduated, I got into the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA internship program for electronics engineering. Or Electronics Engineering Technology basically. So I had worked for a local manufacturing company as an intern on the mechanical side for about a month and a half where I was doing drawings and doing instructions for manufacturing items based on drawings. And then got into the FAA program where I was moved around from department to another just to try to see what I liked best, right? So I thought maybe getting into that program would then allow me once I got my degree, to get into an engineering position with the FAA. It turns out that a little bit before, maybe about a year before, I got into the program, the government actually changed the criteria to allow people to get into the engineering programs. And the EET was no longer on their list of correct degrees to have. So that was kind of like, “Well, okay. Well I went to school to be an engineer and what I’m doing with the FAA is not engineering.” I liked it. It was all about electronics but it wasn’t going to get me to where I wanted to go. I was doing a lot of traveling to Oklahoma City because that’s where all of 17 their training is done. And while looking around for other job opportunities, a test engineer position became open with then, ATK, up in Promontory. I applied thinking, you know, “What the heck.” Right? And I got a phone call and they were interested in interviewing me. I was like, “Okay, sure.” During the interview they seemed very interested in the fact that I had used a lot of their systems when I was working out at the Utah Test and Training Range as an electronics technician. And they were quite happy with the EET program because they had already had three other engineers up there that are Weber State graduates. So they knew about the degree program already. So they were okay with it and so I walked out of that interview with a job offer. KH: Great. HW: I was like, “Well, it says engineer. That’s where I want to be and I already know what I’m doing. So yeah, let’s take that.” So yeah, I became a test engineer for ATK and about three years later, I get a postcard in the mail that says, “Hey, we’re having a seminar on doing an electronics engineering degree.” An EE degree out of Weber. You know, “Come and listen to our little pitch.” And so I showed up and they, you know, they gave the pitch and I asked a question and when I finished the question, Dr. Clapp, who by that time was completely blind, he says, “Is that you Heather?” I was like, “Well yeah, actually it is.” So, I yeah… it was a great degree program to get into. I was first, you know first graduate in the class. They were doing it out of Davis so that was great. And so I was doing full-time test engineering work while going to school. 18 KH: Did ATK support your education goals? Did they work with your class schedule or was it…? HW: ATK as a corporation had no idea I was doing it. My immediate supervisor knew I was doing it. And he tried his best, right? If I needed to stay home to finish some homework or something like that because I wasn’t able to do it at other times, then he understood and he was okay with that. Or if I needed to stay home for a test, you know to be able to study. That sort of thing. So yeah, my immediate supervisor was great about it. KH: That’s good. Now that you have your two degrees, what are the different career fields that you could go into? HW: I think that depends on what it is you’re trying to get out of your career. As an EET, a lot of the jobs and careers that you are going to be looking for are going to be hands on type of stuff. It’s building different apparatuses, it’s doing testing, it’s improving a manufacturing process. There’s lots of things that you get your hands on it and you make it work or you make it better. From the EE perspective, it’s much more design oriented. It’s you think about what it is that you are ultimately trying to accomplish and you design a way to get there. Now, sometimes those two things interlock. Right? You’ve got to design it in order to be able to build it, in order for it to work. Right? But, the job titles are usually based around those two differences. The technology one you’re going to have a lot of hands on type, on the floor, working with the hardware, software, firmware, whatever it is. And the EE, you’re going to have much more of the theoretical design systems analysis type stuff. So just kind of depends on what it is that 19 you’re interested in the most. And sometimes like I said, they combine the two, depends upon what the company is. A smaller company is going to want you as an EE to be able to do EET stuff. Right? Because they’re not going to want to hire another person to be able to do that part. KH: What mentors or resources did you have available to you in your program and in your career? HW: Dr. Clapp was quite a good mentor I think. Although, I’m not sure that I was necessarily thinking of him as such while going through the program. But he was somebody that I could look to and say, “You know, I’d like to be able to do that when I grow up.” Right? So I think that that was probably the reason that he sticks out in my head most of all. Resources wise, all of the instructors were great. If I had a question about admin or something like that, I was able to go to the Veteran’s Office for help with other things. And then my husband at home, you know, just allowing me the time to do the homework, listening as I complained about one thing or another, or just pulling my hair out not being able to understand what it was. And then, you know, the ability to flex a lot of my time at work in order to be able to get the degree finished. KH: What resistance or battles did you face as you progressed in your career? HW: There is a differentiation that a lot of, as we call them, classical engineers make. For whatever reason, the classical engineers believe that the EET program is beneath them. That because the EET’s don’t do as much math, it somehow makes them lower class engineers. So there is a difference there. They 20 distinguish, “You must have a classical engineering degree” in a lot of the jobs. Okay. So when I got the EE degree, it was all of the sudden, “Oh, well then you’re like us.” And it’s like, “Okay, but I didn’t change. So why does a piece of paper, you know, affect your viewpoint over that.” Now granted once I got to working with people and showed them what I as an individual could do and where my experience and knowledge was, that wasn’t something I think that they still held in their head that there was a difference between their degree and my degree. But from an institutional perspective, there is a difference and it is because of the math in between the two degrees. So I was limited before I got the EE degree in terms of the different types of jobs that I could go and do. Not that that really mattered to me too much because I enjoy test engineering. But it is one of those things where it’s kind of like, “Really? You say I can’t do it? Well then maybe I ought to do it just to prove you wrong.” Right? So I was a little limited. The EE degree actually came around at a pretty good time because the test engineering job—the manager above my immediate manager, was making some changes that I didn’t agree with. And so I kind of felt like it was probably best that I move along to something else for a little while. So I did actually. After I got the EE, I moved from being a test engineer to an electrical design engineer and stayed with that for a couple of years and then went from that to being a project engineer over some static testing. Which is a slightly different… I want to say concept, but it was a slightly different form of what I was doing as a test engineer. So I was doing that for a little while and then I was a project engineer over some electronics 21 manufacturing that we were doing in another department. All of it was around rocket motors. So I didn’t really move from where I had started originally with the Air Force. But they wouldn’t have looked at me very seriously without that EE degree for those other jobs past test engineering. But then I got bored and went back to test engineering. So that’s where I’m at now. KH: Is this all still within ATK? HW: Yes. So ATK became Orbital ATK, which was then bought out by Northrop Grumman. So we are now a division of Northrop Grumman, but since a lot of the folks around here don’t recognize the changes in company names, sometimes I have to preface it with Thiokol. Pretty much everybody knows what you mean when you say Thiokol. But it hasn’t been Thiokol for 20 years or something like that. Yeah, so sometimes it’s a little difficult if I don’t start out with Thiokol. If I actually say that I work for Northrop Grumman, that’s a different thought process than I work for Thiokol. And since it’s the same job, you know, it’s just a different name for the company. KH: What committees or organizations have you or are you member of? HW: So I kind of let the IEEE membership lapse. I was a Society of Women Engineers member for a little while. I’ve kind of let that lapse as well. I think probably the biggest thing committee wise that I’m on is I am still a member of the Industry Advisory Board for the Engineering Department here at Weber State. So I get invited once a year to discuss from an industry perspective what can Weber State’s engineering degree do for industry. 22 KH: Well you kind of answered the next question, but is there any other way that you’ve stayed connected with Weber since graduating? HW: I have done a few. Sometimes I get an email from the Society of Women Engineers Student Chapter. There was an Honor Society the first time around—I can’t believe I can’t remember what the Honor Society was. I want to say Phi Kappa Phi, that was one of them but that was not the one I was involved with I don’t think. Anyway, sorry. KH: That’s okay. HW: Transient. Let me get back to the question. The question was how do I stay connected with Weber. I do occasionally get an email from the Society of Women Engineers chapter here to come and visit with the students. There was an industry night last year where we as practicing engineers came and sat and had dinner with a group of the students. There have been several STEM activities both here and at other locations. Not necessarily sponsored by Weber, but held on Weber. There was a presentation that I gave last year… I don’t remember right now what the name that they gave to the forum was. They held it in the Science Technology Building and it was about women talking about their careers and the influences on them… you know these five minute presentations or whatever, right? And I don’t remember what it was called. But yeah, I think that was sponsored by the local chapter. KH: What recognition have you received for your accomplishments? 23 HW: Well, since I was the first and only graduate of the EE that first semester in December, I was the only one wearing an orange tassel during graduation as I walked. So not that I think anybody but the people who understood what the orange tassel meant, recognized. President Millner knew it though when I walked up to shake her hand. So she knew who I was. I was recently awarded at work with an integrated engineering award where basically—so engineering is a broad field and you are never working in a vacuum. An electrical engineer will never just be an electrical engineer. And so one of the things that they did was they created an award to show how you as an engineer, no matter what your specialty is, are interacting with others in order to get the job done. And so that’s what that was about. I don’t know, other than that, just trying to keep up my 3.8 gpa I guess. KH: That’s a good gpa to have. How have you, and you kind of answered this question too, but how have you become a mentor to others in your field? HW: Sometimes on purpose, sometimes on accident I guess. I do try to get involved in as much as possible the STEM activities for the junior high and high school girls. We have several instances like once a year we do the Expanding Your Horizons, STEM activity that’s sponsored by my company. HW: Usually everybody who is presenting those types of things is from our company. And so I try to get involved with that as much as I possibly can and any of the STEM activities for the Society of Women Engineers that I get emails about, I try to attend those as much as possible. I even at one point—it’s a little bit funny— I’m in a little bit off course, but let’s go with it. So I was getting my hair cut and 24 one of the ladies across the room was talking to the hairdresser about her daughter and how her daughter was wanting to go into engineering, and so when I got done, I went over to her and I was like, “You know what, thank you. Thank you as a parent for allowing your daughter to chase that sort of thing.” You know, “As a female engineer myself, I appreciate the fact that you are willing to let her pursue that goal.” Right? So that one was purely accidental. But I do try to get involved as much as possible. I am a lead engineer with my department. I’ve got 12 other engineers that I work with, 3 of them are women. So I’ve got a pretty good percentage going there. KH: Yeah. HW: But it’s not just women that need the mentoring right? I mean as much as society would like to show that guys have it all together and they know what they’re doing, sometimes that gets translated as, “You don’t need to give them any kind of advice.” Right? And everybody can use advice. KH: Agreed. HW: Hopefully it’s good advice. Something that you could, you know, do something with. But yeah, it’s something that everybody can use. As a less experienced engineer, you need more experienced engineers, no matter who they are to be able to give you insights about you know, “When I was your age, we were doing it this way.” Right? And, “This is not the way we have been doing it because of this.” And, “This is ultimately what happened.” So I’d like to think that what I do with not just the STEM activities but with my own group in some way helps the 25 younger engineers grow and become knowledgeable about what they’ve chosen at least in this particular station in their life to do. KH: What advice would you give to students and women starting in your field? HW: The general advice that I would give to all students, male or female, is—there’s probably a couple of pieces. One, ask for help. There is nothing worse than drowning in a class because you’re too stubborn to ask somebody for help. There’s no reason for it, especially here at Weber. Oh my goodness. So, yeah, don’t think that any particular class is supposed to be easy and if you’re not getting it, it must be you that there’s something wrong with. Right? You just need to ask for help. I’m an engineer, which means I cannot spell. It’s just not going to happen. Spell checkers in Word and other word processing programs— you can actually train them to let you get by with misspelled words. So I don’t ever necessarily trust them completely. Spellchecking is a wonderful tool, but having somebody else read it is also a wonderful tool because it makes sense to me but it may not make sense to everybody else. So you need somebody else to look and that’s asking for help. Not everybody is going to be able to understand everything about the subjects that are involved in the degree. Some people are good at math, some people are good at English, some people are good at physics, some people are good at the electronic software programs that are used. But nobody is going to be great at all of that. And so find somebody who is good at the stuff that you’re not. Pick their brain about things, ask them questions about things. But don’t just assume that because you’re not getting it, it’s your fault. As I was saying earlier, the 26 answer is “a” but is it capital “A”, lower case “a”, italicized “a”. Depending upon the way that somebody explains it to you, it may or may not click with your own point of view and your own experiences. So I think in general that would be my first piece of advice. Second one is time management. Absolutely crucial, especially if you are doing all kinds of things, right? I mean, Weber State is a commuter college, right? Most of the folks here as I understand it have at least one job that they’re working. Most of them are going to have a family that they’re interacting with. Whether that be them married with kids, or living at home, whatever it may be, so there’s not just school that goes on. And so you have to have good time management skills to be able to work all of that together and be able to get to the end without pulling your hair out about it. There is nothing in life that is worth pulling your hair out about because you can get help about it. I think in general those would be the two things that overwhelmingly that I would say to a student starting. In terms of women starting in this career, it is getting better but it’s not there yet. So I guess I would say patience. I would say a little more—the word I’m coming up with is aggressiveness, but maybe it’s more stepping forward. And ultimately, putting yourself out there. As a sex, we tend to step back. We tend to be the people working in the background. And that has worked. It’s kept the planet from blowing up, but it hasn’t showcased what it is that we do. And so we’re very good about getting things done in the background. Not very good about stepping forward and saying, “I did that and I will continue to do that. And I can do this.” Right? So I think that would be my piece of advice to women starting in the career field. And 27 not just engineering. I think that’s something that needs to happen in a lot of the things that we do as a society. We just need to step forward and say, “Hey, I’m here. I can do this job and you’ll like what the end result is.” You know, “Just let me do it.” KH: What are some of your favorite memories at Weber State? HW: Favorite memories? That’s hard to say. I remember the astonishment that I had walking into the Union Building—the new Union Building the first time. And how different it was. I knew they were doing it. They had the plans that they were floating around. But until I came back and actually walked in, I was just like, “Oh yeah, this is nice.” I remember enjoying walking around campus. The idea that there were another ten or fifteen thousand people that were going through kind of the same thing I was going through at the same time. You know, sitting through classes… some of them not as interesting as others. Hitting myself upside the head when I got a test question wrong that I knew the answer to but for whatever reason, got off on a tangent and answered it incorrectly. Trying to run through the rain to get from one building to another, because I didn’t have enough time to get to the next class. Trying to find a parking space. Right? So I enjoyed the sense of community that I got from just walking around campus. I think that’s probably the biggest memory that I’ve got about this place, is the sense of belonging. KH: Great. How do you think women receiving the right to vote, shaped or influenced history, your community, and you personally? 28 HW: I had to think about this one for just a little bit. And this answer is probably going to come out more rambling than anything else. As I mentioned before, women as a sex are socially in the background and so prior to us officially getting the vote, I think we had a lot of influence already. And so I don’t know that the thought, the immediate thought of women can vote now, necessarily changed a lot. Right? It would have taken a while I’m sure for a lot of women to figure out, “Hey, I can do this now. I can do this on my own, instead of convincing my husband which way he’s supposed to be voting.” And I think, and this is probably a personal bias on my part, but I’m not convinced that men truly knew what they were doing when they did it. I think they were annoyed that we were being so vocal about the fact that we didn’t have the right to vote. I think they were trying to placate us by giving us this little carrot. It’s like, “Okay, so here’s your chocolate brownie. Go ahead and sit down and have some tea.” And I think that they probably had convinced themselves—at least a lot of them had convinced themselves - that nothing would change because, “I’m the man of the house. And my wife will vote the way I tell her to vote.” Right? Again, I wasn’t there. But I’m not sure the initial thought process was, “Yay, we got the vote. Let’s go out and change the world.” But I think that… because I don’t know that a woman’s world changed much because of the vote. I believe that they were still doing the same thing that they were doing the year before. Right? They still had the same concerns. They were still trying to get their family situated, and keep them safe, and get them educated and so forth and so on. I think that it was the changes from the World Wars that really kind of let that sink 29 in. We were no longer just hanging out at the house. We were no longer just making policy decisions in a quilting club or anything like that, right? We had to pick up what the men had to leave behind and I think that was the triggering point for the empowerment that we finally figured out that we had. Has the world changed since that because of the vote? Yes. Has it changed for the better? Yes. I believe in a lot of ways it has. But I think it was the later generations that actually appreciated and acknowledged what the vote actually provided to us and that was freedom. It was a freedom to express our opinions and our viewpoints that wasn’t as easily talked over as it had been before. It is much easier to get that quilting bee down to the City Hall and throw in 20 votes for who they want, than it is for those 20 women to go back to the house and try to figure out how to get their 20 husbands to vote the way they want to. Right? So I think from a world perspective, from a community perspective, I think it’s been a good thing. I think it should have been that way since the very beginning. And in some societies it is. Right? It’s only the patriarchal societies that really had a problem with giving women the vote. But, for me personally, having grown up already with that, already with the aspect of voting, I don’t think of it in terms of my being a woman voting. I think of it as my being a citizen of the United States and voting. And I think part of that is my experience with the military. I raise my hand every so often to pledge that I will protect the Constitution and the citizens of the United States and that includes the right to vote for everybody. And so I feel that it’s not a privilege, it’s a right that everybody should be exercising because if you don’t 30 exercise it, you’re going to lose it one way or the other. The people who are exercising it are going to make choices that you’re not going to like and if you’re not going to say it through your vote that you don’t like those choices, you can’t sit back and complain about it. So, I think for me, I think of the fact that there was a time in this country where I as a woman would not have been able to vote is kind of silly. So I don’t necessarily see a direct change to me. But I can see where had it not happened, what my life would be like. Right? I would not be sitting here saying those opinions to a camera that other people are going to be able to see, right? But the right to vote is powerful, and it is something that everybody should be exercising. KH: Agreed. Those are all of the questions I have, is there anything else you’d like to share? HW: I’ve shared quite a bit actually. I’m not sure there’s much more to do that with. No, I think I’m done. KH: Okay. Great. Thank you for your time.