1 10 146 http://vtwomenshistory.vtlibraries.net/files/original/fe8c2e3a96f672dcfece0d6db84615a9.pdf 98b52af0f568171739f6db7a16a6808e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Records of the Office of the Associate Provost, Patricia Hyer (RG 5/1/10a) Subject The topic of the resource Administrators--Women AdvanceVT Faculty--Women University administration University policies Description An account of the resource The Records of the Office of the Associate Provost, Patricia Hyer, 1937-2013, contains materials from her tenure as Associate Provost at Virginia Tech, covering such subjects as inclusion and diversity, women's issues, the AdvanceVT program, and strategic planning. The collection also includes some biographical information and photographs. The digital collection contains highlights from the records and does not represent the entire collection in digital form. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hyer, Patricia B. (Patricia Brown), 1948- Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://aspace.lib.vt.edu/repositories/2/resources/3101" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Finding aid for the Records of the Office of the Associate Provost, Patricia Hyer (RG 5/1/10a)</a> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1937/2013 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <span>This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. In addition, no permission is required from the rights-holder(s) for educational uses. For other uses, you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).&nbsp;</span><a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/?language=en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/?language=en</a> Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Articles/Newspapers Presentations/Speeches Reports/Surveys University Documents Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context WomenFacultyAnalysis_DiscRank Title A name given to the resource Women Faculty at Virginia Tech: An Analysis by Discipline and Rank Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1988-05-04 Description An account of the resource This report includes details on a 1987 study on the distribution of women faculty at Virginia Tech by discipline and rank, compared to other universities. It was published by the Institutional Research and Planning Analysis, Vol. 87-88, No. 77. This is item is part of RG 5/10/1a, Associate Provost Patricia Hyer Papers, housed in Special Collections, Virginia Tech. Type The nature or genre of the resource Reports/Surveys Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/legalcode">(CC BY-NC 2.0)</a> Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://ead.lib.virginia.edu/vivaxtf/view?docId=vt/viblbv00980.xml">RG 5/1/10A, Associate Provost Patricia Hyer Papers</a> Subject The topic of the resource Faculty--Women faculty report http://vtwomenshistory.vtlibraries.net/files/original/acf6ea2b3d96893735790f96b2097685.jpg 849d50f3b95abacfa6aa93fff807f59b http://vtwomenshistory.vtlibraries.net/files/original/148eeb7539b15878ad4d437e338ac96f.mp3 0f57bb3ffb1518a55c11d3cc4bc685e2 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral Histories Description An account of the resource This collection includes oral histories from women connected to Virginia Tech. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Rights for individual oral histories may vary. Please see the rights information for individual interview for more information. Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral Histories & Interviews Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Emily Walters Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1:14:43 Interview Format This field should hold one of the following values; audio, video. Audio OHMS Object This field contains the OHMS Hyperlink (link to the XML file within the OHMS Viewer) <a href="http://digitalsc.lib.vt.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=Ms2016-015_PatHyer.xml">http://digitalsc.lib.vt.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=Ms2016-015_PatHyer.xml</a> OHMS Object Text This field contains the OHMS Index and / or Transcript and is what makes the contents of the OHMS object searchable in Omeka Emily Walters: Thank you so much for agreeing to speak with us. We're really excited about this one. If we could start with maybe some basic demographic information, so where you're born, where you grew up, anything else you would like to share from your childhood or things like that. Pat Hyer: Okay. So I grew up in Cleveland in a white ethnic neighborhood, a working-class neighborhood in Cleveland itself, built right after World War II. All houses were about 3-feet apart, everybody Catholic except us. It was quite a neighborhood. No contraceptives at the time so there were children galore. We had teams for everything. I had three sisters, so four girls in the family, a very loving family. We traveled a lot even though we had no money and I had wonderful parents. Emily: When did you start thinking about college and pursuing that? Pat: I think I always was thinking about college. So education was part of my mother's family. Maybe I should say a little bit about them. My mother's mother was a Canadian missionary in the early 1900s, and she went to Turkey on a mule, and ended up working at an American mission, home missions, an orphanage. And she was working with a displaced Greek population living in Turkey, because you may remember that obviously that part of the world was very mixed up in terms of where the boundaries were at one time. And there was a translator there. His family was very well-educated and he was a translator. His name is Youvan Savides, Greek origin. She worked with that mission society for several years. I'm talking about the 1915-18 period timeframe. He was selected by that home mission society to come and be a minister, to be trained as a minister, of all places, in Ohio at Oberlin University, so he was sent from that country by the mission society to become a minister, and they corresponded back and forth, but this was [00:02:10 forbidden] in those days. She was a protected woman and wasn't supposed to be cavorting with the natives, and she was thrown out and returned home. They eventually became a couple and lived in Oberlin and finished school there. He was an educated person from this part of the world. We're talking about the early 1900s. And he encouraged her as well, so education was part of my mother's family, not my father's, but my mother's. So it was always a big piece of my life. We were all going to go to college and we all had equal amounts of money to do so, and so it was always part of what the framework was going to be. The big and bad decision for me was because my father believed in equality down to the last ten-cents, you know he didn't differentiate about whether all of the four of us actually wanted to go to college and who was most likely to do anything at college, which would have been me. I was the one who was the most academically inclined. But I got a scholarship to go to a place called Hillsdale College. I don't know if you ever heard of that, but Hillsdale is the one that determined very early on that they would not comply with Title IX. This was after I had finished, but I got a large scholarship to go there. I didn't know anything about Hillsdale's conservative political ideology. It's a very small liberal arts college. It was completely the wrong choice for me and it was not a good experience. But I sent myself off to Paris. I was a French major and I sent myself off to Paris for my junior year abroad and that's when I discovered other people were having a good time in college. They had other friends who did things with them, so that's when I really learned that that experience could have been a richer, better one. I was really at the wrong place, but I finished. To finish up that story, the one good thing that happened at Hillsdale was that I got a scholarship to the University of Michigan as a valedictorian of that college. They [Michigan] had a program for small college graduates to go to graduate school and that's what got me to the University of Michigan. Emily: And so then you went to the University of Michigan and you came here for your PhD? Pat: Yeah, but it wasn't quite that simple. So in between I got a master's degree in French and then I met my husband at the graduate residence hall and we married, and so I stayed in Ann Arbor looking for a teaching job, which is what women did in those days. This is 1971 we're talking about. But that was an era in which all of the colleges had dropped their foreign language requirements, and there were no teaching jobs because the high schools then dropped their foreign language courses because the students didn't sign up for them because they didn't need them to go to college. So I ended up typing. I typed for a couple of years in French and decided that that was not the way I wanted to spend my life, and so I went back and got another degree. I can tell more stories. I would call this the awakening period, right. So Mike was doing a PhD. He had another year to go and so I decided to try to pursue another master's degree to see if I could get a job in another field when we were going to leave, which I did. I got a degree in community college and adult education at the University of Michigan, so I had two master's degrees. I followed him to Old Dominion University. I was unemployed for about six months, profoundly unhappy, but I did eventually find a job at Old Dominion and a wonderful cohort of activist women. I can tell more stories about this if you want to hear them, but I had already been involved with Women's Centers. There was one at the University of Michigan where I went to get some counseling and then I did an internship there. That was one of the very first women centers in the country. There were only two. In that era it was all about creating opportunities for women to return to college. This is an era in which greater access to contraception, greater access to divorce, the feminine mystique. Lots of women were divorcing and terrified because they had no preparation to do work on their own. There was a whole national movement. There were even bills passed to help women go back to college in order to be able to support themselves. So this Women's Center was focused on returning women. That was the movement at the time in the early 70s. When I got to Old Dominion, within a matter of weeks, the activist women's caucus, faculty women's caucus, was hosting a meeting about trying to set up a Women's Center there. I found out about it. They found out about me. They were thrilled. I was in continuing education. That's where I was employed. It was actually my area of expertise. I was working for a crazy but wild sort of guy who was the dean of continuing education and he thought anything we do would be great. [Chuckles] And so instantly we were involved in trying to set up a Women's Center at Old Dominion. That was 1974-5, somewhere in there, about 1974 or 5. We wrote a grant. It was supported by the institution, which was a growing... Every time the doors opened up each fall at Old Dominion there were another 1,000 students. There was a moment of great change. You know, at one time Old Dominion was actually a branch of William & Mary. But you may not have known that, but they were, and it was a vastly growing urban institution at the time, built on a housing redevelopment project. Anyway, a moment of great change there and everything was possible. Let me just put it that way, everything was possible. So we started a Women's Center but not because we got the grant. We did not get the grant, but the administration agreed to go ahead and start that in one of the old houses that the University had acquired adjacent to campus. Emily: I didn't know that women centers really didn't start popping up until around that time. Pat: The 70s. Emily: Was that the time when women centers across the nation started popping up around that time? Pat: Not quite that fast Emily. They happened but not quite that fast. Of course everything was quite a movement at that time. They started in some placs and not others, and of course they didn't start at Virginia Tech. There were lots of places more ripe for them than other places were, but they did start growing. There [wasn't] an unknown quantity at the time. Emily: What brought you to Virginia Tech? Pat: Actually there were two things that came together. One is Mike, we're not four years into Old Dominion. Mike was a faculty member in engineering there. And he had worked at NASA on some projects with some students, some women and minority students. He was trying to do some research training for them, and he met somebody from Virginia Tech who also had some NASA grants. Parallel track 1: he was being recruited to come to Virginia Tech. The other track was, it was clear to me that if I was going to advance I needed a Ph.D., and so the question was where should I go. I really wanted to go back to the University of Michigan. I thought it was a wonderful institution. I had a great experience there. I wanted to be there. But by then we were out of state tuition and they promised no graduate assistantships and the only thing Mike could get was a post-doc, which would have paid $14,000 and my tuition was 6. Obviously, that wasn't going to work. So then I had to figure out whether I wanted to go off alone and let him pursue whatever he was going to do, or come to Virginia Tech with him and figure out whether I could make it work here, and I ended up choosing the latter. So I followed him here because he was recruited to be part of a very growing and very strong program in composite materials. So, I figured at the time that I could maybe continue to work. The field I was in, continuing education, is a field that respects a doctorate, but really respects experience first and foremost. So the notion that I could work part-time and pursue the Ph.D. seemed like not a bad idea and they were okay with that. So I came kind of as a following spouse. Emily: What were your first impressions of Virginia Tech, the first memories that you have? Pat: Well, my own program at the time, community college education was a much bigger deal in the 70s than it is now. It had only been started in the 1970-71 timeframe, and they had an enormous community college administration program which they ran all over the state to try to help community colleges have Ph.D.-level trained administrators. And there were probably eight or ten faculty members doing that work. That's a big group. The higher ed group however was two people or three people, neither of whom were very strong. There was a strong group of young people recruited by a guy named Gary Fenstermacher, a philosopher of education who was over in something we used to call Foundations, not in the same department I was in. And he and some others, he recruited some young people and I want to talk about them for a minute, were trying to create a Ph.D. option in educational policy that would give the Foundations people, who were sociology, philosophy, and anthropology of education, they had no direct Ph.D. line, to be able to work with Ph.D. students themselves. And remember, the College of Education is a graduate program. There's no undergraduate program associated with it. And so those young faculty members were eager to get something started and they got involved in a brand-new policy option, which I signed up for, and they expected students to be full-time, residential, serious -- that was me, full-time, residential. So it wasn't like many of the other education programs which were all over the state enrolled in by people who were employed, that kind of stuff. So, my impressions of Virginia Tech, well, I need to go back just a little bit. So, when Mike and I drove our U-Haul across the Mason Dixon line we thought we had moved back to the 1950s. I mean culturally it was a shock. It was not a comfortable shock. And I have to say that Blacksburg was less of a shock than Norfolk was. Norfolk was at that time controlled by a lot of retired military, by a very southern flavor religious-right. This is the time of Pat Robertson who ran the 700 Club, a very conservative environment. Women weren't working very much. It was a very alien environment to me, and I often say that's what made me a radical. I really wasn't a radical before then, but the mere fact of wanting to work was a radical move at that time. Well Blacksburg was only a little better than that in some ways. It was a little more cosmopolitan because it had hired faculty in the late 60s or early 70s from everywhere. Now I want to go back to the story about those younger women faculty members. Virginia Tech was growing vastly, and much of that growth was related to women. Remember women weren't admitted on the same basis as men until the mid to late 60s. We are talking about mid 1960, there were about 500 women. In 1967 there were 1,000 women. They were growing as fast as the dormitories could be shifted to women, so it had this legacy, a moment of vast change for Virginia Tech. Hahn was an extraordinary president, extraordinary president with a vision for what Virginia Tech could be, and that included admitting women and transforming what disciplines we taught. I mean that was the era in which we added the "...State University" in [our name], added humanities and added sociology and added education, added a whole bunch of subjects at the full major level that never existed before. So early 70s were a moment of tremendous transition for Virginia Tech and you felt that in the air, so I felt that as well. Back to my story about the young women faculty members, because I know on your list is "who might have been influencing you". In general I felt my graduate program was a five-year independent study. Honestly, I really didn't have faculty members who did me much good, so I didn't really bond with many of them. I bonded with one, and that was Sheila Slaughter. So she was one of those core of junior faculty members who had been hired by this more senior guy, Gary Fenstermacher, who created a group. And Sheila was and is a Marxist. She was a feminist. She had been educated in the [northeast]. Now this is typical of a lot of the brand-new junior women faculty, of which there were very few by the way, even in the late 70s. Because when you hired new faculty at a huge rate they weren't coming out of the south in that era, because the southern institutions were not strong in the 70s, not strong Ph.D. producers. Ph.D.s were coming out of the northeast, the Midwest, and that's where new faculty were coming from. So you ended up with creating this environment in which people like Sheila, coming from the northeast, and [they] are aghast at what they have done [by] moving to the south at an institution with such a powerful cultural legacy of race and gender discrimination and military [requirement]. So, I mean these are legacies that were just beginning to stretch a little bit. Sheila, as I described to you, was a fairly radical person actually, and she taught a couple of classes that several of us signed up for. She wanted [00:17:28 it run] very independently. We met at her apartment up at Jefferson Apartments. She had no furniture, we sat on the floor. There were six of us or seven of us in that class. Most of us older, nobody young. We had an incredible experience. She had us read Emma Goldman's autobiography. Do you know about Emma Goldman? A radical free love labor movement person. This is what we read. What it had to do with higher education is not at all clear. But we conducted original research. I remember these powerful experiences we had, and we broke up into teams and we actually conducted original research on women at Virginia Tech, so we conducted a study and we wrote it up in 1981. The team I was working with was on women administrators, so we surveyed the women administrators and that was not a big survey. Tried to interview some of them. A few of them refused to interview us because they were afraid. They were embattled. Most of the women who had any kind of administrative role were associated with home economics. There were very few women administrators at all at Virginia Tech. The most significant one was a vice president for Student Affairs who was the one who was very difficult to talk to and didn't want to talk to us and was afraid of being misquoted and an atmosphere of fear. So anyway, that was a really powerful experience with Sheila and then she left, as did almost all the young women faculty women who had been hired. It was a mismatch. It was an era in which anybody who did feminist scholarship was denied tenure. It was an era of hostile climates. It was an era in which women were not appreciated in any way and those who had options to leave did or were forced out. I'm really the only one who is kind of left from that era really, and that's only because I think I was protected because I was a student. We started a women's caucus in 1978. I didn't start it, but I was there along with one other graduate student in education, Mary Rojas, a person who became very important to women's issues on campus. Mary and I were both non-traditional students. I had been president of the women's caucus at Old Dominion before I had left to come back to do my Ph.D. I was a spouse. I really didn't feel like an ordinary graduate student in many ways. I felt more like a colleague to these junior women who were only a few years older than I was. And we created this caucus. Again, I wasn't the president of it, but I was deeply engaged in that work, deeply engaged to the point that's why it took me five years to finish my Ph.D. I was so busy doing activism work, writing reports, trying to meet with the administration. And I can tell you more stories about that if you want to know about them, but I was always going to finish. I don't mean that, but I mean I had some major delays along the way. [Laughs] Major delays along the way. Anyway, the young women who were trying to meet with the administration at that time and do things, that whole group ended up leaving and some of them had great careers after they left Virginia Tech, but they didn't stay. They didn't stay. A few were forced out because they were trying to do a women's studies scholarship and we didn't do a women's studies scholarship at Virginia Tech at that time. And others left just because it was a battle too hard to be fought. Emily: And so with that research that you did in Sheila's class and the administrators, that atmosphere of fear, was there any pushback from that once it was completed? Pat: I don't want to say there was pushback there, but I could describe some of the meetings from doing our little study. But it just demonstrated where the climate was at that time. This was not a climate that nurtured women and it didn't nurture people of color either. Let's just be honest about that. There was one African American couple at the time, Johnny Miles, who was part of the women's caucus, that was a woman, and Leroy Miles, her husband. They had been hired in the late 1970s. They eventually went up to the Northern Virginia campus, but that's it. You're talking about nobody really, and everybody kind of imperiled in some way. Okay, so what happened, so these reports, it was more kind of opposition going on with the administration relationship to those faculty women's caucus reports that we wrote, some of which I still have here and I put in the archives. So the meeting I remember the most was the one where we presented -- we did more than one meeting with the administrators, but we did one in about 1983, which is about the time I was supposed to be finishing my dissertation but was actually writing this report instead. We had this meeting in the president's board room. I don't know if you've ever been in that board room Emily, but at the time and for all the decades I worked at Virginia Tech, the board room is a paneled room, wood paneled room with these portraits of all of the past white male presidents that we've had before, most of them with the most severe looking expressions on their faces that you can imagine. All the meetings that I had after I later was employed by Virginia Tech were still in this room, right. So we were in this room with five or six male administrators. I won't name them except John Perry, who I will talk about later. Oh, I will name them, it was Minnis Ridenour, you know, some of these names that are so indelible to Virginia Tech's history. I mean Minnis Ridenour, Ray Smoot, these are names where people were in positions of authority and leadership for decades. We're talking 30 years or more, really shaped Virginia Tech over many years. Anyway, our meeting was then to talk about the need for affirmative action, the fact that we had vastly male-dominated departments, even in English, foreign languages, all the fields that had had more than the majority of women doctorates back in the 70s. So it's not as if there weren't a pool of women to hire. You had to be doing systematic discrimination to end up with 75% male faculty in English. I mean let's be honest about it. The same with foreign languages. So we were having that conversation about the need to hire. We had also done some salary studies and we were talking about discrimination in salary. We were talking about the need to do women's studies, and I describe that meeting in every talk I've ever given as meeting with a group of clueless, completely clueless, not angry, but clueless white men. There wasn't a single man in the room who had a working wife, and we're talking about the 1980s here. This is not the beginning of the women's movement, this is well into it, and they did not appreciate or buy into the vision that we had for that growth and change. So, I had felt that the years that I was working on this that very little happened between 78 and 83, very little happened at Virginia Tech. We kept bringing out the issues. We weren't shooed away when we set up an appointment, but nothing happened as a result of those appointments. Really virtually nothing happened. Emily: And so when did you start seeing any change at all? If not by 1983, did it start picking up any time soon after that? Pat: Well, my personal story is that when I finished my doctorate there was no job. By the way, I did my doctorate on affirmative action for women faculty, so obviously this was a topic near and dear to my heart. So I left and went to the University of Maryland and Mike and I commuted for a couple of years, and then he got a job up at the University of Maryland and hated it. Mike was someone who loved the intense, complete immersion in the faculty experience. I mean he worked seven days a week. He called his students on Saturday and Sunday. All of them remember being called on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. He loved the academic life in an intense way, and at University of Maryland people lived very far from the campus. They didn't come onto campus because you had to park a mile away. You know people were living in Baltimore and there was no campus life and he really didn't like it very much. So we tried to find a third place for us to go. You know he would have gladly come back to Virginia Tech. Virginia Tech was very strong in his field. There was a huge core of people doing the kind of work that he did and great students. So we tried to go at a third place. That didn't materialize. And at that very moment in time, this is 1987 now, the person who recruited Mike to Virginia Tech in the first place left Virginia Tech and went to University of Virginia. He was running a very large-scale grant program with NASA Langley. Mike had been part of it. So Paul Torgerson, who was dean of engineering at the time, got on the phone and tried to bring Mike back to Virginia Tech. I did not want to come. I did not want to come. It wasn't a place that had any future for me as far as I could tell. I had not heard of anything. I still had friends here. I had no reason to believe that it was going to be any better of a location for me to be employed. Paul Torgersen then became the one who was trying to find a job for Pat. This was hilarious actually. This was sort of the dual career program before it existed. Paul was just running his first capital campaign. Virginia Tech didn't do fundraising very much until the 80s. He had very little respect for professional fundraisers. He thought anybody could do it. He was going to hire me as his fundraiser, a fundraiser for him. He did not know that I abhor making cold calls on the telephone, just not my strength, but he was going to hire me in order to get Mike. Then at that moment a lot of things broke Emily. It was just a transformational moment at Virginia Tech. There was the famous land swap. You may not have heard about that. Virginia Tech had an apple orchard farm right where OfficeMax is. You know where OfficeMax is, right? Emily: Hmm. Pat: So we owned all of that property on 460 and there was a land swap made with the Whitethorn property down in McCoy. It was meant to be better property. It was farmland. It was not along an urban, what was a growing corridor. At that time it was still not what it is now, but it was going to be developed, and trying to grow apples in a developed area is not a great idea. There was a guy who was on both sides of the transaction, so that became a complete ethical issue, a huge state issue and a lot of people had to resign over it. Then there was a basketball scandal and we were under NCAA violations, no, we weren't in the NCAA -- well, violations for basketball scandal stuff. Don't even ask me what it was. Then there was a lot of stuff going on, so their whole top administration ended up resigning. President Lavery resigned under a threat of a vote of no-confidence from the Faculty Senate and over these two other issues. The provost left, not because he was involved in any of this stuff, but because he was offered a presidency. This was David Roselle. Everybody was interim. I mean the whole Burruss Hall was interim. Back to my story about John Perry. John Perry was the vice provost at the time. I believe that was his title. He had come with Provost Wilson from Wells College, which was a women's college in the 80s, an enormously good human being, John Perry was. He had no interest in being provost. He was a mathematician by training, but he took over the provostship at that time to hold it together until they could stop the provost search and start a presidential search, and then they would return to a provost search after a new president had been hired. So really the game completely changed in 1987, completely changed. So Perry was looking for a hire behind. We call them hire behinds, to do some of the work that he used to do. He used to do budget work and administrative work in the office, and I got hired in a temporary position to do that work. And I agreed to do that work because it was a moment of transformation for Virginia Tech, and that's when we hired -- I always say in the story that's when we hired McComas. He was the first one who knew how to spell the word 'diversity', and that was true. And then he hired a feminist, Fred Carlisle, and it began a moment of possibility for Virginia Tech, real possibility for Virginia Tech. So that's how I got back to Virginia Tech and how I think things changed. And I think it broke open because of the land swaps scandal, the resignation of Lavery. I mean otherwise the status quo would have gone on for a very long time. Emily: Is this when you started making steps on your own for women's history in advancement of women at the University? Pat: Yeah, and I think that has to be because John Perry let it happen. [Laughs] And there was a lot of activism. Even when I was gone, back to my story, Mary Rojas finished her Ph.D. and stayed at Virginia Tech. Mary Rojas was always very interested in international women's issues, and she talked the administration into having an international women's component. This is at a time when the College of Agriculture was interested in this. So she was part of an international development initiative in the College of Agriculture. She was a wonderful person, brought people together. They had a very slight burgeoning of kind of a women's week activity where people would give talks. There were a few women trying to teach a women's studies course on an ad hoc basis. There were things happening despite a non-conducive environment, so those things were happening, and with the change in administration it allowed those to come out in the open. There was a real women in development program funded. There was eventually a real women's studies program allowed to occur and a director hired. There was eventually a real black studies program funded and a [director] [00:33:12] to be hired. So things went from underground to above ground, and you know the administration funded those things. We also had Carol Burger at the center of this. We created a Women's Research Institute [funded by] the Research Division which was run by Gary Hooper at the time. So there was a meeting with Gary Hooper and John Perry who was the interim provost. I was at the meeting and they wanted to do something. I mean people wanted to do something at this point to try to change, and they funded this women's research institute, or WRI, so that got started. And then we wrote grants and we did lots of stuff that was either allowed to happen or encouraged to happen, let me put it that way. Emily: That's I guess around the time when the Women's Center here was created or founded? Pat: That was just another step. I think that was 94ish. I'm sure you can find that date somewhere, about 1994, but it was in the middle of a budget reduction. So how did that story happen? Well, there was a coordinating council -- oh, this is a funny story I forgot to tell. So President McComas, as sympathetic as he was, in some way was confused, because he didn't know what women wanted, you know, as if there was sort of one voice, and that we should be able to come up with a plan, we should all agree on a plan. There were lots of things to be done, but we did create a women's coordinating council of those positions that now existed. The state required a sexual assault counselor in those days, so there was a person doing that. There was the EO office. There was me. People were actually paid to do some of this work, which was new, you know. We didn't have people paid to do some of this work [before]. So we got together and created a coordinating council, and we wrote a proposal for a Women's Center, and it came to the administration at a moment of budget reduction. We had severe budget reductions multiple times while I was in the provost office. Not fun. And one of those reductions that Fred Carlisle insisted was a 25% reduction in the College of Education, massive cuts, massive cuts. And we allowed some things to happen, so I was part of enforcing that, helping people to retire early, doing all kinds of stuff to try to make a 25% budget reduction in one college happen. And one of the deals that got suggested by a colleague of mine in the office, was why didn't we let a woman who was doing sex equity and education work named Penny Burge, count as a budget reduction and make her the director of a new Women's Center? It was a quid pro quo kind of deal that, if we could talk Penny into doing that, it would allow the college to count her salary as a budget reduction, and it would give us a way to start in the middle of a massive university budget reduction, a Women's Center where there's no time or space to do that. So it was actually that guy who had that idea. And I'm pretty sure it was Fred Carlisle at the time, we came up with a way to get it launched at that time, so that's how it got started. Emily: Can you speak to some of the work that you've done with the Women's Center or with VT advance, here how you got involved with all of this? Pat: Sure. There's kind of an arc here. The arc has ups and downs to it. It was not all easy. It was not all easy, and I can talk about some of those moments that were not easy later, but in general the arc for women was easier than the arc for African Americans, which had more ups and downs of dramatic character. But there was a momentum building and we ended up hiring more people with women's studies background and we ended up hiring more people to serve the Women's Center. So there was a collection of people who had expertise and commitment and passion around these issues, so I wasn't the only one any more doing this kind of work, and it was being done legitimately. I mean that's important for you to understand that all of the work that was done in the 80s was underground, you know. People did it despite, not because of, that sort of thing. So I didn't want to run the Women's Center myself; it reported to me. But even in the case of the one at Old Dominion that I started in 1976, it reported to me, but I did not want to do the work myself. I didn't feel that was my strength. Individual one-on-one counseling was not my strength. My strength was programmatic, policy, that sort of stuff, and the same was true here with the Women's Center. Penny, and a woman named Penny Cook who became the administrative assistant, launched that, and of course I was deeply involved in the life of the Women's Center work, but I wasn't running the Women's Center. Other people were running it and developing its programs. Under another leader, Ellen Plummer, who is of course still here, grew grant programs around sexual assault and grew that effort enormously. That was Ellen's achievement, but we did lots of stuff under Penny in those early years. So now I'm talking about the mid-90s when that got launched, right. Advance doesn't come to play until the 2000s, and it was really an idea of two women engineers named Karen Thole and Nancy Love. Karen was a mechanical engineer and Nancy Love was a civil engineer, relatively young faculty members, not brand new but relatively young and eager. And of course almost all engineers even in those days had to get grants, and so they were always watching for things, and they had seen a grant from the National Science Foundation for this thing called Advance. And they met with me. I mean I was the logical person to meet with because I was probably the most senior person involved in university-level work around women's issues. And they met with me and showed me this grant [00:39:52 call], and what NSF had decided was that they had invested for several decades programs for individual women. Let us fix you. You will be more competitive if you have this experience. So let us give you an intensive laboratory research experience and maybe you can be competitive for a faculty position. So I call that the era of "fixing the women". And the Advance grant was siphoned off as some money off the top of all of the NSF directorates to try to "fix the institutions". That was the modus operandi of Advance. It was institutional grants to fix institutions, not to fix the women. I mean you could fix the women as part of institutional grants, but it was a commitment by those institutions who got the grant to transform the institution, and that sounded pretty good to us at the time. This is now the era where Mark McNamee is provost, someone who got it profoundly at his core, a genuine, authentic sort of man around these issues. That's very important to know. So he was enthusiastic about us writing this grant, and we wrote the grant. It was a $3.5-million NSF grant when we got the money. This is a very big deal. We wrote this grant in about 2002 I believed we turned it in, and we were awarded the grant in 2003. And we started doing a lot of [background work], even without the money. The dual career issues were already on the table. We didn't have a real mechanism for handling them, but they were on the table. We were worried about stop-the-clock issues. I mean there were issues that were on the table but not really systematically focused, and that's what we worked on most effectively for the Advance grant. There were many streams in the Advance grant though. There was the family friendly policies, which is that combination of things around stop the clock, around allowing someone to buyout for a term if they needed to buyout for a term because of a family-related issue, the dual career office, all kinds of guidelines about departments. We did a lot of work on department climate. We did training endlessly for department heads and for search committees trying to increase the probability that a woman be selected in a search for an engineering or science-based faculty member, so the grant was, of course, focused on the College of Science and the College of Engineering. We should be clear about that, because that's what NSF funds. But it spilled over to everywhere, and we made it applicable to all colleges, so it was really an institution-wide sort of effort. We also had a stream of the grant that worked with doctoral students, women doctoral students in the sciences and engineering, [we] tried to increase their flexibility, availability, preparation, notions of what it means to be a woman in science. We tried to have conversations about changing the nature of laboratory science, which is alien to many things that women need to accomplish. The whole job of being a faculty member in engineering and science was a hostile environment for women. And I don't mean because of the way you were treated, it's the work itself, which is so intense, and you are expected to be on the job 24/7. And there are no gaps. You're not allowed to have any gaps. You're not allowed to be going to your child's soccer game. You're not allowed to be breast-feeding, the whole notion of what it meant to be a successful scientist was what was at stake and that's what we were trying to work on. And we worked on that. The grant had several no-cost extensions and we closed that down in 2010, so it went from 2003 to 2010. And I think we made a big difference, particularly on the family friendly policies, but in other ways too. After trying to select more women leaders the College of Engineering was much more involved in trying to find women faculty members. Let me pause there though and see if you want to redirect some things before we go on with that. Emily: Did you have any questions? Katie: Yes. I was interested in you talking about there being a general arc about some of the advancements that happened, but that there were some ups and downs. Can you talk a little bit about experiencing that downtime and how did it come back from that downtime and keep pushing forward to keep doing work even if you were experiencing pushback or resistance to the work that you wanted to get done? Pat: Well, I'll make one story short and then I'll tell a longer story. There were some really terrible times at times. So one of the shorter terrible times was under Paul Torgersen as president. This was 1996 I'm pretty sure. We had a women's week or women's month at that time, and the brochure was advertising a program called "Thank God I'm a Lesbian". And the description of the film that they were going to show created havoc, let us describe it that way. And someone on the faculty, we have some of these folks who are much more conservative and not happy about the changes that were occurring, particularly around lesbians and gays, and they sent that program to the Richmond Times Dispatch. An editorial was written saying that, of course, Virginia Tech didn't need any of the budget money that was being negotiated right at that very moment in the General Assembly. If they had enough money to show a film like this and that it was being funded by university expenses, then clearly we didn't need any money. As I say in the story that I shipped to you, it was a terrible moment in time. Virginia Tech was about to do a major fundraiser in Richmond itself and the people who were hosting that fundraiser were beside themselves with what that might mean, because many of our older donors are not gay-friendly. What can I say? And then the General Assembly itself was voting on the budget in the next two days. I mean it was just an awful moment. And Paul Torgersen's office was inundated, inundated with people who were either mad about us funding such a film, or anxious about what the impact would be. Paul ended up writing an editorial back about academic freedom, which was courageous at the time. It was an opinion op-ed piece that was published in the paper, and he supported the right for that to happen. But it was a moment when all of us on the other side of the receiving end of this were worried that in fact the Women's Center would be killed, that all the funding would [be withdrawn]. Well what does it take to offer a film? Like 10-cents, right? So there was really not a lot of university [money] going into this film. But Paul was embarrassed. He didn't want this to happen again. It was attracting attention at the highest level of the presidency. This kind of stuff happens over and over again now, but back then in '96, this kind of disruption was not the president's daily fodder. So Paul Torgersen had a wonderful, wonderful chief assistant and that was Carol Nickerson. Carol was very supportive of the Women's Center and she was kind of managing this event for the president's office. She called me in and, I don't remember whether I met with the president or just Carol, but she urged us to find a way not to let this happen again because it was distracting, big-time distracting. And we survived that. The women's community survived that. I'll go back and describe what we tried to do at the time. She asked us to do a little bit more monitoring of the calendar and try to not invite this kind of stuff. So I mean one is [that] we are completely clear that somebody on the faculty shipped that off to Richmond in order to attract attention to this. This is a theme that happens again and again by the way. In the women's community we didn't know what to do. We really thought we were going to lose funding for the Women's Center. We wanted to be supportive of lesbian issues, we just didn't know how to play it, and we decided we would go ahead with them, but there was some real risk to all of us who were speaking about this. I mean this [was] a different era than it is now. We survived that. We didn't end up giving up on lesbian issues. I mean they were part of women's month and our activities at the Women's Center for a long time, and obviously that whole environment has changed. But there is an arc to gay lesbian issues at Virginia Tech as well. Another more trying era, longer lasting was the election of John Rocovich as Rector of the Board in probably 2002 if I've got the right era. And this is probably a story I know you already have recorded or somebody has recorded about the appointment of Karen DePauw. So Karen is an out lesbian and we were working to have her partner, Shelli Fowler, appointed by the English Department, and I was managing the visit. That's just one of the roles I had in the provost office. I did a lot of search committees for top level searches and organized all of their visits and schedules. I did all the visits for Shelli Fowler and saw that the English Department supported her appointment and then, you should probably know this story, Shelli's appointment was not approved. It was devastating. It was devastating. I remember Mark McNamee in tears trying to call Karen DePauw and tell her what had happened. Karen and Shelli already had the moving van planned. They were ready to come. They had to make a big decision about whether to continue to come or not to come. And I think it was partly Mark's sincere response to this crisis that made Karen and Shelli willing to take this on as a personal quest. I mean who invites themselves to be dissed in this kind of way. I mean diss doesn't even begin to explain how it felt at the time. But that was only the beginning, so John Rocovich was on a roll and he worked with the Attorney General to write a policy unbeknownst to anybody else eliminating affirmative action at Virginia Tech. And we had at that time written into our policy statement that there would be non-discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation as well. That's what he was really after. John Rocovich was a homophobe and he was about to impose his own personal ideology on the institution. Now, John Rocovich is a very important person to the life of the university, let me say. His parents worked here. He directed millions of dollars of philanthropy from Marion [00:52:00 Via] to the University. He himself was engaged in the life of the university in profound ways. I mean there's a reason he's on the board of visitors. But his personal belief system drove what he wanted the agenda to be for the Board while he was the rector. He completely surprised the administration. He never told Charles Steger that he intended to put forward this resolution at the Board and they passed it. At a subsequent meeting there was a forest guy, a representative of the forest industry, on the board because we are very involved in that sort of stuff, and he was mad about the fact that we had an Eco-First speaker on campus. And the Eco-First at that time took violent protest actions about environmental issues and he was upset about that. So he wrote a little resolution on a piece of paper, pulled it out of his pocket and gave it to the Board to require the president to review speakers on campus before they came, which is of course unconstitutional. [Laughs] And the Board passed that too, so you ended up with an explosion of anger at the institution because we had become a more welcoming place over the years. And we're talking about having worked on these issues for a decade and a half. We had hired people who were feminists. We had hired people who were African American scholars. We had hired people who were thinking differently. We hired gays and lesbians. I mean the campus was not transformed, but was transforming, and we were open to diversity, we really were. This was not who we were. This is not who we were. So we had everybody upset about this and the faculty members engaged on multiple levels. One because of the academic freedom issue, even if they weren't concerned about the gay lesbian issue, and there was a march. I remember Ann Kilkelly walking with a black robe and duck tape on her mouth. You know this is not something that Virginia Tech does much of, but it did then. Letters were written. Petitions were passed. There were conversations constantly going on with the Board. There were alumni who engaged... This is a moment when a lot of us tried to decide whether to quit, really. I stayed. I was mad. I was angry. I was angry that Charles was not more confrontational with the Board. Charles refused to speak about it. He did not want to be publicly in opposition to the Board, so all the work was going on behind the scenes and it left the faculty and the students feeling like nobody was there covering their back. I stayed though because Mark McNamee was there, and I believed in his belief that we would make this right somehow. And I also believed, because I had been there a long time and been through many provosts already that I could last longer than John Rocovich. Their appointments are only four years. After all, boards come and go and being persistent is a huge part of institutional change, and I felt like I was part of that you know, so if you leave when the moment comes when you might do something about it you're not there. And you know I wasn't going to lose my job over this. Mark McNamee was not going to fire me. I was still married to a faculty member. This was not personally threatening to me. It was at the core of my heart threatening to me, at the core of what I meant my professional life to be was threatening to me, but not in terms of my paycheck, so I stayed. Eventually there was a special meeting of the Board called. Enough work had been done behind the scenes and the Board rescinded its action in the spring, and by June the Board had voted Rocovich out of the rector position. And then the Governor began appointing diversity-related people to our Board and then suddenly, whiplash, we're having to report on diversity issues, starting like the next year. So it was a terrible moment that lasted way too long. Eventually the president found a way to appoint Shelli Fowler. It was a complicated work-about. It wasn't in the English Department. It wasn't a lot of things that Shelli wanted, but Shelli agreed to that future and a resolution was found and the Board approved that. So it was a terrible several years, just a terrible several years. There's more to it than I've told you, but it was a terrible several years. Katie: How did principles of community factor into all of that? Pat: Well it was sort of this [00:57:44 denouement], what do we do to repair this damage? And there were many things that we needed to do. There were things that were happening around African Americans as well where we had lost the confidence that anybody had in the state had about sending their kids to Blacksburg. I mean there were moments of terrible down incidents that got a lot of national press, got a lot of state press. So there was that, how to maintain the sense that Virginia Tech was really committed to African Americans was a very tenuous, difficult thing. So all the time we were trying to figure out how to move forward with this, Katie. There were a number of things that we had to do. One of them was this thing called Narrow Tailoring. I don't know if you've ever heard that expression. But one of the ways that we had to address some of the concerns of the Board was to go through every single program we had related to race and make sure that it was legally compliant, which meant that it had to be open to more than African Americans. This was very very upsetting to a lot of people. We had a MAOP program at the time. We had it in place for a number of years. It was for African American undergraduates to have a research experience during the summer. That program took African Americans. It wasn't open to everybody. That was one of those that was on the chopping block. It either had to be opened or it was going to be closed. Bev Watford was running a number of programs. All of those had to be opened. They couldn't be closed, same on gender. If you ran a women's program through what is called CEED in engineering, you had to allow men to participate if men applied, and so on and so forth. So we went through months, months of editing brochures, trying to figure out what the mission statements could be, trying to figure out we could meet its Narrow Tailoring requirements. And Mark McNamee was unhappy, but deeply involved in trying to make these things go. A few of them had to be abandoned. We had one African American scholarship internship, fellowship, whatever you want to call them, in veterinary medicine. They only had money for one. There was no point in opening it up. It didn't accomplish what veterinary medicine wanted to do with one, so if you opened it up you weren't necessarily going to be able to accomplish what the goal was there. So a few things had to be killed altogether and other things had to be opened up. The Principles of Community was just one more thing that we worked on. So how did we get to the point where civil conversation is part of our culture? And we wrote the Principles of Community and felt that this was not everything. It's one thing. And the fact that it's endured so many years is a good thing. It didn't have teeth, and several times we tried to work through grievances or work through employee disciplinary background based on the Principles of Community and the lawyer at the university didn't feel it had the teeth to be able to make it something that you could use as a behavioral mandate, but it does help shape the culture. And of course we had signs printed everywhere. And President Sands has been wonderful about keeping that engaged and alive. Emily: And so there have obviously been a lot of changes happening to this very day. Are there changes that you would still like to see happen on campus? Pat: Oh yeah, yeah, sure. [Laughs] So, I don't know intimately whether or not there is still the energy around women's issues as there was when I was in the provost office. I feel as if when the grant finished and I left that the energy that we had poured into that at some very high level for so many years dissipated. And I'm just not sure that Virginia Tech is as committed to that any more as they were. Back to my "what makes change happen" thing, leadership matters. There's just no two ways about it, leadership matters. And it has to be ongoing for years and years and years. You know when the leaders don't speak about this, they don't make this a priority, they don't hold people accountable, it shifts itself right backwards. So some of that is about how many women leaders we have. We have some. Very recently we've been once again hiring women deans. I bet we went through a period even after the Advance grant was over where suddenly where were women at the top? They weren't there. Just relatively few women selected for senior positions. And women's issues in general wasn't sure. I wasn't sure that the commitment was there to be hiring women faculty in engineering any more, because it takes a lot of work to change that, a lot of work to change that. And it takes a dean who is absolutely insistent that this is a priority to make that happen, not just nice, but a priority to make that happen. And I'm not sure that's there. As much as I support the dean of engineering, there are good things and they have big agendas, all the deans and all the vice presidents have big agendas, but it takes an ongoing commitment -- verbal, symbolic, and actual you know, putting money behind things, hiring the right people, starting programs and supporting them, speaking about it. All of those things matter to create an environment in which a change can happen over a very long time. Now it hasn't snapped back completely. We have a lot of women on campus now, many more than we had before, but we are still not at an equitable state and it's still every single senior women appointment is a big deal, you know. So it's not natural. It's not natural. And of course we've only had one woman provost. We hadn't had any woman president seriously considered, and yet there are other women who have run major land grant universities, the University of Michigan. Most of the Ivy League have now tested and found themselves accepting of a woman president, so that hasn't happened here yet either. Emily: What kind of work are you doing now if any with the University or in your own life? Pat: Oh I'm very busy. [Laughs] So I've moved from pay to non-pay. With Jerry Niles who is an extraordinarily wonderful man and former dean of liberal arts. What do we call it? Liberal arts and whatever at the time. I don't know if you remember, Katie, was the name of the first combined college was. Jerry was an education faculty member and then went on to help create this new combined college that we had one of our major restructuring conferences. Jerry was tapped to try and start a lifelong learning institute by the University and I got in on it very early. It's my thing. I absolutely love it, and Jerry and I are perhaps the most involved, but it's a volunteer organization and we brought together all the people we like to work with who are now retired. We created our little snowball network of folks, so its courses and events, educational courses and events for people who are over 50, and this is our third year and I'm in charge of the program, so we develop all of these. I work on this probably 20-25 hours a week, something like that, so I'm pretty deeply involved in that. We've got 450 members now who are taking courses and we're offering maybe 20-25 courses each of our two terms a year, and then another sort of 20 events. Those are field trips, special lectures. We just had Stefan Duma talk about his helmet research. You know we've been visiting the robotics lab. We've gone to veterinary medicine. We go to the Art Museum in Roanoke. We do all those kinds of things. We're headed to the Volvo Plant to see what the Volvo Plant is like. It's been extremely well received and a really important initiative in the New River Valley I think, so I'm having a great time. Emily: Is there anything else you would like to add or speak about? Pat: No, I just want to be grateful for all of the people I've worked with. I met some wonderful women especially, and I worked with a lot of mid-career mid-level women. I'm going to describe that. I didn't describe that for you. So the provost office except for Peggy Meszaros was always run by men, but there were a group of us mid-level people who did all the work, you know. This is the Kay Heidbreder who was legal counsel, still is legal counsel. This is Linda Woodard who ran human resources. This is a handful of other people. We did a lot of work together and worked well together. Linda Woodard and I for example, we chaired the childcare committee trying to figure out how we could do more childcare, and that led to the decision to try to ask the colleges to ante up some private support to provide a subsidy to Rainbow Riders to create the new program there. So a lot of good work was done with that kind of collection of people who had great good will and respect for each other and that's what makes work worth doing. And I worked for some wonderful provosts. You know every one of them was an ethical, good person. I never ever wanted to leave the job because I was working for someone I didn't care for, and the kind of job I had, you're joined at the hip. You know you either work with that person and like them, or you leave. It's not an option to stay there and fight them. So we had some wonderful provosts who made each their own kind of difference in that and that really matters. Katie: You mentioned early about the young women faculty served as your mentors your first year as graduate student. Did you feel like you continued to get some mentoring throughout your career either from the provosts you worked with or other women who you were working with? Was it a different kind of mentoring than being a student? Pat: Yeah. So I've been asked that question a lot and I've been to a million panels on mentoring, but I don't know that I feel like I really had that. So in my graduate program I told you I really didn't have that, because Sheila had left, so she didn't finish me as they say the language. And I stayed in touch with her, but she wasn't a big part of my life after I graduated. So not for my graduate program I didn't have what I would call a mentor other than that good experience with Sheila. I stayed in touch with some of the women at Old Dominion University who I would count as really instrumental in my early career. This is Carolyn Rhodes, an English faculty member in particular. Carolyn was an inspiration to me and so supportive to me many times. Now I didn't talk to her all the time. This is not a close mentor relationship, but a close friendship. She was older than I was at the time and she's the one who started women's studies at Old Dominion, important to me. But I worked for a lot of good men. You know I don't know that I am thinking of them as mentors, but they were all models to me in some way in which I could see how they interacted. So John Perry I told you about was the first person who hired me. Many years later John told me a story that I was fascinated about, a self-reflective story. So he said of the few candidates that he had, because it was an internal search for this hire-behind position in 1987, he said he decided to hire me based on that meeting I described to you in the board room when I was an activist. He thought that I was articulate, and I thought "isn't that great", because I was pretty angry at that meeting. Here's a man who could listen to that and admire something in me at the time when I was pretty angry. As a woman I had several angry years. So John Perry was a wonderful man to work for. And Mark McNamee was a wonderful man. Actually I liked all my provosts. Fred Carlisle was a wonderful person and his wife, Barbara Carlisle, a theater faculty member was more activist than I was, more radical than I was, so there were many good people I worked for. I'm having a hard time calling them mentors, but there were many good people in my life and I admire many of them. Katie: Do you think at Virginia Tech we could do more, if not like having one on one mentors, but having more mentoring networks? Pat: Absolutely. Katie: Because it seems like you were able to cobble together networks of people who then worked together. Pat: Yeah, right, or it was peer mentoring. Yeah, and I don't mean to say that all those people that I admired I didn't learn something from, because I certainly did, but when I think of a mentoring relationship I think it's more someone who is invested in me and I'm invested in them and it's more a one on-one relationship. I didn't have one of those. I had lots of other support, but I didn't have one of those. Yes, and you know we did even host a speaker from the University of Massachusetts Boston who came and was trying to work on the issue. In this case it was for associate professors and for junior professors. I think we did a workshop where she came in and taught us about networks, mentoring networks, as opposed to thinking about singular relationships. It's very difficult to have those singular relationships. They actually are more rare than they are common, unless you have one with a dissertation advisor or something of that sort. That's where they happen most of all. But otherwise a lot of people just don't have access to that kind of powerful potent one-on-one constructive relationship. Networks can work better and so that was the theme of that. Yes of course, I absolutely believe that. And we also launched several peer mentoring networks among women faculty. These were many of the initiatives that we had going in the years that I was in the provost office, thinking that we don't have a lot of senior women who can mentor other people, so what must we do? We must do peer mentoring. We must do network mentoring. We must look for mentors outside of Virginia Tech. We were encouraging a lot of that. And even the associate professors felt they needed and wanted it. It wasn't simply a junior faculty issue. I have spent a lot of my life, a lot of my career, there was a moment in time when I suddenly realized people wanted me to be their mentor and I was still craving one of my own. It was a very odd experience, you know, to be thought of as someone who ought to be doing the mentoring when I was still wanting one myself. But that happened, and I've spent a lot of my time having lunches with junior faculty administrators and wanting to do that kind of work, and I have done a lot of it. I've been especially invested in a statewide women administrators group and I still teach in that every year and participate in that in a way that was profoundly important to me. That was perhaps my peer mentoring effort was this statewide women's network. It was very important to me for 15 or 20 years of my work life. Emily: Wonderful. Well thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us. Pat: You're welcome. Emily: We really appreciate it. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource VT Stories Oral History with Pat Hyer, March 5, 2018 (Ms2016-015) Subject The topic of the resource Administrators--Women AdvanceVT Faculty--Women University administration Description An account of the resource Oral history with Pat Hyer, completed as part of the VT Stories project: <a href="http://vtstories.org/2019/04/11/pat-hyer-pushing-for-progress-at-vt/" target="”_blank”">Pat Hyer, VT Stories</a> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018-03-05 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Hyer, Patricia Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. In addition, no permission is required from the rights-holder(s) for educational uses. For other uses, you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). <a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/?language=en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/?language=en</a>. For uses beyond educational purposes, permission must be obtained from <a href="https://spec.lib.vt.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Special Collections and University Archives, Virginia Tech</a>. Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral Histories & Interviews Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Ms2016-015_PatHyer Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 http://vtwomenshistory.vtlibraries.net/files/original/ff75d3a2a2d08240614dfe9d828aa069.png 349e50d850610e82e452492ccad78173 http://vtwomenshistory.vtlibraries.net/files/original/1c4a08239a520018c3809b38a7063222.mp3 6ef9dde869b292e00aec9b4719d8d07a Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral Histories Description An account of the resource This collection includes oral histories from women connected to Virginia Tech. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Rights for individual oral histories may vary. Please see the rights information for individual interview for more information. Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral Histories & Interviews Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Ren Harman Location The location of the interview Shanks Hall, Virginia Tech Campus Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1:36:38 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource VT Stories Oral History with Nikki Giovanni, March 14, 2017 (Ms2016-015) Description An account of the resource <p>Renowned poet, eight time NAACP award winner, University Distinguished Professor, and the list of achievements goes on, but much to Virginia Tech’s credit–Nikki Giovanni is a Hokie.</p> <p>Although she didn’t attend Virginia Tech for her degree, she is part of the VT Stories featured faculty selection. Nikki is a vital member of the Virginia Tech family and an inspiration for all of Hokie Nation. She is a proud supporter of the arts and the humanities, a big football fan, and an effervescent professor. She holds the keys to over two dozen cities, has too many honorary degrees to count, and could be anywhere in the world. Still, she chose to make Virginia Tech her home.</p> <p>Born in Knoxville, Tennessee before eventually moving to Lincoln Heights in Cincinnati, Nikki returned to the south every summer to stay with her grandmother. Early life in the Giovanni home was heavily influenced by religion, education, and the shadow cast by her talented, older sister Gary. Both of her parents were college graduates and teachers. Still, Nikki marched to the beat of her own drum. This manifested itself early in her decision to read books and speak to teachers outside of normal coursework. Though it may not have been recognized early on, Gary would be the singer and dancer of the family, but Nikki would be the writer.</p> <p>Those annual summers at her grandmother’s brought Nikki face to face with segregation, but she didn’t fully realize the situation at the time. Though she doesn’t recall understanding why she couldn’t go to the library herself for books she wanted as a child, Nikki’s awareness of segregation grew as she matured. Swimming, movies, and even circuses became events and places that caused discomfort. She came to realize the right and the need to protest.</p> <p>Nikki’s proclivity towards autonomous learning has continued throughout her life. Though she never graduated from high school, she was granted acceptance at Fisk University as an early entrant. Fisk was a large adjustment, and she and the school’s dean at the time didn’t see eye to eye. After spending a year away from Fisk figuring out what she wanted from life, Nikki returned invigorated and ready to complete her undergraduate degree in History.</p> <p>She initially went from Fisk to the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Work. This, too, was a learning opportunity that led to a Dr. Shoemaker inspiring her to attend Columbia’s MFA program. From there, her poetry and writing career took off and has never slowed down.</p> <p>Dr. Virginia Fowler, Director of Undergraduate Studies in English and the Literature and Language Program at Virginia Tech, happened to be at a conference where she heard Nikki speak. The two began corresponding about Virginia Tech, and this led to Nikki and most of her family moving to Blacksburg. With her family near and the welcoming Hokie community, Virginia Tech quickly became home.</p> <p>Nikki became Virginia Tech’s first female University Distinguished Professor and quickly set to work inspiring her students to find their own voices and share their dreams. Although Virginia Tech was certainly not the most diverse campus, then or now, she has never allowed race to hold her back or affect her opinions of others.</p> <p>Throughout her many years here, she has had the opportunity to teach a variety of courses and a multitude of students. One of her favorite classes has been her Harlem Renaissance course. In fact, an activity for this course led her to meeting one of her favorite Hokies– a man most know as Coach Frank Beamer.</p> <p>Nikki supports many programs at Virginia Tech, but she is a most proud supporter and defender of the arts. Beyond sharing this passion with her own students, she has encouraged the arts in the university at large by procuring funding and establishing the Steger Poetry Prize.</p> <p>In her 30 years here, Nikki has been a constant advocate for writers. She has happily taught students in her 8 a.m. creative writing classes who she gets “from their dreams.” She brought her family here and made Hokie Nation a part of her. She has also been with Virginia Tech at its darkest hour. “We Are Virginia Tech,” a familiar chant to any Hokie, comes from Nikki’s impassioned reading at the 2007 commencement ceremony. Nikki, and all Hokies, take solace in knowing that the darkness of that day and that tragedy are the farthest things from what Virginia Tech is about.</p> <p>At 73, Nikki is vivacious as ever, and she advises the joy of growing old to everyone. She has gone from the baby of her family, to the oldest relative. She loves music, cooking, and learning. Nikki is a renowned poet. Nikki is passionate about politics, writing, and her students.</p> <p>Nikki Giovanni is a Hokie.</p> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 3/14/2017 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. In addition, no permission is required from the rights-holder(s) for educational uses. For other uses, you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). <a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/?language=en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/?language=en</a>. <br /><br />For uses beyond educational purposes, permission must be obtained from <a href="https://spec.lib.vt.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Special Collections and University Archives, Virginia Tech</a>. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Ms2016-015_NikkiGiovanni Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral Histories & Interviews Subject The topic of the resource Faculty--Women http://vtwomenshistory.vtlibraries.net/files/original/b1d83acf6483d933462e09d4bef63892.jpg 2c24cbe8e171a773b48a2c18d4412ac6 http://vtwomenshistory.vtlibraries.net/files/original/d292b887baa7863db1229b8f0c373262.mp3 9270cd011fd556399f27d9cbc2c5ac51 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral Histories Description An account of the resource This collection includes oral histories from women connected to Virginia Tech. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Rights for individual oral histories may vary. Please see the rights information for individual interview for more information. Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral Histories & Interviews Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Ren Harman Location The location of the interview Holtzman Alumni Center Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1:02:12 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource VT Stories Oral History with Mary "Prim" Jones, March 27, 2018 (Ms2016-015) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 3/27/2018 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. In addition, no permission is required from the rights-holder(s) for educational uses. For other uses, you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). <a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/?language=en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/?language=en</a>. <br /><br />For uses beyond educational purposes, permission must be obtained from <a href="https://spec.lib.vt.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Special Collections and University Archives, Virginia Tech</a>. Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral Histories & Interviews Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Ms2016-015_MaryPrimJones Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 http://vtwomenshistory.vtlibraries.net/files/original/6a2bdc08feb341b9037a2209d680fc07.jpg f2f4fe6491565654fe8f834181cc5853 http://vtwomenshistory.vtlibraries.net/files/original/61a6471bba6f14d240809ea0a980de43.mp3 329687160154414fefba0b87a04074d7 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral Histories Description An account of the resource This collection includes oral histories from women connected to Virginia Tech. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Rights for individual oral histories may vary. Please see the rights information for individual interview for more information. Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral Histories & Interviews Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Emily Walters Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Mallory Foutch Anna LoMascolo OHMS Object This field contains the OHMS Hyperlink (link to the XML file within the OHMS Viewer) Ms2016-015_MalloryFoutch_and_AnnaLoMascolo.xml OHMS Object Text This field contains the OHMS Index and / or Transcript and is what makes the contents of the OHMS object searchable in Omeka 5.4 2018-03-19 Ms2016-015_MalloryFoutch_and_AnnaLoMascolo VT Stories Oral History with Mallory Foutch and Anna LoMascolo, March 19, 2018 (Ms2016-015) Ms2016-015_MalloryFoutch_and_AnnaLoMascolo 1:01:00 Ms2016-015 VT Stories Virginia Tech Special Collections Mallory Foutch Anna LoMascolo Emily Walters Ms2016-015_MalloryFoutch_and_AnnaLoMascolo.mp3 1:|12(13)|26(12)|38(8)|55(5)|66(6)|81(10)|95(5)|109(5)|121(11)|134(15)|148(10)|161(2)|175(12)|186(10)|200(4)|212(15)|225(8)|238(6)|251(13)|265(1)|277(5)|289(3)|302(11)|316(9)|333(4)|348(7)|360(7)|371(6)|382(14)|396(1)|407(13)|419(5)|432(8)|445(4)|459(6)|469(15)|482(5)|494(9)|506(15)|520(5)|534(7)|546(6)|560(11)|574(8)|588(10)|603(3)|616(10)|628(9)|639(15)|651(14)|665(10)|677(2)|689(4)|701(4)|715(8)|727(1)|737(13)|754(11)|767(13)|783(1) 0 https://digitalsc.lib.vt.edu/files/original/bbf79e847bf34fc7858c619a894e0f64.mp3 Other audio Emily Walters: I hope you guys are doing well. Thank you so much for the rescheduling. I guess we can start by maybe your personal history with Virginia Tech, so what brought you here, how long you&#039 ; ve been here, why you chose Virginia Tech, and Mallory we can start with you. Mallory Foutch: Sure. So I came to the Virginia Tech community in June of 2016, so not quite at two years yet. This was my first full-time position straight out of graduate school, so I went to college for four years and then I went to graduate school and studied higher education for two years, and then I was like okay well, I guess it&#039 ; s time to get a job. So put a pause on going to school for a minute and go to work. When I was in college and when I was in graduate school I became just a very excited and outspoken and passionate feminist I think. So I was really involved in a lot of social justice work in college and then continued that into grad school. But grad school was where I specifically started to channel that into the work that I was doing, and so started to really try to see where work around women and equity and feminism could show up in my different positions on campus. And so that really inspired when I began job searching, so in early 2016 started looking at jobs, knew I was going to be graduating, so I just started to figure that out. The position at the Women&#039 ; s Center offered a really unique opportunity for an entry-level professional into working in higher ed administration. You got to work with students. You get to develop programming. You get to work with faculty and staff. You get to work in a dynamic office that isn&#039 ; t on every campus, and so I had never worked on a campus before that had a space that was just devoted to the issues that our office focuses on. Typically it&#039 ; s like eight to 15 issues and it&#039 ; s called like the Gender Center or something like that, and it covers so many things, and sometimes that doesn&#039 ; t allow specificity right, and you feel like you are trying to do everything. And so I was drawn to working here because we focus on issues that are specific and that are culturally relevant I think. They impact how our communities work. And I was really drawn to that and to the idea of doing work around culture change, right. So it&#039 ; s not just like a one-off. It&#039 ; s like you show up and you are engaged in the work and even though it can be difficult, you can figure out what your role can be, and I think that was really exciting for me. And after meeting the staff and like getting to know the community a little bit I was pretty drawn to the position. And so being able to come here and start working and get really engaged on campus has been really the life of me here for the past year and a half I think. And being involved at the Women&#039 ; s Center and being able to bring those connections and build that out into the rest of campus I think is the type of feminism that I like for the Women&#039 ; s Center to be about, right. It&#039 ; s about community building and it&#039 ; s about coalition building, and it&#039 ; s about solidarity. And it&#039 ; s about how our issues affect the issues of your community and how we can work and build those out together. And I think it&#039 ; s really an inspiring place to work. With given current events and given a lot of things that are going on in the world right now I think a lot of folks are looking to the Women&#039 ; s Center to lead conversations, but then also they are also like, &quot ; How can we help the Women&#039 ; s Center?&quot ; which I think is a cool opportunity that we&#039 ; re in right now. So that&#039 ; s a little bit about how I ended up here. Emily: Anna. Anna LoMascolo: And before I start let me just say how glad we are that we ended up with Mallory, because it never felt like a guarantee until she signed the contract. She put thought into it. She&#039 ; s made a big difference being here, so we&#039 ; re grateful. So my story is very different from Mallory&#039 ; s. So I like to say that my family is woven into the fabric of Virginia Tech. And I say that because my great-grandfather, Angelo LoMascolo, who immigrated from Sicily was Virginia Tech&#039 ; s first tailor way back in the day when we were all-male all-military. And in fact, today I have rare opportunities when some of the older alum at the University come back to engage with them and they remember him very fondly, so that&#039 ; s a great connection for me. And actually there was a little white house named the LoMascolo House when I was growing up, and I actually lived in that house for three months, which I don&#039 ; t think we were supposed to, but we did. And one of the cool things in that history is that the LoMascolo House was next to the Price House, which became the second home of the Women&#039 ; s Center, so I like that sense of connectedness. But I come from a long line of Hokies. My dad got two degrees here. My mom got two degrees here and my sister got two degrees here. I got two degrees here, so we go way back. I did grow up here in Blacksburg, went to Virginia Tech as an undergraduate, got my degree in communication studies. I left Blacksburg, went to New York City, lived in California, thought I would not come back and I did. So I came back to pursue a PhD in sociology, and I have a degree in that program with a certificate in gender studies, women&#039 ; s and gender studies. But my major building was McBride Hall. That&#039 ; s where sociology is house, and so at that time the little white house, Price House, was the home of the Women&#039 ; s Center. So as a gender sociologist walking in and out of McBride on a regular basis I saw that little white house that said Women&#039 ; s Center on it, and was always curious about what they do. So one day I just walked in and said, &quot ; Hi, I&#039 ; m curious about what you there,&quot ; and there was a volunteer coordinator at the time, Penny, who I struck up a friendship with. And I just started doing little volunteer things for the Women&#039 ; s Center. I wasn&#039 ; t even really that active or involved, but I really fell in love with the staff. I fell in love with the mission of the center. I fell in love with the feeling that I got when I was in the Women&#039 ; s Center. So you know, I came to Virginia Tech for school, but I ended up finding kind of a home away from home in the Women&#039 ; s Center. And then, I don&#039 ; t know, somewhere halfway through my graduate program I ended up applying for a job here and I got it, so I&#039 ; ve been at the Women&#039 ; s Center since 2004. So multiple roles. I&#039 ; ve been a student. I&#039 ; ve been a member of the community and on the staff of the Women&#039 ; s Center for a long time. Emily: I do definitely want to talk about the Women&#039 ; s Center a little bit, but before that I want to ask, and this might tie into the Women&#039 ; s Center, if in your time here what was your first memory or what was your favorite memory or any difficult moments that you faced? The women that we&#039 ; re interviewing, we&#039 ; re interested in women&#039 ; s history here at Virginia Tech, so only being here a year and a half you might not have as many stories, but just anything that you may have faced or interesting moments, things like that. Mallory: I don&#039 ; t know. I think it&#039 ; s interesting that we&#039 ; re in women&#039 ; s month again, so I think of this time last year -- ooh, there was a lot going on, and I think we can say the same thing for now, right, like that&#039 ; s still a common thing. Like ooh, there&#039 ; s a lot going on. Ha-ha, like that&#039 ; s new water cooler talk. But when I think of a really kind of like flashpoint moment or something that really kind of calls to like why the work here matters, and like makes me think like that was super Women&#039 ; s Center, was last year when we were organizing one of the main events for Women&#039 ; s Month which is called like Take Back the Night, so like a student group organizes that. But in the build-up to that, so it&#039 ; s typically in late March, but in the build-up to that there had been just a slew of crime alerts and things going out, and so there was just a high awareness around issues of gender-based violence at that time and lots of folks reaching out to the office. Being like how can we help? Lots of people like we need to do more, lots of calls for campus to do X Y and Z by lots of different folks, folks inside the community, folks outside the community. And so there was just all this energy kind of funneling into this one evening that typically stands like a rally where people gather and talk and share stories, and kind of just build awareness and solidarity. It was raining that day, so it was kind of like cruddy outside, so it&#039 ; s typically supposed to be outside and then you March, but it ended up being inside. So we had to move it into the graduate life center auditorium, which I think is capacity around like 580 or 600, and so many people showed up. There were almost 800 people there. People that were sitting in the aisles. I was sitting right in front of the stage like on the floor in a much smaller space than my body can hold, and I was like this is wild, but it was so powerful. I feel like I will always think of that night when I think of the Women&#039 ; s Center, because the issues that we work on have an ability to make people care, and they have an ability to like make people show up, and they have an ability to move a community to action, right. So there were just so many calls for people to say something or speak or release a statement or do X Y and Z. And I think it made a lot of people uncomfortable, but then it also made a lot of people be like maybe we need to rethink some things. And I think that is such a moment where it comes from power from students pushing up and pushing against, and it also calls for people who work here to recognize that students have a lot of voice and a lot of car and a lot of passion. And when we congratulate them for caring about things but then we don&#039 ; t show them a route to like do something with their passion, that&#039 ; s like maybe we need to rethink that, right. And I just think it was such a cool moment and such a way to capture a women&#039 ; s month that while we were planning we were just kind of at a loss. Like how do we even pick a theme for right now? How do we capture a moment that is women&#039 ; s month 2017? Like what is 2017 even? And so, I felt like it was just so quintessential of the moment that was happening in a way to capture a lot of the anger, a lot of the passion, a lot of the energy, but also funneling that into how can this result in something that is positive, right? And so I feel like sometimes we get really anxious when people or students are angry, and I think what we need to do is focus on how do we channel that into something that is productive? A lot of times I feel like that is sometimes what I do here. [Laughs] And thinking about how do we take all these issues that sometimes suck and channel that energy into being productive through routes of advocacy or routes of social change or routes of culture shift or anything like that. And so in my short time at Virginia Tech I will always remember Take Back the Night 2017. It&#039 ; s just like I guess this is how we do things here. It was a lot. [Laughs] Emily: I just spoke with Susan Anderson who I think is the faculty advisor for the group that organizes that, and she said last year was really powerful as well, just because of everything that&#039 ; s going on. Anna: So for me lots and lots of highs and lows over time, but one of the things that I think about when I think about the work of Women&#039 ; s Center, and this is something that Sharon Davy who was the long-time director of the Women&#039 ; s Center at UVA said in a book that she wrote that at Women&#039 ; s Centers we on the one hand bind wounds and on the other hand we turn our faces to the sun and we celebrate. And so I always try to be mindful in every day of the work that there&#039 ; s really hard really frustrating aspects of the work, and then there&#039 ; s so many rewards. So to start with the binding the wounds and the things that have been difficult and painful for me when I look over time, because I&#039 ; ve been here forever, for 14 years, I think about those few times that there have been very high profile incidences of interpersonal violence that have resulted in the death of members of our community. And you know, that&#039 ; s extremely difficult. We deal in the practice of supporting people on a daily basis who are dealing with violence and the threat of violence. But those moments where it escalates and it results in loss of life and the amount of pain that that inflicts on the community and the confusion that that inflicts, and sort of the space that the Women&#039 ; s Center occupies in that to be a source of support and a source of trying to help people cope and understand and have resources and have access and that kind of thing, those have been really difficult times. But what emerges from that is a renewed sense of commitment to the conversation, a new sense of awareness that this really still exists in significant ways, and you know, exists in significant ways on a university campus. And it is something that we need to really continue to be committed to and work towards and find ways to grieve together and heal together and kind of review that commitment and move forward. Mallory just talked about last year&#039 ; s Take Back the Night, and I think about the way that Take Back the Night in those years where that has happened how that became a space of speaking out and remembering and honoring and renewing that commitment, so it&#039 ; s powerful. Those have been some tough times, and as a Women&#039 ; s Center we have been uniquely positioned to respond in certain ways and to support and that&#039 ; s a real gift for us I think. When I think about turning our faces to the sun there&#039 ; s been lots of moments where I felt like the institution was advancing in significant ways around women&#039 ; s and gender issues. And one of those, I had the joy of being the first graduate assistant on the Virginia Tech ADVANCE grant back when we received National Science Foundation funds to have an ADVANCE program here. And it was that moment where we got money from the National Science Foundation that was about transforming the institution not fixing women, right. Because so much of the time it&#039 ; s about what should women be doing different. But this takes a look at the culture and the structure of the institution and says what kind of changes need to be made on that front to advance women, and of course advance specifically focused on STEM areas, so Science Technology Engineering and Math. We continue to have the ADVANCE program post-grant and those activities include everyone now, but during the life of the grant it was very focused on those STEM areas. But you know you fast-forward these years later and we have four or five women deans. We have significantly more representation of women in the faculty ranks in those areas, and there were so many work/life policies put into place that support women that help them have more successful academic careers. So when I think of celebration that&#039 ; s one of the hallmark moments, and to have been part of that when it was getting off the ground and then I transitioned from ADVANCE into the Women&#039 ; s Center. The Women&#039 ; s Center of course the director at the time was part of the grant-writing process to bring ADVANCE to Virginia Tech. So just to be part of that mix, to see that get underway and to see the changes that rolled out, and again, under that umbrella of let&#039 ; s look at the institution and things that need to change about the institution to advance women, not that sort of focus on what do women need to do differently. Because you know when you work at a Women&#039 ; s Center and you engage in this work, I feel like we are always consistently redirecting the conversation, whether it&#039 ; s advancing women in faculty careers, or if it&#039 ; s talking about women who are victims and survivors or violence, it&#039 ; s looking at the social responsibility. Looking at the culture. Looking at the structures in place. Not looking at the individual and saying what should you be doing differently to prevent things happening to you. So shifting that focus. We need to stop focusing on individuals and groups of people and really push looking more broadly at structures and culture. Emily: Yeah. Kind of two questions. We were talking about like a moment and I feel like now is definitely a moment where we are at least societally we are looking more at the culture and what we&#039 ; re doing wrong rather than looking at the individual. I want to ask you about if you&#039 ; ve seen changes or more support because of the MeToo movement or the TimesUp movement or the Oscars or at the Academy Awards they wore all black. And then also what kind of changes. You just spoke about the ADVANCE grant, but any other changes that may have happened that you were happy to see and what changes you would still like to see happen, so problems or issues that need to be resolved here on campus that you see here and need to be addressed in the future. Mallory: We&#039 ; ve already had a couple of different discussions, programs, things like that for Women&#039 ; s Month specifically that are about MeToo. They are about how that layers onto or shows up in academic spaces where sometimes even though a lot of the pieces around Title 9 or equal opportunity or just like federal law, like everybody has to learn those things right, when you join the community, but they may be some of the things that you quickly forget. And so there&#039 ; s a big kind of I think push to re-educate people and re-empower them around like what are your rights? What are the things that shouldn&#039 ; t be happening to you? How do you access and use voice? How do you have power or are you disempowered, and what are those structures of power and hierarchy and access that people may have at the institution or people don&#039 ; t have. And so I think that there has been a heightened, and I mean I have only been here, and I think there has always been a call to the Women&#039 ; s Center to be able to respond to cultural movements. But I&#039 ; ve only worked here since I feel like there is gender and there is violence and there is conversations around sexual assault in the news at a very frequent basis. That is the only time I have ever worked here and so it always feels saturated. I feel saturated when I&#039 ; m at work. I feel saturated when I&#039 ; m out of work. I feel saturated when I&#039 ; m in public and it&#039 ; s just such an interesting moment to feel such a hyperpresence, and I think that that has allowed us to view the issue as not the shortcomings of individuals or the single bad actors or the bad apple. We&#039 ; re looking at the tree now and I think that is the cool piece of it. And I would say that at the universities that I have been made aware of and been allowed to be a part of is just the increased want to be involved in this office has just been such an over-rush in the time that I&#039 ; ve been here. Like we&#039 ; ve had more applications for student interns, for students wanted to get involved. I&#039 ; m answering emails from students almost daily about how can I get involved? What is my role? How do I claim access to being a part of this? And I feel like this moment is telling people that it is no longer good enough to just care about things. How are you acting? How are you no longer just saying well I&#039 ; m not a bad person. Like these are the things I care about. I support these things, etc. This moment is asking us, but what are we doing to change the way that we act. How are your conversations changing? Who are you showing up for physically? What are you no longer letting fly in a meeting? Where are you speaking up? Where are you checking your friends? Where are you showing up as a bystander? And I think a lot of these moments are showing up, and I do a lot of bystander education with the office, and I think so much of this is showing up as people are seeing connections to national movements that you sometimes don&#039 ; t feel a part of, to people are seeing how that literally is bystander intervention. People are literally seeing how that is gender-based violence prevention. People are seeing how that literally is a conversation that I have with a friend where we discuss that one creepy moment that we both had like that is #MeToo. You know what I mean? And I think that there is just such a cool moment where people see themselves so reflected in national movements that are led by like really powerful people, right, but I think it&#039 ; s also the really powerful people are looking at the people who have no power and saying what are we doing for them? And I think historically it&#039 ; s maybe not been a ton, and so that&#039 ; s why I think something like Time&#039 ; s Up is really cool and important, like they are raising all this money and giving legal opportunities and access to people who work in service shops or folks who work in staff positions and things like that. Like it&#039 ; s just so important. And I think that it ties back to what Anna was saying. It ties back to all of these things that I think Women&#039 ; s Centers have probably always been saying, that if we&#039 ; re asking questions about the individual aspects of an event we&#039 ; re not even getting it. We&#039 ; re not getting it, right. It&#039 ; s about structure, it&#039 ; s about culture, and it&#039 ; s about power. And so when I talk to students and I say gender-based violence at its core is about power. They are like, hmm, I don&#039 ; t know if I understand that. That seems very abstract. It seems like it&#039 ; s about two people. It can be about the interaction of two people, but it&#039 ; s really about power. And so how are we able to engage in that conversation, and I think when people are seeing it played out nationally it does cause some people to draw back, to withdraw. Like this is just too much. I&#039 ; m inundated, etc. But I think on the whole it&#039 ; s actually drawing more people into the conversation. When you are inundated by it you are like well, might as well pay attention and learn something from this, right? And so I&#039 ; ve also seen much more male engagement in the issues as of late of men who literally just want to show up and learn things. I also think this is a time where we can have grace and empathy with each other around what we do know, what we don&#039 ; t know, what we&#039 ; ve historically shown up to, what we haven&#039 ; t shown up to. And I think that the more that we can put hands out to pull people in to conversations and culture change rather than shame people or blame people for what they historically have not been a part of, I think that&#039 ; s how we continue to move forward in a time of MeToo that honestly doesn&#039 ; t seem like it&#039 ; s ending anytime soon. Emily: Yeah. Anna: That was such a good response I don&#039 ; t actually have a whole lot to add, but I will say that MeToo just feels like such the perfect example of the whole feminist adage of the personal&#039 ; s political right. So the thing that we individually feel and deal with and recover from and heal from we suddenly understand and the context of this happens to so many more people than not. And that is sad, but it also is incredibly powerful to be part of community, whether that&#039 ; s localized community or feeling like you are like Mallory said connected to this larger movement. And I will say that I&#039 ; ve had more family and friends curious this year about what I do. I mean I&#039 ; ve spent most of my professional career, I think everybody thinks I&#039 ; m a women&#039 ; s studies professor and they really don&#039 ; t ask me what I do because they are like, &quot ; She&#039 ; s a college professor. She teaches students,&quot ; and I really don&#039 ; t do any of that. I don&#039 ; t teach. I am not located in that academic department. But there&#039 ; s been so much more curiosity around what I do because of the awareness that people are gaining. And this is stuff they&#039 ; ve never even thought about, right. And so that to me is wonderful. A couple of threads I wanted to pick up on that Mallory brought up is that saturation issue. And I am keenly aware that while from an awareness perspective I&#039 ; m so excited about MeToo and Time&#039 ; s Up, because we&#039 ; re having a national conversation that needs to happen. That said, I think about people who are impacted and traumatized by violence. I&#039 ; m thinking about our clients and I&#039 ; m thinking about members of our community that never get a break anymore, right. So they are living it and they are dealing with it and it&#039 ; s the noise of their lives. It&#039 ; s the backdrop of their lives. Where can you go? Where can you turn on the radio or the television or go to the coffee room or water cooler and it&#039 ; s not a topic of conversation? So I am sensitive to the benefits and drawbacks of that saturation point. That said, I do hope that it continues to keep its traction so we continue to talk about it and it doesn&#039 ; t fade out with the newest chaos of the day. The other thing that I&#039 ; m keenly aware of as well is that it is a privilege to be able to say MeToo. There is a comfort I think that many of us feel to Facebook#MeToo and to basically identify ourselves as yes, I have faced this. I have experienced this. And being reminded that there is a lot of people for whom it would be really risky to make that claim, and an awareness that there are folks who aren&#039 ; t at a place yet for themselves where they can make that claim. Again, I&#039 ; m excited by MeToo and I am grateful for the connection and local being connected to national and this sense of community. I&#039 ; m always aware as well of those who can&#039 ; t quite claim that yet for whatever reason and that&#039 ; s okay. Emily: So do you think -- so everybody talks about like Hokie nation and how strong our community is, especially after April 16th, so I&#039 ; m wondering if you feel that it&#039 ; s especially strong maybe here just the people reaching out, just saying how can I help, do you think that&#039 ; s part of the Hokie community nation, like just how it is? Because I know when I reach out about jobs it&#039 ; s all about the Hokies that you know there and they are like, &quot ; Yes, we like hiring Hokies.&quot ; I&#039 ; m wondering if you feel like it is helpful to have a community like that, like a strength like that, and do you think that it is happening elsewhere and how we can maybe permeate elsewhere if they don&#039 ; t have this kind of strong community? Mallory: I think that, let me think, so one of my first I would say experiences with the idea of the Hokie nation, so being someone who is newer to the community, was one of the first times I was talking with students who identified as activists on campus, saying we are not a part of the Hokie nation. Like we don&#039 ; t identify with that idea. We want to, and we think that the work that we&#039 ; re doing around pushing awareness of gender-based violence or issues of racism on campus and things like that, they are like that&#039 ; s the Hokie nation that we want to see and be a part of, and that&#039 ; s why we care so much, right? And so I think a lot of the students that I work with and community members that I work with are working on advocacy and are working in caucuses who are doing a lot of kind of lobbying really to get people to care about the issues that really pertain to peoples&#039 ; identities and ability to feel safe and supported, and like they can advance at the institution. I see that as being a part of the Hokie Nation, but also wanting the Hokie Nation to progress. But I will say that I have felt differently at different times. I mean I think that since I&#039 ; ve started here I&#039 ; ve probably been to like eight rallies or protests or things like that, and those are moments when I see an emerging of something like the Hokie nation with kind of the outer community to see. Like what are the connections between our thoughts on current issues or events or like what&#039 ; s happening in the world or anything like that. And I do see an idea of the Hokie Nation when people are reaching out and say we want to get involved. We want to serve. We want to do those things, because for a lot of the students I work with the idea of Ut Prosim is helping the institution get better and advance and include more people, and think more about people who haven&#039 ; t always been thought about in the conversation. Or who weren&#039 ; t thought about when this building was built, or weren&#039 ; t thought about when there were only stairs to get somewhere versus a ramp or something like that. Like those are the people that I think of when I think of the Hokie Nation, is people wanting this community to get better, and they see themselves as accountable to the institution improving and getting better for more people. When I love a place I want to hold it accountable. I see that as the purest form of like love, is like I am accountable to you. I want you to get better, but I also need you to help me believe that can happen. And I see that the idea of kind of progression or advancement for a lot of folks is the individual commitment to either Ut Prosim or the Hokie Nation or whatever your idea of the Virginia Tech community is, so that&#039 ; s an individual commitment. But then I also see it as a lot of people joining to look at it deeper than that. So what is the commitment from the institution back to you to commit to these new ideas or programs or strategies around diversity inclusion or advancement for women or advancement for people of color, or recruitment of more minority students or things like that. So I think those would be my general thoughts around the Hokie Nation. I think I have been here at a time where more students are starting to mobilize than maybe have previously. But I think that from my understanding and the people that I work with a lot Virginia Tech has always been a community that cares deeply about its people and wants to do right by those people and wants to make them feel like they are valued in their community. And so those things that we can unite around when we want to unite around something it&#039 ; s typically in a very large fashion, like a lot of people will show up. And so I think what we&#039 ; re doing right now is widening that, like what are the things that we care about and value as an institution that makes people want to show up and care and be present in that. Yeah, I would say those are my thoughts. Anna: Yeah, those are some really good points. You know whenever you take a workshop or a training in conflict resolution they always talk about the benefits of conflict and how we think of conflict as a bad thing, but really it&#039 ; s a very productive thing. So I think the accountability piece, the part of being a member of the Hokie Nation is constructive criticism. It is pointing out opportunities to get better and it is holding us accountable so that&#039 ; s really important. I&#039 ; m a little more warm and fuzzy about Hokie Nation stuff and I think that&#039 ; s part of my -- I feel so much part of Virginia Tech in so many ways. And I&#039 ; ve had so many experiences in my personal life where I&#039 ; ve been out in the world and the only other people in the room were Hokies. It was just strange. I got my first internship when I was in college at HBO Downtown Productions in New York City, because I interviewed with a guy who had just spent the weekend in Blacksburg because his sister was going to Virginia Tech. I was in Coastal Sonoma in California and we were in a sandwich shop and we were in a town with a population of 19. The town population said 19. I don&#039 ; t even know why they had a sandwich shop, but we were in there with two other people and they were biking from Alaska to San Diego and they were from Virginia Tech. I&#039 ; m like when did that happen? I went to Stonehenge. They were Hokies. So it&#039 ; s just we&#039 ; re everywhere and I love that sense of global, literally global community. And I do think there&#039 ; s something special about Virginia Tech. I do think there&#039 ; s something special about this identity of Hokie Nation and I do think there&#039 ; s something deeply special about Ut Prosim. I think the way that manifests itself for me from a Women&#039 ; s Center perspective is that we are a relatively small staff with a really big mission with really big goals and objectives. We can&#039 ; t accomplish them. We can&#039 ; t meet them as an inn of 9, we can&#039 ; t. And so our work and the accomplishments that we can celebrate and the difference and impact that I feel that we make is only because of relationships and commitment across campus and kind of throughout the community. So to me that&#039 ; s Hokie Nation. To me that&#039 ; s Ut Prosim in many ways, right. It&#039 ; s like we have this amazing corps of Virginia Tech ambassadors for Women&#039 ; s Center work, which is just an incredible thing. So you know, I will forever say my number one favorite thing about this job in this place is the people that we get to do the work with, and they are many and they come from all different corners of the campus and community. And to me that&#039 ; s special, because I tell you, when you go to regional Women&#039 ; s Center meetings and national Women&#039 ; s Center meetings you learn that that is not the norm. It is not typical. It&#039 ; s not normal or typical or average for the Women&#039 ; s Center to work closely with law enforcement. It is not typical or average for the Women&#039 ; s Center to work closely with Title 9 officers or judicial officers, or so many of the folks that we work with in support of our mission, in support of our students, in support of our clients. And so to be able to say that it&#039 ; s a special thing, and I think a lot of that is connected to that sense Hokie Nation, to that sense of service. It&#039 ; s such a collaborative spirit. It&#039 ; s intangible, but absolutely alive and important, and I just don&#039 ; t think we could do what we do without it. Emily: And so could you speak a little bit about what each of you do at the Women&#039 ; s Center and then maybe favorite moments that you&#039 ; ve had with your job or your favorite aspects or things like that, just Women&#039 ; s Center specific? Mallory: Sure. Well I serve as a program coordinator on our programming team within the office. So my position specifically looks to engage in programming and event management, so doing a couple of different series that we have historically done, so a couple of lecture series, some smaller conferences, a couple of kind of workshop series around salary negotiation or different kind of issues that directly impact women. I also coordinate what&#039 ; s called Women&#039 ; s Month, which is a month-long celebration each March where we look to folks around the Blacksburg and Virginia Tech communities to organize and host events or plan exhibits or do any type of thing that has to do with women to their specific community. And then we really try to highlight and get folks to go to a lot of these events, to kind of pick up on that celebratory piece thing Anna was talking about earlier. I think there is always an aspect of Women&#039 ; s Month that is about kind of like the cultural shift or like what&#039 ; s the work to be done. But then there&#039 ; s also just a good portion of let&#039 ; s just gather and celebrate, or like let&#039 ; s gather and talk about things, or let&#039 ; s gather and support the work and the research or the advocacy or anything that each of us are doing on campus. And I think I&#039 ; m really pleased by the amount of programs that come from all different areas of campus. And I think it&#039 ; s also a cool moment for a lot of different offices that I work with for them to be like, &quot ; Oh we never even thought to partner with the Women&#039 ; s Center. This is cool.&quot ; I&#039 ; m like, &quot ; Yeah, we&#039 ; re here. Hit me up.&quot ; This is what I like doing. I love building collaboration, like I thrive. And so I think Women&#039 ; s Month, and then just like my general programming vision in general is just how are the tables that we are allowed to sit at, that is such a responsibility, right, if we are programming or collaborating with people. I think I see it as a duty to make sure that gendered aspects or feminism or anything like that is showing up in those partnerships. I work with a lot of students in the office and outside of the office. I help a bit with gender-based violence prevention, so in doing bystander intervention. I help with our campaign called It&#039 ; s On us that is from a nationally-recognized movement that asks colleges and universities to think about how they are educating people about consent. And then I just help with things here and there. One of the biggest things we&#039 ; re working on right now is getting things ready to go, so a year from now the Women&#039 ; s Center will be celebrating our 25th Anniversary on campus, and so that&#039 ; s a huge programmatic undertaking. And it&#039 ; s also a huge opportunity for community building and relationship building and inviting folks in who are inspired by the moment that we&#039 ; re in to say, &quot ; Hey, you can be an ally of the Women&#039 ; s Center too.&quot ; Like you can show up for us and we can also show up for you. And so I consider a huge part of my work for the Women&#039 ; s Center as a program coordinator to really just build relationships and get to know people and show up for them, and then figure out what are the end roads and the connections that our offices can have that maybe haven&#039 ; t historically been built-out, and so let&#039 ; s put in the time to do that. And I think it just opens us up to knowing more people, to more people knowing who we are, and to be ever-expanding in the idea of like what our work is, right. And so I think that our call right now is to know that the work of gender-based violence prevention or the work of feminism or the work of equity and access and things like that, we can come at it through just a gendered lens, but how is the work at the Women&#039 ; s Center to also be thinking about race and ethnicity, to be thinking about class, to be thinking about ability status, to be thinking about sexual orientation. Like how are we also needing to include all of these other identifies in the ability to be effective in our work? And I think that&#039 ; s another challenge that I put to myself in serving as a program coordinator for the office. Anna: So my current role is co-director and I work closely with Mallory on the programming and outreach side. My co-director, my other co-director oversees the counseling and advocacy work. This is my fourth position at the Women&#039 ; s Center since I&#039 ; ve been here, so I started out in a grant-funded position that did education and outreach around gender-based violence, and I also worked more closely with clients in that role. And then my most previous few roles have been on this programming and outreach side. Some of the highlights for me, so Mallory said we&#039 ; re getting ready to celebrate our 25th Anniversary. I&#039 ; ve been around for the 10th and 16th and the 20th, and those anniversaries have been real highlights, because they are an opportunity for us to celebrate what we&#039 ; ve done, to really highlight who we are and our mission and our impact on the campus and to be in community with other people. So those have been some real highlights. I think back to the 10th Anniversary, I think the two big epicenters of that celebration was a gala. And then there was a concert in Burruss Hall by Sweet Honey and the Rock. And at that time I didn&#039 ; t really know much about Sweet Honey and the Rock because I wanted to participate in the celebration and I didn&#039 ; t sit down the whole time. Burruss Hall was packed. Sweet Honey and the Rock was fabulous. They are an A Capella group and they are just amazing. And that was one of those moments where at the end the then vice president of Multicultural Affairs told our director after that show, &quot ; Wow, we really didn&#039 ; t know just how much we needed this.&quot ; So it was again, it was just one of those moments where you don&#039 ; t even necessarily plan for that kind of impact or see it coming, but where you&#039 ; re just in community with to her people celebrating, and it was very cathartic for folks I think. And so to be part of those anniversary celebrations and to uplift the work and to recognize the accomplishments and successes of women on campus have been real highlights. We have a program here at the Women&#039 ; s Center that pairs Virginia Tech women as mentors with middle school girls at Blacksburg Middle School, it&#039 ; s called Aware. And that has been a highlight for me to watch that program develop and grow over time. Every April we bring all the aware girls to Virginia Tech for what&#039 ; s called College Day, and so they get to engage in all sorts of activities that college students would do, right. So they get to go to Squires and maybe bowl. They get to go see some sort of demonstration, whether it&#039 ; s robotics or science or what have you, go visit a residence hall, eat in a dining hall, scavenger hunt around campus. And so they are really kind of moving through campus as if they were students. And I got to a couple of years ago kind of follow them around for a day, and that was such a highlight, because there are a lot of kids who don&#039 ; t seem themselves at college. And just the act of bringing them here and demystifying it and having them see how kind of neat it is and different, it feels like it really makes a difference. And we hear from parents every year, especially our coordinator of that program, Jessie [00:45:07 Molsner], hears from parents every year about the difference it makes in their child&#039 ; s life. And it is such a great opportunity for Virginia Tech women to serve in that mentoring role, to be someone that those kids can talk to and learn from and look up to, so it&#039 ; s really exciting. And then I guess the other highlight I would talk about is last year at the Advancing Diversity Workshop I cofacilitated a presentation with Mary Beth Dunkenberger who was then the women&#039 ; s community representative to the Commission on Equal Opportunity and Diversity. And we kind of just did a needs assessment session as a breakout at the Advancing Diversity Conference, and that session culminated that day in the genesis of the Women&#039 ; s Alliance and Caucus at Virginia Tech, which has been a really active involved vocal group of representatives for women across the board at Virginia Tech -- graduate students, staff, teaching faculty, AP faculty, research faculty. So I&#039 ; m so proud of that. I&#039 ; m so proud to have a voice, that women have a voice in governance, that they have a voice at the table and that sort of just came out of an hour and a half conversation where we were talking about what does Virginia Tech need to be doing differently and that that was able to emerge. Through that alliance I&#039 ; m also now working more at the institutional level to talk about women&#039 ; s and gender issues and the way women in different employment classifications are being impacted at the University. So it seems like a real opportunity to make some headway and to make some positive change. So in my day-to-day, unfortunately, the more I get involved in those sort of institutional level endeavors the less opportunity I have to do a lot of on the ground programming. But it&#039 ; s all important work and it&#039 ; s all a way to make sure that we continue to have women&#039 ; s and gender issues at the table in discussions at multiple levels. And I feel like as long as we continue to do that we are meeting our mission and we are doing the work of the Women&#039 ; s Center. Emily: We spoke a little bit about changes that you&#039 ; ve seen. Are there any that you would like to see either here at the Women&#039 ; s Center, not like bad changes, but just the progress that you would like to see made here at the University? Mallory: I think about the Women&#039 ; s Center and meetings that I&#039 ; ve been in recently. So Anna mentioned that we have good relationships with other folks that are tasked with doing response work around gender-based violence and things like that around the institution. And the one thing I know about all of the people that do this work is that they are all so overstretched. Like there is just an inundation of people who need services right now. They are in this moment where you are just saturated by people coming forward and people seeking justice and people wanting their story to be heard, that is happening here too. Sometimes they think that we can look at social movements at present and wow, it&#039 ; s all of these celebrities who are coming forward or it&#039 ; s all of these things and what-not. But no, that happens in your community too. That&#039 ; s happening on college campuses everywhere. All of the communities that I&#039 ; ve ever been a part of I talk with people who still work there, and they say, &quot ; Our caseloads are so wild right now. We just have so many people that we need to serve, whether it&#039 ; s through kind of a Title 9 or gender-based violence response avenue, whether it&#039 ; s through just a counseling services avenue, whether it&#039 ; s through these other avenues of people who need support at an institution. There is such a need and there is so little people, resources, energy to meet that.&quot ; I think one of the biggest changes right now is around -- that I would like to see is just around how we resource and value the people that do this response work, because they need help too. They need more money. They need more people. They need more access to restorative and self-care opportunities. And I think that at this moment, like I was in a meeting the other day and it was like we are about to go meet with this group of people who have power at the institution. What should we tell them that they need? And we all kind of sat there for a second and I don&#039 ; t think anyone was going to say anything, and I was like well, I feel like if I don&#039 ; t use this moment to advocate for people who are tired and always stretched and always really stressed out by the work. The direct service work is really taxing. I was like if I don&#039 ; t use this moment to advocate for them or at least say something that would be bad on me. That wouldn&#039 ; t be doing my job. And so I was like, well, I think that we need to have more conversations around adding more positions, adding more lines for people to do this work, adding more resources to people to be able to do this work. And so that is a culture change that is getting people to review budgets. I think one of the most common lines that I hear thrown around in higher ed is that your budget is your mission statement. Like your budget is reflective of what you value, and I would love to just see if we want to be able to retweet and post about all of these issues that are like we are committed to ending X Y and Z, or we are committed to people getting the help they need. Sometimes I think that there is a palpable disconnect between bodies who say something like that and the people who are actually doing the work. They are like, &quot ; Okay then well we would love to see it too.&quot ; [Chuckles] I don&#039 ; t know, I am one for radical honesty in moments like this. I just think that if we&#039 ; re not able to be honest about the people who do the work sometimes not feeling that support, I think that that&#039 ; s something that I would love to see in terms of as a right moment for change, right. I think that in this moment where we are just feeling it from a lot of angles that allows us to also have multiple angles of analysis. It is not the fault of one person or one office or one institution or one thing for why a lot of these issues are coming to a head right now. And so when we can see a multi-faceted kind of issue we can then also give ourselves space for a multi-faceted solution. And so it comes from a lot of people caring in a lot of new ways, and so I think that would be one of the big changes that I would love to see right now. I would also just love to see a change in how people think that they can be involved with the office. It&#039 ; s not the work of just women to make sure that these issues are worked on. I think sometimes the name of our office allows people to excuse themselves from being involved, so working at the Women&#039 ; s Center that can be a barrier of exclusion. I think a change right now is for more people to be able to see themselves in our work, and I think that&#039 ; s something that we all are working on every single day, is who are we having conversations with and who are we inviting in to be a part of this work and to be a part of these movements. And I think those are movements that need to be inclusive and inviting of people who have been involved and who haven&#039 ; t been involved and who have the vocabulary and who have never read the book, whatever book that is. There are multiple books, right. It is a time where we are so well positioned for people who have been doing work forever and it&#039 ; s their lives&#039 ; work, and for people who are saying hmm, seems like for many reasons, it could be privilege, it could be lack of understanding, it could be just blatantly not caring, for them to say hmm, maybe I should be involved or maybe I should care, maybe I should show up to that meeting, or maybe I should know about what the Women&#039 ; s Center is doing. And I think that is a really cool avenue for change if we are willing to be patient and have grace and be kind, and you know, have those moments with people where we are holding them accountable for maybe hey, historically you haven&#039 ; t really been involved in that way, so do better, but then also like do better with us, right. Like we can do better if we are doing better together. And so I think that is a moment and a change that the University I feel like in some ways is also seeing. We are starting to see the work of advancing people at the school and supporting people at the school that haven&#039 ; t always been invited to the school from the beginning. We are starting to see that as everyone&#039 ; s work, where I think historically it&#039 ; s been here is the office who does this, and they are just a small group of four people on a campus of 35,000, right. Now we&#039 ; re starting to see that, it&#039 ; s like oh no, I have a role in that. I see myself in that, and I think that is a change. And that&#039 ; s not something that I can sit down and do tomorrow, right, so that&#039 ; s why the change is hard and the end is not clear. But, I think that&#039 ; s the change that matters the most to how people are a part of this community and a part of Hokie Nation or a part of the Women&#039 ; s Center Community of allies, or just a part of a moment. Anna: Those are very good points, and the first point that I would make that sort of relates to the last thing that Mallory was talking about was also the Women&#039 ; s Center being seen as a space that&#039 ; s accessible and welcoming broadly. So again, the name Women&#039 ; s Center, we continue to believe that given Virginia Tech&#039 ; s history, given Virginia Tech&#039 ; s demographic, given our STEM focus, given a lot of things about our campus structure and culture, there continues to be certainly a need for a space for women as a group, right, to receive services, to explore issues, to look at issues of equity and leadership and wellness and all that kind of thing. So that said, we also understand that the issues that we deal with and the people that we serve, the issues for the people that we serve don&#039 ; t just impact women, right. So it&#039 ; s a matter of, I don&#039 ; t know what we need to do, we talk about this a lot these days. We need to think about our outreach and our engagement differently, because we want to make sure that folks who need our services and folks who want to engage in our issues and our programs feel like this is a space where they can do it. So thinking intentionally about what changes we need to make as a staff and what things we need to do differently in our outreach and collaboration and the way we do our programming and services, to make sure we as a Women&#039 ; s Center are inclusive. The other thing is one of the fundamental concepts in the book, whatever the book is right Mallory? Mallory: [Laughs] I don&#039 ; t know the title. Anna: One of the fundamental concepts in that book you were talking about is intersectionality, that we understand that woman is not a monolithic thing. We get that not everybody feels connected because of this identity they share as woman, right. So we have different life experiences based on how being a woman intersects with all sorts of other things, our race, our religion, our socio-economic status, sexual orientation, it goes on and on. So one of the things that Mallory has contributed to in such significant ways and we have had programming folks historically that have contributed in significant ways is those partnerships with other groups that help to really complicate the conversations we&#039 ; re having around women&#039 ; s issues, right. So I want us to continue to develop those. You know conceptually theoretically we are really good at intersectional thinking. We are really good at having intersectional conversations. And as those manifest in the way we do our services, as those manifest in the way we approach our programming, to continue to strive to demonstrate that we understand that, and to do a better job I think of connecting with people and resonating with whatever we&#039 ; re talking about, resonating with where they come at that issue, if they even come at that issue. So to continue to understand that you know, yes, we all may identify as women, not that everybody who comes here or works here does, but we may share that identity, but we also have a lot of differences, so how do we complicate our conversations. How do we complicate our understanding of peoples&#039 ; lived experiences and their needs? Again, as I circle back, to ensure that this does become and remain a space where people feel like they can access what we have to offer that&#039 ; s really really important to us. And I think we have a responsibility to continue to think about it, to continue to work at it, to continue to seek counsel and advice about it. It&#039 ; s an aspiration and we&#039 ; re not there yet, and I&#039 ; m proud that we continue to strive in that direction. Emily: I think those are all the questions that I have. Do you have anything else that you would like to add or talk about? Anna: Well, I would like to just lift up again that Spring of 2019 is the Women&#039 ; s Center 25th Anniversary, and that feels like a really special milestone of a quarter of a century of the Women&#039 ; s Center at Virginia Tech. And you know the Women&#039 ; s Center was founded by a group of mostly faculty and administrator women, and I think some graduate students. They were called the Coordinating Council on Women&#039 ; s Concerns. It was chaired by Ann Kilkelly, an emerita theater professor who we miss seeing day to day. But you know, I wonder when they founded the Women&#039 ; s Center 25 years ago if they wouldn&#039 ; t -- I wonder how they would have envisioned 25 years out. I wonder if they had been in an interview and you had said what do you hope for the future if they would have imagined us having a staff of 9, us having grant funds, us having institutional support, us having developed a network of relationships and partnerships. And so it feels like a moment to pause and recognize our foremothers and to celebrate our accomplishments, and then to start that hard work of thinking about the next 25 years. And that feels like a community conversation, so we look forward to engaging others and imagining what that might be. Emily: Well thank you so much. Permission to publish material from the VT Stories Oral History Collection must be obtained from Special Collections, Virginia Tech. audio 0 Ms2016-015_MalloryFoutch_and_AnnaLoMascolo.xml Ms2016-015_MalloryFoutch_and_AnnaLoMascolo.xml https://digitalsc.lib.vt.edu/Ms2016-015 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource VT Stories Oral History with Mallory Foutch and Anna LoMascolo, March 19, 2018 (Ms2016-015) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Ms2016-015_MalloryFoutch_and_AnnaLoMascolo Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018-03-19 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Events/programs Faculty--Women Staff--Women Women’s Center Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Oral history with Mallory Foutch and Anna LoMascolo, completed as part of the VT Stories project: <a href="http://vtstories.org/2019/02/28/mallory-foutch-and-anna-lomascolo-making-virginia-tech-a-better-place/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mallory Foutch and Anna LoMascolo, VT Stories</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. In addition, no permission is required from the rights-holder(s) for educational uses. For other uses, you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). <a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/?language=en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/?language=en</a>. For uses beyond educational purposes, permission must be obtained from <a href="https://spec.lib.vt.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Special Collections and University Archives, Virginia Tech</a>. Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral Histories & Interviews http://vtwomenshistory.vtlibraries.net/files/original/e0f7c2e66e7ae4fc10ab635c6f521654.jpg 1c80f1c7ac359febc0c2dd88a3805dce http://vtwomenshistory.vtlibraries.net/files/original/d0f5fde86182160759020ae2a1d3e503.mp3 7929fce2a74291f1320cbc14a629849e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral Histories Description An account of the resource This collection includes oral histories from women connected to Virginia Tech. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Rights for individual oral histories may vary. Please see the rights information for individual interview for more information. Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral Histories & Interviews Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Grace Baggett Location The location of the interview Holtzman Alumni Center Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 0:57:34 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource VT Stories Oral History with Linda Plaut, February 23, 2018 (Ms2016-015) Description An account of the resource You don’t have to graduate from Virginia Tech to be a Hokie. After moving to Blacksburg as a faculty spouse, Linda Plaut joined the university’s staff as a part-time teacher. What started as a temporary position blossomed into a permanent career of building lifelong friendships and igniting the torch of gender equality on Virginia Tech’s campus. During her years at Tech, Plaut promoted equal rights among faculty and shed light on gender discrimination throughout history. She continues to exemplify Hokie ideals by advocating civility, inclusion, and creativity within the Blacksburg community. Before joining the Virginia Tech family, Plaut led a career in music. A love for the violin and a natural affinity led her to share the arts with others. She taught music and conducted orchestras in Pittsburgh, Boston, and Philadelphia elementary schools; she also performed with several city groups such as the Boston Pops, Philadelphia Opera, and with singer James Brown. Plaut came to Blacksburg in 1983 at a time when the university needed more faculty. She accepted an offer of a two-year part-time contract to teach humanities courses. Having no prior experience teaching in that field, she devoted her first year of teaching to nights of studying material. In time, Plaut became an exceptional humanities teacher – so exceptional, that she kept her position for 23 years. She expanded from humanities to honors, leadership, and women’s studies courses. A classical violinist with passion for the arts, Plaut noticed a significant lack of female composers in history. She decided to request a grant to exclusively play concerts written by women. Initially, instructors could not receive grants, but the Women’s Resource Center realized that the majority of instructors at Tech were female. They supplied Plaut with funds to go to the Library of Congress and find music by female composers. She found so many wonderful compositions that she and other musicians put on six concerts entirely written by women. The experience opened Plaut’s eyes to female underrepresentation in society. The inability for women to produce as much art as men did in history bothered Plaut greatly. The injustice made her realize that women should have equal opportunities as men. Until that time, she had never considered herself a feminist. She began to research feminist theory and women’s studies; the fascinating material was something she never received in her education. As she studied and taught women’s studies, her focus shifted from women in history to women of today. Plaut began to recognize women’s issues related to staff at Virginia Tech. Part-time instructors, like Plaut, were not considered faculty at the university. A seemingly small detail, this distinction meant that instructors were not eligible for pay with benefits. After she and a group of female professors investigated the issue, Plaut discovered that Tech had been receiving full-time equivalent money and spending it on furniture. She quickly pointed this out to administrators, and her group advocated increased security for instructors. The process was slow, but eventually their work paid off. Advocating equality has not always been met without resistance. In the 1980’s and 1990 administrations of higher education were male-dominated; some could not accept changing that structure. Slowly, faculty attitudes have been evolving. Plaut and other female Tech educators stayed resilient, supporting each other and their cause with determination. They helped one another with difficulties in teaching, collaborated on class activities, and encouraged each other. After retirement, Plaut remains active in the local Blacksburg community. She served as secretary on the Lyric Council Board of Directors for six years and contributed to a book about the historical theater’s restoration. The Lyric is a significant part of Blacksburg’s culture, but significant to Plaut in a special way: she met her husband there on a blind date.Plaut and her family would not think of leaving the area, for they are involved in many local organizations. Her husband enjoys volunteering at Gilbert Linkous Elementary School while Plaut finds herself focused on political and feminist efforts. Additionally, she attends as many performances at the Moss Arts Center as she can – when she’s not performing herself. She is pleased with her community work, as she has discovered that Blacksburg is home to many wonderful people. When asked about changes she would like to see, Plaut encouraged less harassment of others. She hopes that faculty and students continue to embrace a stronger female presence at the university, as well as more general diversity and inclusion. In her opinion, the best part about her career at Virginia Tech was a change from “extremely overworked, underpaid, and insecure” instructors to those with confidence and job security. To the next generation, Plaut advises getting involved in local organizations and following one’s own passions. The best piece of advice she can give? “Don’t be afraid to change your mind.” Linda Plaut is an exemplary advocate, educator, and Hokie, because she stands up for what she believes in. Thanks to her and women like her, a brighter, more equal future lies ahead. Plaut and her generation of feminists paved the way for equality; Hokies, present and future, will follow that path to a better tomorrow. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2/23/2018 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. In addition, no permission is required from the rights-holder(s) for educational uses. For other uses, you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). <a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/?language=en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/?language=en</a>. <br /><br />For uses beyond educational purposes, permission must be obtained from <a href="https://spec.lib.vt.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Special Collections and University Archives, Virginia Tech</a>. Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral Histories & Interviews Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Ms2016-015_LindaPlaut Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 http://vtwomenshistory.vtlibraries.net/files/original/41b8afe0f8ca54a3b10909a6c5204443.jpg 90318b74a36b69b848438642f196c90d http://vtwomenshistory.vtlibraries.net/files/original/2f84fc34ff393894fefd22c6b9fa53aa.mp3 e404d9d6bc700d1caeae118dd18e45d1 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral Histories Description An account of the resource This collection includes oral histories from women connected to Virginia Tech. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Rights for individual oral histories may vary. Please see the rights information for individual interview for more information. Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral Histories & Interviews Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Ren Harman Location The location of the interview Graduate Life Center, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1:24:14 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource VT Stories Oral History with Karen DePauw, November 21, 2017 (Ms2016-015) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 11/21/2017 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. In addition, no permission is required from the rights-holder(s) for educational uses. For other uses, you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). <a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/?language=en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/?language=en</a>. <br /><br />For uses beyond educational purposes, permission must be obtained from <a href="https://spec.lib.vt.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Special Collections and University Archives, Virginia Tech</a>. Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral Histories & Interviews Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Ms2016-015_KarenDePauw Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Administrators--Women Faculty--Women University administration University policies http://vtwomenshistory.vtlibraries.net/files/original/58d5d5700d1e2573b5989f946e4fe965.jpg 1a5aed8d1815292abd1bc9bba1c90bb8 http://vtwomenshistory.vtlibraries.net/files/original/f00a5c151eafa80d9826874527dd5107.mp3 de41d4f3c36d62e7b5eef9b6548660cb Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource VT Stories Oral History Collection (Ms2016-015) Description An account of the resource Initiated in 2015 by the President’s Office and managed by faculty and staff in History, English, TLOS, VT Libraries, and the Alumni Association, the VT Stories Oral History Project collects and examines stories, memories, tall tales, tragedies, and triumphs of all members of the Hokie community to help us know our shared history and to make sense of it. At the heart of the project is Hokies interviewing Hokies—largely student-staffed and trained by oral historians, interviewers engage with VT Alumni to learn their history and to make mentoring connections that go beyond the student experience. As we seek to understand why Virginia Tech is top rated in its success in engaging alumni, we highlight the exciting, memorable, historic moments in Hokie lives that have forged strong and enduring connections. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://digitalsc.lib.vt.edu/files/thumbnails/spec_forms/PubPermission.doc" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Permission to publish material from the VT Stories Oral History Collection must be obtained from Special Collections, Virginia Tech.</a> Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral Histories & Interviews Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Ms2016-015 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Ren Harman Location The location of the interview Holtzman Alumni Center Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:08:45 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource VT Stories Oral History with Ida Powell, May 17, 2018 (Ms2016-015) Subject The topic of the resource Student life/organizations Description An account of the resource Ida Powell graduated from Virginia Tech in 1958 with a bachelor's degree in home economics. In this hour-long interview, Powell discusses her experience as a female student attending Virginia Tech's campus in the 1950s as well as her humanitarian work following graduation. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://digitalsc.lib.vt.edu/files/thumbnails/spec_forms/PubPermission.doc" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Permission to publish material from the VT Stories Oral History Collection must be obtained from Special Collections, Virginia Tech.</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral Histories & Interviews Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Ms2016-015_IdaPowell Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Language A language of the resource English http://vtwomenshistory.vtlibraries.net/files/original/568374eae4ad81e3ec9eb8b5cbf664ac.mp3 ea771ff340d781526b81c02865692303 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral Histories Description An account of the resource This collection includes oral histories from women connected to Virginia Tech. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Rights for individual oral histories may vary. Please see the rights information for individual interview for more information. Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral Histories & Interviews Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Manisha Sharma Location The location of the interview Holtzman Alumni Center Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 0:55:56 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource VT Stories Oral History with Clara Cox, March 23, 2018 (Ms2016-015) Description An account of the resource In this VT Stories interview from 2018, Manisha Sharma interviews the former Director of University Publications Clara Cox in the Holtzman Alumni Center. In this oral history Cox talks about her rise through the ranks of university relations, her current work supporting the Council on VT History, and her love and affinity for the university. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. In addition, no permission is required from the rights-holder(s) for educational uses. For other uses, you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). <a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/?language=en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/?language=en</a>. <br /><br />For uses beyond educational purposes, permission must be obtained from <a href="https://spec.lib.vt.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Special Collections and University Archives, Virginia Tech</a>. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Ms2016-015_ClaraCox Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral Histories & Interviews http://vtwomenshistory.vtlibraries.net/files/original/f7ef6325a0b546750448a9cd98dddae3.jpg 4d03f690ff2dc9ca987a9ba459b32b00 http://vtwomenshistory.vtlibraries.net/files/original/90aad95bb81ec2bbd76d48cb04591b4f.pdf 1008c5392854875573d06c1e8b1115bc Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Black Women at VT Oral History Project (Ms1995-026) Description An account of the resource The Black Women at Virginia Tech History Project is a multi-phase research and educational project that involves identification of the first black women students, staff, and faculty at Virginia Tech and the collection of their oral history narratives. The interviews focus on the entry experience and the interviewees' perceptions of the climate and attitudes within the university community particularly as pertains to race and gender. Another phase of the project involves the design and execution of program events to enhance communication within and beyond the university community. The Black Women at Virginia Tech History Project, a multi-phase research and education program, involves: <br /><br /> <ul> <li>The identification of the first black women--student, staff and faculty--to enter the university.</li> <li>The collection of their narratives of that entry experience.</li> <li>The design and execution of program events to enhance communication, understanding, and relationships within the university's culturally diverse community.</li> </ul> The project will increase knowledge about the women's community, celebrate the racial integration of that community, and provide deeper insight into the issues and opportunities inherent in striving to achieve an open, diverse, and just educational environment. The term "black" is used here to designate those United States citizens who are the descendants of slaves, ancestorially residing in the country of approximately 400 years. <br /><br />The three-phase research component of the project got underway fall term, 1994 under the auspice of The Women's Center in collaboration with the University Archive in the University Libraries. Two factors supported The Women's Center's investment of a considerable amount of its limited resources in this project. First, grounded in a philosophy of feminism, it was important that the center's account of history of campus women recognize and document racial diversity. Second, administrative records only began to account for the racial identity of its members in 1985. To begin a study to build an appropriate account of the history of university women, the center and the University Archive undertook archival photographic searches and networking activities. <br /><br />Phase I of this on-going project identifies the first black women entrants by name, entry date, role, historic and current photographs, and current address. Preliminary findings suggest that black women may have first entered the university community as laundresses and maids. They also indicate that the first black coeds entered fall term, 1966. University Extension Services hired the first black professional woman, followed in the early 1970s with the appointment of the first academic faculty. The early 1970s also brought black women administrative personnel to campus. <br /><br />Phase II consists of the collection of entry experience narratives through individual, in-depth interviews. Several preliminary interviews have been carried out, establishing a substantial basis for semi-structured interviews with approximately 30 women. <br /><br />Finally, Phase III will involve evaluative research to assess the impact of the education component of the project. The education component proceeds concurrent with, and draws directly upon, the research outcomes. Educational activities began in the spring term, 1995 with a Women's Month 1995-sponsored round table discussion of project aims and progress. <br /><br />The education effort will involve a wide variety of programs, carried out by campus and community organizations as well as academic departments. Some of the activities will be oral, written, audio-visual, and video-taped presentations, seminars, round table discussions, exhibitions, and in tandem study and actions programs. Study and action programs will forge and sustain diverse coalitions of university members who design and carry out actions to identify and eradicate barrier to cross-racial cooperation and associations in all spheres of the university. <br /><br />Elaine Carter initiated the Black Women's History Project at the Virginia Tech Women's Center in the fall of 1994. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Rights for individual interviews vary. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 text Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Ms1995-026 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Transcript of oral history with Linda Adams Hoyle, November 3, 2000 (Ms1995-026) Description An account of the resource Linda Adams (now Hoyle) was the first Black Woman to Graduate from Virginia Tech. Please note: Audio of this interview is not available. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://search.vaheritage.org/vivaxtf/view?docId=vt/viblbv00025.xml" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">See the Finding Aid for the Black Women at VT Oral History Project</a> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2000-11-03 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. In addition, no permission is required from the rights-holder(s) for educational uses. For other uses, you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). <a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/?language=en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/?language=en</a>. <br /><br />For uses beyond educational purposes, permission must be obtained from <a href="https://spec.lib.vt.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Special Collections and University Archives, Virginia Tech</a>. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral Histories & Interviews Transcripts Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Ms1995_026_Hoyle_Linda Subject The topic of the resource Black women students First women students Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hoyle, Linda Adams (interviewee) Cook, Susan Fleming (interviewer) Kennelly, Tamara (interviewer)