Oral History Program Catherine Zublin Interviewed by Kandice Harris 2 May 2019 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Catherine Zublin Interviewed by Kandice Harris 2 May 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: Zublin, Catherine, an oral history by Kandice Harris, 2 May 2019, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Catherine Zublin 2019 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Catherine Zublin, conducted on May 2, 2019 in the Stewart Library’s University Archives Conference Room, by Kandice Harris. Catherine discusses her life, her memories at Weber State University, and the impact of the 19th Amendment. Alexis Stokes, the video technician, is also present during this interview. KH: Today is May 2, 2019 and we are interviewing Catherine Zublin. I’m Kandice Harris and Alexis Stokes is working the camera. When and where were you born? CZ: I was born in Los Angeles on May 7, 1955. KH: Happy Birthday. CZ: Yeah, almost. It’s a little scary, I’m going to be 64. I love the Beatles and you know that whole song about, “Will you still love me when I’m 64?” I’ve been thinking about that one a lot lately. KH: Would you talk a little bit about your early life and some historical background? CZ: I’m the oldest of four kids. My parents moved around more with me than anyone else because all of my siblings were born in Texas, and then we moved to New York state. My dad worked in Manhattan, he took the train in every day. He read lots of newspapers and brought some of them home at night, so I read all of the trash papers from New York City for years. I think he read the Times in the morning, he never brought that one home. So the Daily News is total trash. So 2 yeah, I grew up in New York state, I graduated from high school in New York, I went to school for two years in upstate New York at the State University College at Oneonta where I took my first theater class with my best friend who made this necklace [indicates the necklace]. I took a theater class once because I thought, “Easy A, I can sew.” That wasn’t really what happened, but it was a good start. I guess I should step back to high school and explain. When I was in high school, my school was right across the street from a fabric store that had a youth group. If you were part of the group, you would get free fabric and make an outfit that was part of their fashion show, because they were trying to get teenagers to sew. This was the 70’s, I think Project Runway is trying to do that now, so I’m optimistic. You know, I just went to school for two years in upstate New York not really… Well I know what I wanted to study when I started. It was 1973, I wanted to be a political scientist. I was thinking I wanted to be an attorney, and run for public office. Then Watergate happened and that kind of crushed a lot of thinking in that way. It seemed like everything was corrupt and I was unhappy about that. I started taking some other classes, and I always called them my sanity classes. I wanted to take something I’m going to take just for me and get credit for it. That’s how I ended up in the first theater class just for fun. KH: Were you encouraged to pursue and education? CZ: Oh yeah. You know, I’ve talked to students here, the students I’ve had over the last many many years, and many of them talk about things that they always knew their whole life was going to happen to them. I’m like, “That’s such an odd 3 concept to me.” I started thinking about, “What did I know, most of my life that was going to happen to me?” And going to college was the only thing I could think of that I knew. Having children was not on my list— although I have two, and very happily that I have two. Getting married wasn’t really on my list, but I’ve been married for over 40 years so, I’m happy about that too. But going to school was the one thing that I think was always sort of there. Now oddly enough, of my siblings, I’m the only one with a four year degree and the only one with an advanced degree. They are all very successful so they did okay. But it sort of… but they made sure all of their kids went to college. So they learned their lesson. KH: What started your interest in performing arts and costume design? CZ: Well because I could sew. I started sewing at a young age because I wanted clothes that other people didn’t have. I’m not as picky about that now. I must have fifteen gray t-shirts. That might be on the low side. I might have more. That’s because I worry about what other people wear more than I worry about more than what I wear for a lot of the time. I just kind of got lucky. I know that that’s silly but I think I would have found it regardless, but the path worked out well for me. And the path was that after two years at Oneonta, I transferred to the University of Colorado. I transferred in January so I’m going through late registration and in those days it was the mid 70’s, you had to get a very coveted IBM card, the punch cards, or you weren’t in the class. I’m walking around the field house, trying to figure out what’s still open because in those days, unlike—I think it’s great. There’s some things I don’t think technology is great at and online registration is 4 one of them. But that’s a whole other story. So I’m in the field house wandering around, trying to figure out what classes are still open and the theater had zero line. I had just taken a theater class at my first school and I thought, “Well maybe there’s something that will fill in a gap here.” So I go over to them and they say, “Oh yeah, we have stagecraft. You get to help make the scenery.” And I said, “You mean like, hammering and paint?” And they said, “Yeah.” I said, “I’m in. Sign me up.” So I took that class, and because I was in that class and did well in it I was offered a summer job—servitude might be a better way to put that—with the Colorado Shakespeare Festival. They brought me into help work on props. I discovered I hated working on props because there were way too many bosses. So you had the director telling you what to do, you had the scene designer telling you what to do, and then you had the actors telling you what to do—because if they were edible props, they wanted them to taste good. It was kind of crazy. The best part about that is I met my husband that summer. He was in between jobs and he had really liked theater in college and so he came up to volunteer and they had him working on props one day when I was at a job that actually paid me. That’s how we met, which is still amazing to me, almost 41 years later. I kind of liked the vibe of theater, but I was not a theater kid in high school. Most of my students are that I get now. But I just thought, “There’s got to be something else to do here.” So I went to talk to the costume designer and I said, “I can sew. What’s the chance of me working on costumes next summer?” He said, “Will you take a class from me this year?” I said, “Absolutely.” So I took 5 all of his classes the next year. I realized that even though I was getting a communication degree in mass comm[unication], they wanted me to have a specialty in another area. They wanted it to be in journalism, but I talked them into letting it be in theater. So they counted all of those classes towards my degree and I still got out in eight semesters. I got my first job doing costumes… in 1977. That was my first summer of working on shows in the costume shop. I once figured out that I had a total of 60 months of summer work doing costumes which equals five years, I thought was enough of my life to do summer work, so I have kind of taken a break from that. KH: That’s fair. CZ: Yeah. KH: What degrees and certifications do you have? CZ: Well I have a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Colorado in Mass Communication. And then I have an MFA—Master of Fine Arts in Theater and Drama from Indiana University with a specialty in costume design. KH: What were some of the challenges you faced while obtaining your degree? CZ: Oh it’s all about money, let’s face it. You know, poor. Like I probably—I really don’t want to eat Ramen Noodles anymore, ever. But there is that little Ramen house downtown that I keep thinking that I should checkout, right? Because it’s always full. That’s what I figure. Money is always the biggest issue in getting a degree. Ed and I were married. I guess the initial big challenge was that he 6 really wanted to go back to Indiana for grad school and he had a plan and I was somewhat plan-less. So I graduated in December, we moved to Indiana in January, and he was right into his grad program and I was working for a while, which is fine, and applying. Hoping that I could get in at Indiana because that’s where he was. We just decided to take a leap of faith. We got married before I was accepted. I just figured we’re going to work this out, and then I was accepted. It was the only school I applied to and it’s the only one I got into and I think that I’ve made them proud. It’s worked out pretty well for all of us. I was always considered an out of state student but my tuition was paid for. Most grad schools for theater provide free tuition in exchange for students work on the departmental productions. A very tiny stipend that barely pays for food. I was once visiting my parents while I was in grad school and one of their friends was there and he has a PhD in Geography—no Geology. The other “g” one. He said, “Oh grad school, best years of my life.” And I said, “Then shoot me now.” And he looked at me like, “What?” and I said, “This is the hardest I have ever worked in my life. So I need to know that this is not the norm.” And it wasn’t. But it did provide with me a group of peers that I could count on for a long time. Like, “Hey where did you find this?” And this is all pre-internet, right? You can google all of this stuff now and find it. But in those days, if you were trying to find something or a piece of information or a particular material that you wanted to work with, you needed friends to guide you. So that was what grad school really provided for me. 7 KH: What were your career options once you had your degree? CZ: I could have freelanced, which is a challenge. The problem with being a designer and freelancing, is that you almost always have to be looking for the next job while you’re working on the current one, or you need an agent. I did not go to a fancy enough school to get an agent—that’s almost all Yale and NYU— nor did I really understand that. Like it wasn’t something that anybody ever talked about. So my best shot was to go into teaching so that I could continue to design. It turned out that particular year, I got really lucky. I applied for tons of jobs, there were just lots of them available. One of them, the one that I ended up getting, was at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas. The reason why I got the job is that the chair of the department was a very good friend with the person who directed my thesis project in grad school. I believe strongly in the following phrase: “Your reputation is your resume.” And especially in theater, I rarely worked with people I didn’t know previously. I have, but not that often anymore. I kind of digressed. Did I get the answer though? KH: Yes. CZ: “I digress” should be printed on my forehead. KH: We love the digressing, it shares so much more information. What mentors or resources did you have available to you in your program and your career? CZ: Well I think that I would say the peers were huge. There were four of us initially that were all in the MFA program. Then there were a lot of other students in other areas that also ended up being mentor-like. Then there was our main 8 theater professor who was a huge influence on my life. We called him Mr. Brauner the whole time we were in school. I now call him Leon, and we exchange Christmas cards still, and I visited his home in Washington state when he retired from Indiana—he moved back to Washington state. He’s really important to me, yeah. He was tough, really tough. But very important. KH: What resistance or battles did you face as you progressed in your career? CZ: I taught for four years at Sam Houston State, and at that time the position was a lectureship not a tenure track position and they refused to make it a tenure track position, so I resigned. Resigning without another job is really stupid, but I did it, and I now make sure neither one of my children will ever do that. I had a three year old at the time, it was insane. I ended up freelancing for the year, it was not the best decision I ever made. I’m glad that my family life survived it. Then I came to Weber State. I came to Weber State because the set designer at the time was a friend of mine. He called and said, “She resigned! She resigned, you have to apply.” Because he didn’t really like my predecessor. So I got here in ’86, and he only stayed another two years and then he left. We are still friends too, he lives in Iowa. But I came because he said I should apply for the job and I said, “Okay.” I’m like, “I don’t even know where Utah is.” You know? I looked and I’m like, “Oh my god, it’s practically in California.” I think that’s what my words were. Which it’s not, obviously, it takes me 12 hours to drive there. I mean, I went to school in Colorado, I knew where Utah was. But, I had never considered living here before. So one of the things that happened my very first year at Weber State, kind of blew me away and not 9 in a good way. One of my colleagues at the time was fairly taken aback that I was 30 years younger than he was. Now I’m 30 years older than several of my colleagues and I’m delighted to have them, okay? But he thought that this was an affront; and we’re at a meeting once and we’re going to be working on tenure promotion guidelines and they put me on this committee because I’m the new person, right? And I’m like, “Fine, I need to learn this, because my last positon wasn’t tenure track. So I need to learn.” And I’m sitting there and all of the sudden he says, “Oh…” And I had just designed a show for him, right? So I’m think, “Oh, he’s going to say something nice.” He says, “Catherine is unique in the entire history of our department….” And I thought, “Oh great, he’s going to say something nice about me. I just designed for him.” He says, “… She’s a mother.” I’m not speechless very often, and I got it together pretty quickly and I said, “And you’re a father, and you’re a father, and you’re a father, and what’s that got to do with anything?” And one of my colleagues who I remained friends with throughout this said, “Yep, let’s get back to the topic.” You know, just scooped it back in and went on and it was the end of the conversation, but I was kind of blown away. I once had—back in the old days at Weber State, our salaries were a big secret and you were told not to discuss them. Now, I had a handful of people that I discuss it with every time. We did the math, we figured out what our percentage rates were, and who got better and how that worked— every year we did it. But one year, my then chair… I’m not going to name names. It’s bad— handed me my contract and said, “I don’t know why you got such a good raise 10 this year, you’ve been such a bitch.” And I walked straight to the dean’s office to report it because that’s crazy. So I think those little things like that happened when I was first here. I thought, “I can outlast these people. I’m better than this.” And one of my back up phrases in my life, the way that I deal with things that piss me off—and for good reasons I think, is that I say, “Yeah, but my life is better than yours.” I’ve got this great husband, I’ve got great kids, I’ve got mostly good colleagues, a couple of clunkers, but I’m younger than they are. I’ll outlast them. I had this thought. So yeah, other than that, I think that… [To Kandice] What’s the whole question? KH: What resistance or battles did you face as you progressed in your career? CZ: This should be a battle, but it wasn’t. So I don’t know, maybe I’m not answering your question, but one of the things that has always been good about Weber State is that they have valued the MFA as a terminal degree. It is everywhere, but it wasn’t a fight here ever. That was really important to me, that it wasn’t a fight. I work with faculty on other campuses where it is a fight and I can advise people about that. So that’s something. The other thing at Weber State that’s not a problem, like if you have more than one person up for promotion in a year, there’s no quota. Everybody can get whatever they are qualified for if they’ve hit all of the requirements and jumped through all of the big flaming hoops. KH: Who was the friend that drew you to Weber State? CZ: Oh his name was Michael Gallagher. He was the set designer here for two years after I came, and maybe two years before I came. So mid 80’s he was here. He 11 was a really good set designer, but he ended up—he didn’t like the hours of theater—resigning and sticking around in Utah for a while working for some other companies where his skills were sort of ancillary, you know? Like it was stuff that they hadn’t thought about but he could bring to the table. And then he decided to go back to school and become a chiropractor. I have never known anybody with that kind of career path ever, but he’s been a very successful chiropractor in Iowa for 25 years probably? Maybe more? Yeah. I know, it’s a very strange career path. KH: Very. What was Weber State like when you started? CZ: There were 13,000 students. There was a bunch of buildings that aren’t here anymore. The day that I came for my interview, I was put up in a suite in what was then Promontory Tower, which is gone. My friend Michael was in town and I called him and I said, “You have to come get me.” He asked, “Where are you?” I said, “It appears to be the tallest building on campus, but other than that I don’t know where I am. I got dropped off.” And he said, “Oh you’re…” And there was a desk and I went and I said, “Where am I?” And they told me. And he said, “I’ll be there in a few minutes” and he zipped down to get me. And his mom was visiting and she had crocheted blankets for my babies and so it was great to see. So I had dinner with them and just sort of relaxed because my flight had been delayed getting into Denver, and so they picked me up late when I got to Salt Lake finally because you know, that’s how it works when you’re coming from the east coast. So it was nice to just be driven around by somebody. [To Kandice] Okay, what was the whole question? 12 KH: What was Weber State like when you started? CZ: When I was hired, I was hired based on the quality of my portfolio. No one asked for teaching demonstration, which doesn’t happen to anybody who gets hired anymore. They had a CV, and they had my portfolio, which I brought with real pictures and all real drawings. Nothing was online, nothing was digitized in any way, shape, or form in the mid 80’s. The biggest thing that I scared them with was that I don’t eat meat, and so then they were panicked where to take me for lunch, so Rainbow Gardens is where they took me. So they were a little panic struck about where to take me to eat. Which is kind of hilarious. At that time, I thought, “Oh vegetarians are the smallest minority in Utah, got it.” The other thing that struck me—the art building wasn’t there then. So the parking lot that I parked in was pretty much where the art building is now. One of the first things, like my mantra for design is that my designs are only as good as my research. On the first show I got to the library and I get this big giant pile of books, and then I realize that I’m walking in the dark to my car that is not very close to the library and that this is not the safest practice, ever. And was kind of shocked that there’s no parking near the library. That they thought, centrally located was better than—I always thought that they should have moved it instead of fixing it. I want to swap Elizabeth Hall and the library, right? I was like, “Yeah, this isn’t going to work. I’m going to have to come in during daylight and do research now.” Because I’m from New York and I take walking to my car very seriously. Other than that, Ogden was a lot different then, and Weber State has kind of grown with Ogden, right? And in some ways lead the way. 13 When I first got to Ogden, there were two things I was looking for: loose coffee beans, you know, fill the bag and grind them. No. No loose beans in town. And no imported cheese anywhere in Ogden. It was like shocking. And Ed knew somebody. The sister of one of his best friends lived in Salt Lake, and so she reached out to us and took me to the Italian grocery store. And I’m like, “Oh thank god, there’s cheese.” You know, vegetarian, but I love cheese. Yeah, little things. But the work—we were in quarters then too. I hated quarters. But lots of faculty that are still here really miss the quarters. But for theater, it was particularly bad because you need some incubation time to design. You need to read the play, you need to think about it, you need to have time to think about it, get it done. Especially for the students who were designing, because we mentor student designers. But students hadn’t had much opportunity to design before I got here, and the costume shop was run by students who were just on work study. So they were from all over campus and were not necessarily theater majors. That was something that I changed pretty quickly. KH: Who were some of the people on campus when you started? Either in your department or… CZ: You know you meet sort of your cohort, it’s not as easy to do it as it is now because new faculty go to the New Faculty Retreat or as we call it over at our place, “Teacher Camp.” They get to meet everybody that they start with, which is really great. It was not that way when I got here, so one of my—the scene designer was one of our best friends and remains so. The rest of the faculty, I 14 was—Oh! Right after I got to Weber State, this is really good. Well, eh… you’ll see, you decide. So right after I got here, I mean I start in… it’s the quarter system, so it’s the last week of September, early October, in 1986 and within a month the dean—there was this big shake up and a whole bunch of programs moved to the ATC, and things shake up in the Browning Center, and he is going to put together the Department of Performing Arts, and he’s going to put theater, music, and dance all together. Now, dance was up in the gym and they were in the College of Education, so they had to be moved. I’m sitting there stunned. So all of the sudden, the person who was my chair, isn’t my chair anymore. So I’m standing in the Browning Center, looking at a list of all of the music faculty and I’m just reading the list of who they are. The dean goes by and he says, “What are you doing?” And I said, “Well, apparently these people are now all my colleagues, and I thought I should learn their names since we are in the same department.” And he says, “Are you worried?” And I said, “I don’t know, should I be worried?” And he looks at me and I said, “Look, I just moved 2,500 miles, I bought a house, my husband is unemployed, and I’m pregnant. Should I be worried?” He said, “No, it’s going to be okay.” And he was right, and thank god he was right. So, the kids are grown up, the husband is retired, and the house is paid for, so that’s all good. Same house, we never… we thought, “Let’s start a house.” No, we just kept fixing it up, it’s really cool. It’s 102 years old. KH: Oh those are the best. CZ: Yeah. Okay, what was Ogden like? Weber State like? 15 KH: What was the faculty like at the time? Who was the dean? CZ: The dean was Sherwin Howard. Sherwin was actually a great guy. He was very—you know, the deans always make the job offers and you usually interview with the dean. And I remember that he asked me to describe my words in three words. I know that one of them was, “Trainable.” And I still say that because I don’t know everything but if I need to learn it, I will figure it out, right? The original reason I learned how to use a computer was because of the card catalog, because I couldn’t do research without it even in a library, and I had to learn how to use a freaking computer. Now I don’t know how I would deal without it, and I carry one around all of the time, right? The first time I ever used email was a librarian showed me how. So, Carol Hansen was a big influence, she’s retired from the library now. In fact, she just reached out last week. I’m happy about that. There’s a few of us that are still here, Angelica Pagel was one of my colleagues that started the same year I did. But the theater area just kept evolving. There were quite a few older faculty who as they retired… so now I am the most senior member of theater faculty. I think there’s one music faculty member who started the year before me that’s still on the faculty. It just keeps changing, and that’s kind of good. It’s frustrating and good all at the same time. KH: How has costume design changed over time? CZ: Oh my gosh, this is the best! I did note that you were going ask that and thought, they are going to hate my answer. At the end of my first year at Weber State, one of my colleagues said, “So Catherine, what was the hardest part about doing 16 your job this year?” And I don’t know what he thought I was going to say because I don’t make snarky religious comments, that’s not what I do. I said, “Buying fabric, I’m not making prom dresses or quilts.” That was in ’87 and there was actually—you know where FedEx Kinko’s is? That was a fabric store. There were four or five other fabric stores in Ogden that are all gone. If that was a problem in ’87, it is much more compounded now. The internet doesn’t make buying fabric that much easier because it’s tactile. I had to make a dress to go to my son’s wedding last year. And I wanted a very particular color of lace, navy blue—because I think people with silver hair look good in navy blue. So there you go. Which is the last thing I made myself, so I don’t sew that often for myself anymore. But, I got like ten fabric samples, they all were no bigger that a 3” square. This is not big enough. So then I had to go back online to blow it up and see what they were. But at least I could compare the color and look at it, and I picked one. So I can do that if you have enough time. But, most fabric stores that you deal with online do not understand the time crunch of theater. JoAnn’s [JoAnn Fabrics] only has so much. In Ogden right now, we have JoAnn’s, we have Bennion Crafts, and then there’s a little fabric store at Rainbow Garden’s, those are mostly quilting shops. So, it’s a challenge—Oh! And Walmart, don’t forget you can get fabric at Walmart, 24/7, which you know, there’s a plus to that some days. My biggest thing is that in order to really shop for fabric and have options, I need to go to Los Angeles. The plus there is that my oldest son now lives in Los Angeles and I can 17 stay with him. I can Uber around for cheaper than I can rent a car, which just blows me away. That said, an example that I use often and I think illustrates this pretty well is that back in the early 90’s we did a production of Assassins. It’s a great play, it’s a musical. It’s got a very strange premise, but the music is really fantastic and the characters are very interesting. It’s about the men and women who attempted to, and in some cases succeeded, in assassinating a president of the United States. There’s a character named Sam Byck, you’ve probably have never heard of Sam Byck. Sam Byck had a plan to highjack a plane from Baltimore and crash it into the White House because he was after Nixon. Sam Byck is a character in this play, I had never heard of Sam Byck before either. You know, some of the other’s I had heard of okay? But Sam Byck was a mystery to me. So I—this was before laptop computers, this is before google or anybody else. I went to the library—I like the Salt Lake public library, and that was before they had their great building too. But, they had a deeper archive than Weber State had and they had years and years of the New York Times and they helped me. Oh it took forever, I used to get so many parking tickets when I was at that library. They helped me finally find a picture of him in black and white on the cover of the New York Times. He used to protest in front of the White House dressed in a Santa suit. So that’s what I put him in, a really dirty Santa suit. So I would get people who would call me, “Do you have a Santa suit for rent?” And I’m like, “Yeah, but you don’t want it, because I sprayed it all down and made it 18 look filthy.” If we googled Sam Byck right now, it wouldn’t take long, like a fraction of second to get many, many pictures of him. So those kinds of things have really changed the way I do my job. Recently, I’m trying, not with a lot of success yet, but I’ll work on it, it’s one of my summer goals, to draw on my iPad. I have a little arthritis in my hand, but I knit to keep that limber. My students are very interested in drawing with an iPad, and I need to know more about it and figure out how to do that and to teach it. I teach them how to draw, but drawing on an iPad is different. We have a collection of iPads so I can sign them out to them for use. Other than that, the changes have been in the department, is that we have a very very robust assessment tool that has helped us tremendously. An assessment at many times at Weber State is a four letter word because it’s not what I was trained to do. But I am trained to interview students, and I’m trained to mentor students. I do know how to do that. So what we did was we came up with this theater jury system where they come in. If they are performance majors, they will do maybe a song or two and a monologue. But if they are design majors, they will come in with their portfolio’s and talk about what they’ve done this semester, this year. We rate them. We sit there behind of our computers and we have this Google form and we rate their presentations. But that gives us so much data that we’ve been able to increase our faculty because we can say, “This is where our students are weak, we have proof.” That has been really very valuable and I think more people should do it. I’m not really a data driven person, I’m more of an instinct person, but my son’s an economist and he says, “You got to have data, Mom.” And I’m like, “It’s so 19 boring to look at the data.” It’s boring to sit there behind… and we do this for nine hours, we have three days from 3-6 every fall and every spring. And we do all of this as a group, everybody rates everybody. So I think that’s a big change. We did it without a Google form for a long time, just taking notes about each student. But having the numbers and the data has really helped us a lot. KH: What are the steps to designing costumes for a play? CZ: Oh that’s much more fun to talk about. Many years ago, I came across this creativity model that I really like that I use to describe what I do. I’m about to blow it by not being able to give you the name of the person who’s model it is because I like to give credit where credit is due. I’m messing that up big time right now. But there are steps to this. The first step is some kind of impulse or reason to start a project. I tell students that I get paid to do this. So that’s the impulse. Since they are paying me, I guess I better start. But then that goes around to what I call, “Incubation”. I think I used that word earlier too. Where you sort of collect the basics of what you need. Like for me, it’s read the play, maybe meet with the director or the rest of the design team, just to get an idea of where this project might be going. Then it goes into the Illumination phase. That’s just long, that’s the biggest. That’s everything from initial sketches to finished product. Well, finished before dress rehearsal, and that’s the next step. So it’s going to be sketches, fabric, construction—you know when you are painting a room and the first thing you have to do is tape it all out and then you have to go back finally and scrape things there and fix it? Costuming is a lot like that too. So we are going to start 20 with finding or making a pattern, we are going to have some fittings, we’re going to get all of the accessories, make sure the hair and the shoes are right and we are going to get all the way to dress rehearsal. So the last show we did had 41 costumes in it—because I was curious, I counted. We get to dress rehearsal and it is either verification or revision. So cha-ching, I got it right. Or, “What the hell was he wearing? Why did he look so bad?” So I call one of the actors in. His shirt was hanging on the rack and I put a tie around it with a fancy pin. But he didn’t think he should untie the tie and that he couldn’t quite get it on. I’m like, “No, sweetie. Come to a fitting tomorrow, I’m going to show you how to wear your costume because you have to look good.” He said, “Yeah, I was wondering…” I like to have final fittings with everybody, but there’s not always time because you are still finishing things up. So this is one of the cases where, “Come have a final fitting so you look good for the rest.” We usually do three dress rehearsals, so it’s easy to fix things. Most of my notes were about how the actors were wearing things and I had a couple of small tweaks that I needed to do. There were a bunch of petticoats that showed all of the sudden. So we re-hemmed a whole bunch of petticoats and little things like that. But every once in a while, you get to first dress and the verification doesn’t happen and you need a complete revision. I was doing a dreadful play once and by dreadful I mean, sexist and misogynistic. It had lines like, “Too many rings around Rosie will never get Rosie a ring.” You know, come on, this is not my kind of thing. But it was musical set in the 20’s and it was a period piece and they were having fun with it. 21 I don’t have to like a show to design it, I can design it. But there were a bunch of characters that came in and were immediately sent off to rooms in the house. And they were sent off to rooms with names that were color names, so I thought, “Oh I’ll put them in the same color. I’ve got no other motivation here.” So I put the character who went to the lavender room in a lavender dress and it was terrible. It was a terrible dress because I pulled it from stock because… it was not good. She comes in talking like this [deep and throaty] and she’s dragging something behind her and she has this long cigarette holder and she’s got this very deep voice, deeper than mine. And I’m like, “Oh yeah, I put her in a fluffy lavender dress with feathers, this is not working.” And the director looks at me and I said, “I’ll fix it.” So he said, “Bohemian.” And I said, “You know, if you had said that in a meeting I would have remembered it. I think you just thought it.” The next morning, I went downtown to an antique store that a friend of mine owned and I said, “I need a piano shawl, something with a lot of fringe and I need you to let me borrow it.” And he did, he did. Then I went to a fabric store that was right downtown on Washington that has been gone for well over 20 years now. I went in and I just looked around for fabric for something that would look good with the shawl and I bought the fabric and I took it to the shop and one of my students made a dress in a day. I often think that we should have had time lapse photography and I think he would have been great on Project Runway. By that night, we had another dress and this cool piano shawl that she could drag around and it would look cool. The director turned around and went [gives an 22 okay sign] and I said, “Yeah, I know how to fix things.” I don’t think I had all of the tools, I don’t think I knew everything that he was thinking… I knew I had never heard the word bohemian before. So every once in a while those things happen. Part of this illumination period is when are having production meetings, so we have a meeting usually once a week with the whole production team. It would be the director, all of the designers, the stage manager, there will be a handful of students that are doing jobs. I think this must be a very confusing process for students like, “What are they talking about?” But the set designer will bring in a model, I’ll bring drawings, I might have fabrics, but also I always invite the directors into the costume shop. You need to visit to see what I’m doing. KH: Okay. CZ: That was long. KH: No, we love it! What does a typical semester look for you? CZ: Most of the design faculty get six credit hours of design every semester. So half of our load is always in design. That is whether we are designing or mentoring. We try to keep that even. I teach all of the costume related courses. The one class I teach every fall is—well I guess it’s gotten down to three classes that I teach every fall now. But I’ve taught Costume History every fall for the entire time that I’ve been here. It’s still my favorite class, and I reached out to fashion merchandising and said, “Why aren’t your students in my class?” And she said, “I didn’t even know that was a class.” And I said, “Bring them.” So I get them, and I’ve been trying to 23 get—although with not as much success—the students in creative writing to take my class because the first thing, if I’m reading a novel and they don’t describe the clothes right, I’m out. I won’t even go past that page, right? So I try to explain that, but every once in a while, I’ll get them to take my class. So I teach Costume History, I teach Costume Fundamentals, and I teach a class—and sometimes I teach two other classes, so I often have an overload because we are not that deep. We are better off than we were, but not that much. I teach a class called Freshman Seminar or New Student Seminar, just so that they know they have to take even if they are not a freshman. Basically the how to succeed as a theater major. The fundamentals class is sort of the overarching—you get a little history, you get a little design, you get a little construction. Then in the spring I have a rotation. I teach either costume design or costume technology back and forth because I don’t have enough students to teach both of those every year, because that’s usually the specialized class. I had nine students in the tech class this semester, which I know is kind of small for Weber State, but it was a luxury for me. Several years ago, I was asked by Honors to develop a class. I’ve been able to teach that pretty much every spring since, which is really kind of great. It’s called, Why Creativity Matters. At first I thought, “What am I going to teach in Honors?” And Judy Elsly came to talk to me, she was director of Honors then, and she said, “You’ve got to have something in your bag.” And before she got to my office, I realized what I had in my bag. That was a book called, “A Whole New Brain.” It’s a Daniel Pink book. Do you know Daniel Pink? 24 KH: No. CZ: Okay, I’m going to jump back to my freshman seminar. When the class was only twenty students. I started something that really worked well for me. But when it got over 40 students, it wasn’t working. So I’m trying to come up with a new way to do that. I was at a meeting on campus and they were talking about how students don’t read for leisure anymore. We should get students to read. But if we are assigning it, it’s not for leisure. I get that. But I found one book on creativity that was so boring, everybody just wanted to throw it at me. Then I found this book and he talks about creativity in ways that I had embraced but without knowing it. So he helped me define things that I was already doing. I wanted students to realize that they could have a creative life even if it wasn’t exactly how they thought it was going to be as a freshman. Just because you were the star of the high school musical, doesn’t mean that’s what’s going to happen to you in life. I don’t want to say that to them, but I need to give them the tools to figure it out. I think this book helps do that. But I got a new book now because this book is a little long format for that class. I have a new book now called, Steal Like an Artist. Steal Like an Artist is awesome. Cover to cover you can read it in two hours. Austin Kleon writes it, and I’m trying to get him to come to campus. Kleon is spelt with a “K”. But he has an interesting blog, he’s done some TedX talks that are interesting. I use those books in my honor’s class, both of those. But they started with my freshman seminar class. Because I had this Daniel Pink book on my desk, and Judy was coming over and I went, “We could do a whole class on the concepts in this book.” And that’s what I put 25 together. It’s worked out pretty well. It works great for spring semester because one of the chapters is about story and storytelling, and how important that is [WSU Storytelling Festival is in the spring]. Daniel Pink has this great little—lots of clips on YouTube. And he’s got one talking about story and how he picked a bottle of wine. He picked the bottle of wine that he bought and brought home because it had a whole story on the label about the people who owned the vineyard and why they thought this was important and what they were trying to achieve by making wine. It had their story on it. He said, “If people aren’t paying attention to the stories, then they are missing out.” In the chapter he talks about how doctors have to listen to our stories because it can’t just be this one symptom, there is something that happened to get you to whatever it is. I made an appointment with to meet a new doctor because I had just ditched my last one. He and I the first day—I ditched my last one, I wanted a female doctor I thought and then I realized it didn’t really matter, I just wanted a good doctor. So I’m meeting with this new doctor who is still my doctor and at the first meeting he says to me, “Do you mind if I take notes?” And I said, “I’m a college professor, I expect you to take notes.” And he laughed and I laughed and we’ve gotten along ever since. So he needed to listen to my story. So my classes are usually six to eight hours of class and six hours of design, every semester. That was the short answer, sorry. Teaching in Honors has been really fun. The thing about it is that I get to teach students I normally wouldn’t 26 ever meet. So I make them come to the Browning Center because half of them have never even been in the building before. KH: Yeah, I know a lot of students who seem to be proud that they have never been in the library. CZ: Yeah, that’s insane. There’s no pride in that. I actually make my freshman seminar class come here for one of their assignments. KH: Oh good. CZ: They meet with Nicole Beatty, and we do two things. One, she talks about the internet navigator class and the other one I teach them how to do Cattracks and look at it for themselves. We are up in 246? Yes, that’s how I remember it. But it’s much nicer to be over here than in any other lab, and that way they get to meet Nicole too. They think she’s cool too because she’s got tattoos. It’s true. KH: It’s true. What committees and organizations either on campus or otherwise are you a part of? CZ: Right now, on campus I am on the Faculty Senate Executive Committee, and this will be my third year on the Faculty Senate. I spent a good middle section of my career at Weber State as an administrator. Part-time I was Associate Dean. As Associate Dean I couldn’t be on a lot of those committees and I couldn’t be on the Faculty Senate. So go back to my days of political science, I really liked being on the Faculty Senate. So as soon as I was eligible, I ran to be on it again. I like the fact that faculty government is important at Weber State. So that’s the main one I do. Other than that, because I’m a full professor I get tagged for 27 search committees and tenure promotion committees. I was on the library tenure promotion committee; I was on the social science tenure promotion committee this year. I was on two search committees this year. So yeah, that’s the kind of thing I do. I’ve been at Weber State since ’86, I have a lot of institutional memory. Some of it could be a little fuzzy, but I have more than many of my peers. So that’s the one thing I can bring to those committees, “Well this is much better than the old days.” Or, “In the old days, you know, we got this for this.” You know, so it’s, “Really?” “Yeah.” Stuff like that, it’s alright. KH: What about outside of the campus? CZ: Outside of campus, I am active with the Kennedy Center of American College Theater Festival. I just ended a six year board membership with them. I am the institutional liaison with the United States Institute for Theater Technology. As an institution, we belong to that organization. We have an institutional membership. That gets me in without having to pay an extra fee which is great for me. A lot of us go to that when we are not—our production butted right up to that date this year, so a bunch of us didn’t get to go. So those are the main ones. There’s probably a few others that I could be part of, but those are the ones that I like the best. KH: You mentioned that you were Associate Dean. How long were you Associate Dean, and what did that entail? CZ: Oh boy. I was Associate Dean, I started in 1999 and I ended in 2016. So 15, 16. I worked for two different deans, I think it only really succeeded because the 28 dean’s office is in the same floor of the same building as the costume studio. I would give my job as Associate Dean as much time as I could when I wasn’t in production so that when I was in production they could just come find me. You know, you asked what Weber State was like when I first got here, I did not have a costume shop manager when I first got here. I did all of that. I did both jobs. My office was in the costume shop when I first got here, and I immediately asked them to move it. I said, “I will not get anything done if you don’t find me another space,” and they did. So I have a costume shop manager and a half-time employee besides students working has been a huge change. But being Associate Dean, seriously, I think it wasn’t in the same building, I probably couldn’t have made it work. I had an office in the Dean’s office for most of that time. But I still had my theater office and so I said, “You know, I’m going to give up my office in the Dean’s office, I’m around the corner on the same floor of the building. I’m just going to use my theater office.” So I stayed until Scott—well I stayed until I did a year as interim dean and I took a year of special leave. That was the best. Then I came back as full-time faculty. I needed a change. KH: Who were the two deans that you worked under? CZ: June Phillips and Madonne Miner. KH: Okay. What does the Associate Dean do for the… CZ: Anything the dean wants them to do. Yeah, it’s true. I did a lot of different things for different people at different times. One, as a faculty member, I could fill in at any meeting for the dean. I could go to Dean’s Council. I mean I’m not staff so I 29 could do anything that they needed me to do that way. For June, I proposed a bunch of things that were image related to the college, trying to get documents and things to look similar. Now we have somebody who is doing that for us. I think I was the first person to try. I had an image committee, trying to make us look like a college because we are in different buildings. Lots of colleges are all in one building, but we have always been in two or three. You know? And we still are, so how do we look like a college? Then I did a lot of things with articulation and orientation and trying to help students get classes in the right place. Lots of changes in Cattracks because when I was first associate dean, we didn’t have any college advisors. All advising was being done by faculty, and there were no college advisors. Now there are three. So they are doing some of the job that I would have done initially, and freeing up for doing more things with the faculty. It depended on what was going on. I did a lot of things with scholarships and how that money was distributed. Things like that. But seriously, anything they want you to do is the job description for associate deans. KH: What topics have you written about? CZ: I was about to say, “I don’t write.” But that’s not really fair, I don’t publish. As a costume designer, I design. Most of my scholarship is creative scholarship, not written scholarship. However, last year I had my first publication. But it’s all about a design, right? So USITT—United States Institute for Theater Technology—every other year has a design expo, and then almost 200 people 30 put their designs up and they pick less than 20 to publish in their publication in the summer, and I was one of those. KH: Congratulations. CZ: It was so cool. I was there and they leave you an envelope and I was like, “Oh my god, there’s an envelope on my display.” And then they told me, and I just sat there and kind of got all teary about it. I couldn’t believe it. It was just a good year. But writing is not what I do. I write reports, I’m writing a grant proposal right now. But mostly I draw pictures and make clothes. KH: What recognition have you received for your accomplishments? CZ: The one’s that I am most proud of—the two I am most proud of. I’ll tell you that one and I can hit you with a couple of others because they are funny. The one that I am very most proud of is that last year I received the gold medallion from the Kennedy Center for Excellence in Theater Education. It’s kind of cool, it’s got Kennedy on it. I got that from The Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival. There are eight different regions of that, we are part of region 8 and region 8 gave it to me. So that’s kind of cool. And then the other thing that I’m really proud of, is that twice I have been named the mentor for OUR— Undergraduate Research. I’m the Mentor of the Year, or whatever or however they call it, for our college in mentoring students. So at this stage of my career, mentoring students is what I do best and I want to continue to do that. Last year, so the gold medallion was last year. Later in last year, I go the Pharaoh Award. Now the 31 Pharaoh Award is kind of… Okay, we should not call it hilarious. What they wrote about it when they nominated me was the most meaningful part of it. There’s a new theater organization that’s doing summer musicals, Ogden Musical Theater. They are working down at the Egyptian Theater. They are giving an award every year. So the first year they gave it to Dean Hurst. KH: Makes sense. CZ: Yeah, but the second year, they gave it to me. Which was really sweet. My colleague—I mean they told me I was getting it. But one of the things that they didn’t tell me is that my colleague, Jean Louise England gave them a bunch of costumes that I designed and they put them on mannequins and they displayed them, too. Which was really sweet. Then Dean [Hurst} made a comment about me. So this year they are giving it Ann Milliner, and I said, “Do I get to talk about Ann?” And they said, “Yes, you get to be there.” I said, “Yay!” I don’t know what I’m going to say about Ann yet, but yesterday she was in my costume shop, borrowing a costume because of this whole thing with the train, right? So yeah. I’ll say something. But those are the ones. Many years ago—Oh the funniest one. Not funny ha ha, but funny how it came to me. I did get the Master Teacher Award from Crystal Crest about ten years ago. I couldn’t be there because I was at the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival, the National Festival. I was in Washington D.C. I told the two students who nominated me that they had to go to the awards. I’m sitting in the Kennedy Center, and they text me and said, “You won!” and they took a picture of my little Crystal and the certificate and they got 32 the custodian to let them in my office and they left it there. Which is really sweet. Then one day I’m like—maybe like a month later I’m like, “I should put a little frame around that certificate, it’s kind of cool.” Low and behold, there was a check underneath it that no one had told me about. Which was really sweet, I had no idea! It had been sitting on my desk for at least a month. I had no idea. So I cashed that. But you know, those are the big ones I think at this point in my career. KH: You mentioned how mentoring students is a big part of your job. How have you been a mentor to them? CZ: How have I been a mentor to them? It’s so hard to explain. In costume design, I’ll start there. For next season, I have four costume design students who get to design main stage shows. That’s more than ever before, actually. I’m going to do one, they are going to do the other four. Because of that, I have this idea, I’m going to set up sort of this dummy class of one credit so that they meet with me, all together, every week, or it falls through the cracks. So I’m going to make sure that they are going to get credit for meeting with me, and then it will happen. I’m going to jump around a little bit. The Kennedy Center for American College Theater Festival, region 8 has an opportunity for students to display their undergraduate research and all design is undergraduate research. So they put these four by four foot displays up that my colleagues and I all mentor how they look, what information they include, we rehearse what they are going to say, they’ve got a five minute schpiel that they have to give about it. So last year, one of my students—two of my students won 33 the regional festival in Los Angeles. One in allied crafts for his scenic art for one of the shows and one in costume design for her costume design of one of the shows last fall. Then, they both got to go to a national competition with that and the costume design student won. So I was sitting in the Kennedy Center when she won. We went to lunch that day and she said, “What if I don’t win and you came all of this way?” I said, “I’m here because we’re having dinner together. I’m here because we went to the art museum together. I’m not here just if you win.” I said, “You’re not going to want to hang out with me either way, I know that.” She said, “Okay, you sure?” I said, “Yeah, I’m positive.” But I couldn’t text people fast enough, trust me. But it was really cool. I wish I got to go with her on the next phase, she’s going to Prague because every four years, there is an international theater exhibit in Prague. It’s called the Prague Quadrennial. So I’m listening to her telling her family that she’s going to Prague and them trying to figure what country Prague is in. It was hilarious. I said, “Tori, just say Czech Republic really fast.” The three students who are going to be designing this fall will also be presenting in the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival for region 8 and we will see how that goes. KH: That’s great. CZ: Yeah, I talk OUR out of a lot of money. I help students get a lot of grants to go because I know that there are a lot of people on this campus who probably think that undergraduate research is just for the scientists. But that’s not true. It was just another way to describe what we already do. 34 KH: How have you become a mentor to others in your field? CZ: At USITT, I have signed up to mentor younger faculty a couple of times. I will see what the slots are and if I’ve got one time that I can. So once I was talking to a young faculty member who was from—a costume designer, I always get the costume designers. She was teaching in Alaska and she wanted to know more about the tenure promotion process and I said, “Well I’ve never read the rules and regs at your place but I can give you a couple of hints. One is, does the dean know your name?” She said, “I’m not sure.” I said, “You need to make sure he or she does.” I was on some committees when I was first here because Sherwin Howard knew who I was and said, “You know, I think Catherine could do that.” There are more faculty in Arts and Humanities than any other college so every committee needs one, we are not going to go very far. So, “Someone needs to know who you are and you need to make it clear that you are willing to serve because you probably need to have committee work at your place for service. Your design I’m not going to worry about, your teaching I’m not going to worry about, but the service is the piece that most people have problems with.” And, “You might check with the dean to see if anybody from the outside needs to see your design work on campus for it to count towards your tenure promotion because sometimes you need somebody outside to write about it.” She hadn’t thought about that. And the other one that I mentored wrote me the most beautiful thank you note because she was in tears, and she said that her colleagues were mean and they were expecting blah blah blah. Things that were 35 unreal. I said, “That’s unrealistic.” I said, “You need to leave. Do you have any children?” She said, “No, just my husband.” I said, “Is he portable? Like does he love his job or is he willing to move with you?” “No he’s willing to move. What about my students?” I said, “You’ll have new ones, plus the ones you have are going to graduate and go away, it’s always influx. That’s great that you are worried about them, and since you want to go to a grad program, maybe some of them will move with you. The undergrads might apply to your new place, but you need a new place.” And she wrote me, she said—she sat there and cried and I said, “I didn’t mean to make you cry.” And she said, “I know, but you are saying what I’ve been thinking.” And I said, “Okay, I’m glad that I could help.” But I felt kind of bad and kind of… and then she wrote me the nicest thank you note when she got a job, she loves it there. I see her every once in a while at USITT still. But you know, I do a lot of—it’s not mentoring. There are fewer than you would imagine—women full professors in theater, especially costume design. So I do a lot of reviews of other people’s portfolios, because at Weber State, our stuff doesn’t go off campus for tenure promotion, but at many campuses it does. So I write reviews of people’s portfolios for tenure promotion. One of my friends was teaching in Florida. He’s a set designer and I said, “Put my name on the list.” And he said, “Why?” And I said, “Your chair is a woman, right?” And he said, “Yeah.” I said, “She’ll pick me. That’s how it works.” He said, “What?” I said, “You put my name on the list and she will pick me, trust me.” And she did because that’s how it works, you know? Women value other women’s opinion. 36 “She’s going to value my opinion as a costume designer about your work as a set designer.” So yeah. KH: What advice would you give to students and women starting in your field? CZ: I think the number one piece of advice that I have to give anybody living in Utah is that to succeed is that they might have to leave the state. It doesn’t mean that they don’t get to come back, but to succeed initially, they may have to leave. Some are not willing to take that step. I want them to think about it really seriously. Recently, back in February we had a panel of former students come to talk. I moderated the panel and I said, “All of you have successful jobs in Utah now, what were some of your… well you don’t have to hit me with everything… but how did you, after leaving Weber State, end up back, successful in Utah, in theater or a theater related job?” One of them has their own shop where she does specialty costumes, she’ll do bizarre corsets and even mascot costumes and she’s in Salt Lake. The other one in costume is working at Hale Center Theater as a designer. A couple of the guys were working at—they were more backstage people, one of them was representative for equipment, you know, in theater. So they’ve all—and it was really interesting to hear them talk about that, it was particularly gratifying—it was that they had said that one of the things that they really learned from our program was to have a good work ethic. I think that obviously leads to success. So I guess I have to say, one, you have to have a really good work ethic, and two, you have to be willing to leave Utah. At least for 37 part of the time. You have to show that you know other things than just being here. KH: What are some of your favorite memories at Weber State? CZ: Wow. I have to say, somebody said, “What’s your favorite show?” and it’s, “Always the next one.” I haven’t even read the play for the next one I’m designing yet because I don’t have a copy of it. It’s been ordered. The next show that I’m designing won’t be held until next February. But I’ll start working on it this summer because I need to have it in my head. I have to say that we just did, Sunday in the Park with George. Boy I loved it. I thought it was really good. It looked good, it sounded good, I was really proud of it. One of my colleagues who is retired, Jim Christian, who used to do all of our musicals. He wrote a musical back in the early 90’s. This was before I had a shop manager. So I can remember—and we were still in quarters, I remember that too. I’m working on, he called it, The Pirated Penzance. It’s not called that anymore, but that’s what he called it then. He had been writing it before and I finally said, “Did you ever finish that play you writing? Should we do it?” It’s a take on The Pirates of Penzance, but it’s set in the 1930’s and it’s set on a movie sound stage where they are going to record this play. I designed it and I’m at first dress and I’m always exhausted by first dress. So I’m at first dress rehearsal and I’ve never laughed so hard at a first dress ever in my life. I mean, I had read the play, but this is the first time that I got to see it. I was like, “Oh my god, it’s so funny.” It was so funny. 38 The woman playing the lead, the lead actor puts her in this deep swooning embrace kiss and she’s got a hoop skirt on and it flashes the whole audience. At intermission, she says, “Catherine, I have to have bloomers!” And I said, “I’m sorry Jenny Lynn, but I’m going to give you a black garter belt.” And she said, “What?!” And I said, “It’s supposed to look like you have 1930’s underwear underneath that, not 1830’s underwear. So we are going to mix it up.” “Oh.” I said, “Your family will understand, don’t worry. They will laugh and it will be okay.” So we did that. When the Browning Center was closed, we did shows down at the Egyptian Theater. Paul and Carolyn Thompson—he was president. And they came to theater a lot, which I really appreciated. That’s not always the case with administrators. We did a production of Pippen down at the Egyptian that got a little sexy at times and some people walked out. I’m there at opening night, I’m standing in the lobby, and Carolyn Thompson just comes up to me and gives me a big hug. She just gave me a big compliment and it was kind of awesome. So little things like that happened. She was also—her giving me that hug reminded me of another time she gave me a hug, so I’ll tell this story too. In ’97, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Carolyn had had it previously to that. It was amazing how supportive Weber State people were. Amazing. I mean, my friend, Judy Elsly shows up at my house and she gave me this little doll that she made. Which I still have, it’s in my studio at home. She said, “What is one of the telling points about being at Weber, is that not only can we succeed together, but we will hold each other up when we are sick.” It’s really true. When 39 Lyle Crawford had that horrible bike accident—he’s not here anymore. I mean, he’s alive, but not at Weber State. He lived alone and Raj and Priti Kumar took him in and took care of him until he could take care of himself after he got out of the hospital. When Judy got sick, she said, “Would people make meals?” And we all signed up right away. It’s just what you do. It’s easy to know who your friends are here and it was easy to make friends here. KH: How do you think women receiving the right to vote shaped or influenced history, your community, and you personally? CZ: I have voted in every election since 1973 that I was eligible to vote in. I even had to register once as a republican to do it, and I’m not. Yeah. It was a primary and somebody in city government that was—she was running against her male boss and she had been doing his job for some time, so I wanted to make sure that she got elected. Most people in the state who want to get elected, run as a republican. Which is why I can’t run, because I couldn’t do that. I told Ann Milliner once I couldn’t believe that she made me vote for a republican. But I literally have voted in—I registered to vote within days of moving to anywhere I go. I put voter information on all of my canvas syllabi. They know how I feel. I realize that that’s not always cool that they know how I feel, but we are living in terrible times right now. What a despot. Women having the right to vote, I am appalled when people don’t vote because I would never not vote. I also—I’m not really fond of the mail in ballot either. I take it to a ballot box, I can’t put it in the mail. I have to take it to the ballot boxes off of 26th street and I feel like that’s casting my ballot by putting it in there. My husband thinks that I’m 40 really silly, he just wants to put stamps on it. And I’m like, “No, no there’s no guarantee it will be there.” So I have to do that. One year, when I voted for Obama, I had done it by mail, I had to go somewhere to find an “I voted” sticker because I had to have it. You know? If you vote by mail, you don’t get a sticker, so that’s a bummer. They need to start putting stickers in there so we can at least put them on. KH: Yeah, that’s true. CZ: So I need the sticker, I might have to make some. When I voted for Obama, I took the sticker off and I put it on a magnet and I made it into a magnet for my refrigerator. So I know I voted for Obama so I was really proud. People who don’t vote blow me away. I can’t understand why they don’t do that. It’s not that hard. KH: I agree. CZ: Okay. KH: Is there anything else you want to share? CZ: I don’t know. What else, is there anything that I hit on parts that you want more info of? KH: What was it like when the Browning Center was remodeled and they took out the arches? CZ: You know, my office used to be on the front of the Browning Center. I had floor to ceiling windows on the front of the building and every once in a while I thought 41 about putting political signs there, but that I figured that might get me in trouble because at the time I was a junior faculty member. But I did have this big swatch of different tie dye patterns that I had learned how to make. I sewed them all together and I put them up as a curtain, because I needed a curtain at the bottom of the window. Someone said, “Where’s your office?” I said, “Look for the tie dye, you’ll find it.” You know, moving out of the Browning Center was a challenge because we kind of did it ourselves. The costume shop was moved to the Miller Admin building, which sounds really strange. And the Admin Building has been renovated since then, but I was on—when you go in the ramp, I was on that floor, so I think that’s the second floor. The entire west side was mine because that’s where admissions used to be and they had just opened the Student Service Center. I was moving to their old space. So there were all these costumer service windows, right? And they were built ins and so we put all of the sewing machines in the built in’s. There were drawers for the built ins and I was taking the drawers over to my shop in the Browning Center and we were filling them with things just to move that way. But a bunch of the drawers were missing. So I had an empty drawer and I finally figured out where they were. So I took the drawer over to the student service center, I said, “You got any of these?” And I got this look from—I’m sure I scared the poo out of. I wasn’t very polite, it’s true. I said, “Do you have any of these?” and she said, “Yes, but we are using them.” I said, “Find a box, they’re mine now. I’ll be back tomorrow.” And I left. Yeah, they just moved their stuff in the drawers. I said, “They are mine now. 42 Give them back.” It’s that New York kind of mean. When I first got to Weber State I had students who said, “You’re not like anyone else I know.” I said, “Is that a bad thing?” “Well I haven’t decided yet.” I’m like, “Okay.” It’s alright. I mean, I had my second son after my first year at Weber State. I had students who literally said to me, “Aren’t you going to quit now?” I’m like, “Why would I quit? I just got here.” “Well you just had a baby.” I’m like, “Yeah, I’m going to hire professionals, I’m professional at this.” He’s great, right? But that was not going to happen. I had a three year old when I got here and then within a year I had Ethan at the end of my first year. And there was— oh this was a big change at Weber State! There was no maternity leave when I had my babies at any university I was at. Nothing. Zippo. I said to my husband, “We have a two month window of opportunity here for the second baby.” He said, “What?” I said, “Well if don’t get pregnant in two months, we will have to wait a year.” He said, “What?!” I said, “There’s no leave, what am I going to do?” And as it turned out, he was born a little bit earlier, we got pregnant faster than I thought, and then he was born at the end of May and we were on quarters that went until June. My colleagues filled in for me. KH: That’s good. CZ: This is a vague recollection of how things ended at that semester, you know? I just had a baby. But my medical bills were much better paid here than they were when I had a baby in Texas, so they are into babies here. KH: Shocker. 43 CZ: Well you know, he was born in McKay-Dee when it was across the street and I had a nurse who—oh, this is really funny. I had a nurse who had the hots for one of my music colleagues who was a widower. When I mentioned, “Oh I can practically see my office window from here.” And she said, “Where?!” And I said, “In the Browning Center.” “Do you know_______?” I said, “Of course, he’s one of my colleagues.” I barely knew him, he was music. She said, “I’ve been trying to get him to come over for lunch on Sunday for ages now.” And I’m like, “Yeah, good luck with that.” But she took really good care of me because I was his colleague. It was really funny. Maternity leave… When I went through tenure promotion there were no salary bumps like there are now. So I’m really really happy that things improved for people after me. Do I wish I made more money? Of course. My kid with the PhD is making more money than I do and he’s only 31. It’s a little depressing, but he’ll take care of me in my very old age. So we are good. I don’t know, anything else I didn’t babble about? KH: What was it like working for June Phillips? I know she was one of the first female deans at the university. CZ: She was one of the first female deans at the university, and I was the first Associate Dean. She put out a call for people to apply and I’m pretty sure she picked me for one major reason. That is that she was in the humanities side and I was on the arts side. I think that’s an important distinction, and I think the office needs that distinction. She traveled a great deal. So I represented her at meetings a great deal more than I ever did with Madonne. Madonne didn’t travel that much. She went away for weekends and did marathons. June was very 44 active in a couple of foreign language associations, and she was active in policy making with them, so she had to travel a lot. She helped me learn how to deal with different situations. She funded me to go to an association that’s called CCAS, Council of Colleges of Arts and Sciences. It is an organization of deans. I felt like a faculty spy there. Completely. Like deans talk about faculty like they are second class citizens often. Like, “Oh the faculty did this.” And I would be sitting there like, “I’m still 50% faculty, I still identify more as a faculty member than as an associate dean.” It was weird. But a lot of small ideas came out of that. You know, I can remember meeting some people who had some really interesting things to talk about with their jobs that helped me do mine better. I made some friends that I could say, “Hey, what’s going on at your place with this?” And people who were willing to share ideas about different places, which was interesting. KH: What was the campus like—the faculty and staff community in regards to minorities and women? Do you feel like it was pretty diverse when you started? CZ: It’s Utah. Utah is not diverse. KH: It’s true. CZ: You know, when I started, I never left the Browning Center. I didn’t have a shop manager and I would go pick up my kid at 5 at daycare, have dinner, and go back at 7 so I could cut and get ready for the next day. So it wasn’t part of my radar. KH: Okay. 45 CZ: I know how that sounds—The Browning Center was not diverse. I can say that because I never left the Browning Center. Someone said, “You’ve been at Weber State for 33 years, why?” and I said, “Because I’ve always had pretty good colleagues and I’ve had some of the most open minded students on campus and we do good work together.” So there wasn’t any reason to leave. Every time that I got any kind of promotion or anything good happen, Ed would just put more money into the house, until it’s just exactly what we want. That was his thing. AS: [To Kandice] Can I ask a question? KH: Yeah, go for it. AS: In your undergrad did you face challenges? Any resistance–and in your master’s, too? CZ: No, in the master’s absolutely not. Once I got there, I got to design the very first semester so I was able to prove myself—prove to them that I was in the right place and that was fine. As an undergrad, no. My biggest problem was always money. My father almost had a heart attack when I told him that I actually qualified for food stamps as an undergrad. And he said, “What?” And I said, “Yeah, dad.” I don’t remember how much I got. But I said, “I qualify, so I got them. Why? Are you going to send me that money?” And I had two younger brothers and a younger sister still at home, so no he wasn’t going to send me that money. I said, “Then back off dad because this is what I do.” 46 Once I got my master’s and I started teaching, my parents were sort of semi-retired by that point. They traveled around in an R.V. and the funniest thing that I used to hear from what they said is—you know, everybody talks about their kids. I talk about my kids. They would say, “Oh yeah, my daughter.” For my dad it was, “My daughter, the college professor.” And my mother, “My daughter, the costume designer.” So I think that kind of sums the two of them up pretty well. But other than money, I got into the schools I applied to. I mean one of these things that I have thought about a lot—because I have friends who have had difficulty finding love. I have friends who had difficulty getting pregnant when they wanted to. I just got lucky, you know? I found the right career that I didn’t even know about in high school. I found the right guy. He convinced me to have the two right children. I know that that makes me ahead of the curve. I’m not quite sure how everything lined up for that to happen but it did. There was a sketch on Saturday Night Live not too long ago about how all of the baby boomers still have the jobs that millennials want. I’m like, “Yeah, I still like what I do. So why should I retire?” So, I’m not quite old enough to retire. I’m here for a little bit longer. I haven’t annoyed too many people yet. Everybody knows somebody who kind of checked out and still was getting a paycheck. Well, I’m not that person. KH: Well good. CZ: I have no intention of being that person. KH: Okay, great. Thank you. 47 CZ: You’re welcome.