Women's History

Artists celebrate Black womanhood, presence and connectedness

Anonymous — Tue, 06 Feb 2024 23:43:58 +0000

Artists celebrate Black womanhood, presence and connectedness Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 02/06/2024 - 16:43

Rachel Sauer

New exhibition opening Friday at CU Art Museum created by socially engaged artists-in-residence to honor Black girls and women

Like the “Mona Lisa” whom she mirrors, “Lona Misa” is keeping her secrets. Her expression is unknowable, and a million thoughts could be swirling behind her calm eyes.

She is a testament to the growth and evolution of her young artist, Kiana Gatling of Denver—a recognition of talent and value, of being an artist whose work is deserving of gallery walls.

Von Ross (left) and Charlie Billingsley consider how best to display "Lona Misa" by Kiana Gatling.

That’s not always an easy evolution for women, and especially for Black women, says Charlie Billingsley, who recognizes the profound power in a woman declaring “I am worthy.”

“That’s one of our goals here,” Billingsley explains, “to tell Black women, ‘What you create is good enough. What you create is amazing. You are amazing.’”

The “here” is "We CU: A Visual Celebration of Black Womanhood, Presence, and Connectedness," a new exhibition opening with a celebration from 4:30-6:30 p.m. Friday at the University of Colorado Art Museum; it will be on view through July 13. “We CU” is created, curated and presented by Billingsley and Von Ross, founders of the Museum for Black Girls in Denver and inaugural artists in the Socially Engaged Artists-In-Residence program created by the CU Art Museum and University Libraries.

“When we say, ‘We see you,’ what we’re saying to Black women is ‘we see you beautiful,’” Billingsley explains. “We see you amazing. We see you talented. We see you courageous. We’re saying to Black girls and Black women, ‘We want you to see yourselves as we see you.’”

‘You don’t have to be what you see’

One afternoon last week, with the ingredients of the exhibit fully formed in their minds and on paper, but in progress throughout the exhibition space, Billingsley and Ross consider the “Lona Misa.” Her 4-foot by 5-foot canvas is propped against a far wall and the two women stand chins on fists contemplating her.

If you go

What: Opening celebration for "We CU: A Visual Celebration of Black Womanhood, Presence, and Connectedness"

When: 4:30-6:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 9

Where: CU Art Museum

Learn more

“She needs her own space,” Ross observes, and Billingsley nods.

“But is that wall too big?” Billingsley asks, pointing to an expanse of blank-for-now wall, against which an assortment of empty frames lean. Some of the frames are very old and reminiscent of ones they came across in the University Libraries archives—one of the many benefits of being artists in residence, Ross says.

“We get to see all these amazing art works, go through the archives and have access to these collections,” Billingsley says. “And that’s another thing we want to accomplish with ‘We CU,’ because a lot of times Black people don’t have this kind of access, so we want to show people that they belong in these spaces.”

Billingsley and Ross are considering whether to hang “Lona Misa” by herself or to surround her with empty frames—the frames being a motif that extends from the Museum for Black Girls.

“The frames are empty because you don’t have to conform to what society tells you (that) you should be,” Ross explains. “Oftentimes, Black girls don’t feel that the way they are is OK. They feel like they have to change, like they have to be different, so we’re saying that you don’t have to be what you see.”

Charlie Billingsley (left) and Von Ross partner on creating the exhibit "We CU: A Visual Celebration of Black Womanhood, Presence, and Connectedness."

‘We honor you’

The theme of authenticity runs through the exhibit, which Billingsley and Ross envision as a home. The various rooms and artifacts of home are represented “because home is where you’re your most authentic self,” Billingsley says. “You don’t have to talk a certain way or dress a certain way. With this exhibit, we’re inviting you into our homes.”

Against one wall, there’s a low green couch encased in plastic, because it’s the good couch and the plastic is how you keep it from getting dirty, Ross says. Against another wall is a salon chair with a clear plastic dryer hood, the kind under which many women have spent many hours.

“As Black women, these are the artifacts of our lives,” Ross says. “We want there to be that recognition and we want to say that these things have value. They matter.”

The exhibition highlights words and quotations that contextualize and exemplify the countless ways to be a Black woman in the world “and to show that words matter,” Billingsley says. “We want to show how impactful words are on Black women.”

The flow of the exhibition will take visitors to a dining room, on which places are set for some of the many, many roles Black women fulfill, and then to a room filled with flowers.

“That’s our ‘thank you’ to Black girls and women,” Billingsley says. “This is our garden, and as they come through this is how we say, ‘We honor you.’”

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New exhibition opening Friday at CU Art Museum created by socially engaged artists-in-residence to honor Black girls and women.

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Teaching Russian at CU �鶹ӰԺ was not her plan

Anonymous — Thu, 31 Aug 2023 22:37:19 +0000

Teaching Russian at CU �鶹ӰԺ was not her plan Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 08/31/2023 - 16:37

Clint Talbott

Elizabeth Shevchenko Wittenberg was born in China, detained in World War II Japan and fully embraced her American life; a scholarship named for her describes her life in 54 words. Here is the rest of the story

Getting to know Elizabeth Shevchenko Wittenberg was “like peeling an onion,” a longtime friend says. Each layer revealed another staggering challenge of a far-flung life faced by an indomitable woman.

Wittenberg taught Russian at the �鶹ӰԺ for a decade after earning a master’s in Russian here. She is remembered as a compelling teacher, now immortalized with a scholarship that is named for her and summarizes her life in 54 words. There is more to her story.

Born in Manchuria, China, educated as a dentist, married and later detained for four years in World War II Japan, she moved to post-war America and reared two boys in rural Colorado before coming to CU �鶹ӰԺ. She could have taught a rigorous curriculum on life. She was content to teach Russian.

At the top of the page: Elizabeth and Maria Shevchenko sail near Yokohama, Japan, in 1937. Above: Elizabeth and Ernst Wittenberg sit near a fireplace in �鶹ӰԺ in the 1980s.

Peter Wittenberg, a retired pathologist in North Carolina and a CU alumnus, recently shared his mother’s story with this publication. David Burrous, her student and friend and a teacher of Russian and Spanish in Jefferson County schools (and a CU alumnus), also shared his recollections. This is their account:

Elizabeth Shevchenko was born in Harbin, China, to a Ukrainian family who built part of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Her sister was born in Ukraine, and the family frequently traveled between Ukraine and Manchuria.

Elizabeth and her sister studied dentistry in Germany and, after earning her credential, Elizabeth moved to Tokyo, where she met Ernst Wittenberg, a young OB-GYN doctor.

He had worked for the Salvation Army Hospital in Berlin and later, with his father’s help, became a ship doctor and traveled the world. He moved to Japan in 1935 and opened a private practice, later becoming a physician for the British and U.S. Embassy delegations.

In Tokyo, they had two children, Peter and Paul. It was still a time of relative peace, though not for long.

Detained and marked for death

In 1941, before it attacked the United States, Japan was widely expected to attack. Fearing for their lives, the Wittenbergs secured a British visa and were scheduled to sail for Britain on the Swedish ship Gripsholm on Dec. 7, 1941.

But that was the “day of infamy” on which Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, propelling the United States into World War II.

Japan refused to let the Wittenbergs leave the country and interned the family. Britain tried to exchange the Wittenbergs for POWs, but Japan refused.

“The Japanese were afraid that my dad knew too much about what was going on in the diplomatic corps, so they put us on house arrest,” Peter Wittenberg says. The Swiss Embassy and Red Cross recruited Ernst Wittenberg to join their medical team. He was in the first group of physicians sent to treat U.S. prisoners of war at the Nagoya prison camp.

“I have his notes, and they were tearjerking. The prisoners were treated inhumanely. Food was scarce, and intimidation was common,” Wittenberg says, noting that Japan also intimidated the Wittenberg family:

“My neighbor was hung in front of our house as a warning.”

Elizabeth Shevchenko Wittenberg near Yokohama, Japan, in 1937.

The entire Wittenberg family was to be executed on Aug. 15, 1945, but the execution order was halted because that was also the day that Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s unconditional surrender.

The beginning and end of the war thus bookmarked their forced confinement and their escape from death.

New obstacles, more prejudice

After the war, Ernst Wittenberg became the personal doctor to the wife of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who commanded U.S. forces in the Pacific. Also, the family sailed to Seattle on a troop ship, ostensibly to freedom.

“Dad was a German Jew—mother was Russian Orthodox—and he had some money in the bank. But the (American) bank confiscated it, so we had no money.” The family’s money remained frozen and unavailable to them until the 1960s.

Ernst borrowed money from a sister in New York, so the near-penniless family then moved to Long Beach, New York. Young Peter and Paul went to school there.

“I spoke fluent Japanese, German and a smattering of English,” Wittenberg recalls. “Since we did not have grades in Japan, they put me in third grade, which I flunked.”

Elizabeth had been a dentist in Japan, but she would have had to repeat her training in dentistry to practice here. She declined. To help the family survive, she performed menial labor at a local hospital. She also waited tables.

Ernst faced similar obstacles.

“In those days, they didn’t let foreigners practice medicine in the states,” especially if they were German, Wittenberg notes. Colorado was one of the few states that allowed German-born physicians to take the medical licensing exam.

A few days before Ernst was scheduled to take the test, the state of Colorado forbade him to take the exam.

William L. Knous, who was then Colorado’s governor, intervened on Wittenberg’s behalf. To those who would deny Wittenberg the right to practice medicine here, Knous said, “You can’t do that to the poor guy,” Peter Wittenberg recalls.

After Ernst worked for a time at Penrose Hospital in Colorado Springs, the family settled in the tiny town of La Jara, in Colorado’s San Luis Valley. Ernst Wittenberg took over the OB-GYN practice of a Quaker physician and delivered about 100 babies a year.

Initially, the nearby Alamosa Hospital denied Wittenberg privileges but later relented under pressure from other physicians.

In the 1950s, Ernst Wittenberg wanted to leave the San Luis Valley, and the family moved to �鶹ӰԺ, over Elizabeth’s objections. Ernst became a physician at the CU �鶹ӰԺ Wardenburg Student Health Center.

Elizabeth enrolled in a CU �鶹ӰԺ master’s program in Russian and graduated in 1964. Peter earned a degree in biology in 1960 from CU �鶹ӰԺ, then an MD from CU’s medical school in 1964. Peter’s brother, Paul, now deceased, earned his veterinary degree from Colorado State University in 1964.

“So, we all graduated the same week, which was unusual,” Peter Wittenberg says.

Drinking with George Gamow, speaking in many tongues

In �鶹ӰԺ, Elizabeth and Ernst became friends with George Gamow, the CU �鶹ӰԺ physicist who advocated for and developed the Big Bang theory of cosmology and after whom the Gamow Tower on campus is named. Gamow was born in Odessa, which was part of the Soviet Union then but became part of Ukraine after the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. in 1991.

Gamow was Russian. “George would be at our house frequently,” often drinking cognac, Wittenberg recalls, though Wittenberg switched Gamow’s libation to vodka, because Gamow could drink great volumes of cognac. Vodka was cheaper.

David Burrous remembers many evenings at the Wittenberg home. The Shevchenkos were Ukrainian, but like many Ukrainian families, they spoke Russian and Ukrainian. Elizabeth’s brother was an exception. He refused to speak Russian and spoke only in Ukrainian.

In an undated photograph, the Shevchenko family poses for a portrait. Elizabeth is seated in the front, wearing black.

At dinner parties, the lingua franca could change, Burrous notes. A man who spoke Polish and German could speak in German to Elizabeth and Ernst, who would translate to English. Elizabeth’s sister-in-law visited from South America, and she spoke only Spanish and German. Though she spoke Chinese, Japanese, German, Ukrainian, English and Russian, Elizabeth did not know Spanish.

At the dinner table, then, Elizabeth’s sister-in-law spoke Spanish to Burrous and his wife, Alisa, who translated to English. “Occasionally we would use the wrong language with the wrong person and the table would erupt in laughter,” Burrous says, adding: “Dinner was always a multicultural experience."

The fare, too, was exotic. Before every dinner, Elizabeth would serve an hors d'oeuvre; her favorite was pickled cod.

“I don't know if you've ever had pickled cod, but it's a little bit like bubble gum. I mean, you just chew it and chew it,” Burrous notes. “But she always insisted that the the first part of the hors d'oeuvres was going to be pickled cod. And she wouldn't bring out the next hors d'oeuvre until we all finished the pickled cod. Ernst detested pickled cod, but he knew better than to not partake.”

Teaching with a passion

Elizabeth never complained about not working as a dentist in the United States. “She just saw an opportunity to teach, and she didn’t want to go through dental school again,” Wittenberg says.

Burrous agrees. “Her love was the Russian language and teaching. She was so kind in class, encouraging us to speak Russian. She had a new focus. In fact, I didn’t know she was a doctor of dentistry until several years before she passed away. It just never came up.

"We always spoke Russian together, in and outside of class. Meeting on Saturday mornings for coffee and a chance to speak Russian, my facility to speak Russian much improved.”

Although she was popular with the students and successful in teaching Russian, she did not gain a permanent faculty position at CU �鶹ӰԺ. The university reminded her that she was married to a physician and said another, male, candidate “needed the job” as a permanent faculty member.

“She was madder than hell,” Wittenberg recalls. “She was so mad when they told her that.”

Elizabeth Shevchenko poses for her graduation portrait, after earning her dentistry credential, in Germany.

Despite the setback, Elizabeth taught for a decade at CU �鶹ӰԺ and took other opportunities to teach Russian. “She just loved teaching, and she had a good personality,” Wittenberg says.

And a compelling personality, Burrous adds. She was fully multilingual, but she didn’t learn English until she was an adult. For that reason, she sometimes used phrases that would evoke laughter from her friends.

At a gathering whose attendees included CU alumnus John Bartow, Elizabeth said, “I want to sit next to the John.” She did not repeat that mistake.

Elizabeth loved to eat at a restaurant called the Black Angus, Burrous recalled. “But when she would tell us that she and Ernst were going out to dinner that night, she would say they were going to the Black Agnes. We kidded her about that for years.”

“She always took the joke very well. I mean, here was a woman who spoke six different languages, and we’re joking with her because she pronounced something incorrectly.”

Burrous attributes Elizabeth’s facility with language, in part, to the fact that she was extroverted and enjoyed talking with people, and in part to the fact that she needed to learn foreign languages when she was in foreign lands.

“If she went to a grocery store and there was someone speaking Japanese, she would join in the conversation. If there were someone speaking German, she would join in,” Burrous recalls.

She soaked up new languages as she went to the grocers, ferried clothes to the dry cleaners, “all of those things regardless of what country they were in,” Burrous adds.

Elizabeth maintained her Russian Orthodox Christian customs. For instance, when Burrous and his family moved into a new home, she brought them a loaf of bread and flask of salt, a Russian tradition that imparted a “house spirit.”

When those who have a house spirit move to a new home, they take the spirit, along with the bread and salt, with them. “You say, ‘House spirit, come with us. We are going to a new house,’” Burrous notes.

Now in a different home, the Burrous family still has the bread and salt she gave them, sustaining the spirit of the house and the memory of their friend.

Elizabeth Shevchenko Wittenberg received her MA in Slavic Languages from CU in 1964 and taught at CU for 10 years and is the namesake for the Elizabeth Shevchenko Wittenberg Scholarship. She was involved in Russian activities throughout the state, including the High School Olimpiada of Spoken Russian and Jefferson County’s weekend Russian immersion village “Sosnovka.” She died in 1990.

Ernst Wittenberg was inducted into San Luis Valley Health’s Medical Hall of Fame in 2017. He died in 1990.

Photos courtesy of the Wittenberg family.

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CU’s symbol is male, but the first version highlighted a female

Anonymous — Tue, 29 Mar 2022 15:52:28 +0000

CU’s symbol is male, but the first version highlighted a female Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 03/29/2022 - 09:52

Women’s history snapshot: From 1893 to 1908, the University Seal featured an image of a Greek female and the ‘Let Your Light Shine’ motto

Those who know the University of Colorado generally recognize the official University Seal: It adorns diplomas, transcripts and other official documents.

The seal depicts a male Greek classical figure sitting near a pillar, holding a scroll. His scroll points toward laurel branches framing a burning torch. In between are the words “Let Your Light Shine.”

At the top of the page: The current seal of CU �鶹ӰԺ, adopted in 1908, depicts a male Greek classical figure sitting in front of a pillar and holding a scroll. Next to the figure, laurel branches frame a burning torch. The inscription in Greek reads “Let Your Light Shine.” Above: The central figure on the first university seal was a Greek woman.

This is the university’s second adopted seal. The first also depicted a Greek figure kneeling before a lamp, bearing the same message. A key difference is that central figure on the first university seal was not a man, but a woman.

Introducing the first University Seal in 1893, then President James Baker told that year’s graduates that the emblem bore a Greek motto, “chosen from the volume of Christian teachings, translated to mean ‘Let Your Light Shine.’”

The emblem itself was a reproduction of a medallion created by William Wyon, a British engraver. As Baker told the graduates, the outer rim of the seal was an etching of the mariposa lily, “plucked in the fullness of bloom from the base of our own beautiful foothills—a true Colorado flower.”

Baker concluded, “One who chooses to decipher these emblems may read—Truth, Art, Science.”

Before 1893, the university used a slightly altered version of the official seal of the State of Colorado, but the CU Board of Regents never officially adopted that seal, or—President Baker’s statements notwithstanding—the one featuring the female Greek figure.

As William Davis reports in Glory Colorado, the regents officially chose the current seal in 1908, picking a design by a Henry Read of Denver. Read said he stuck with the classical theme because “the Greek civilization stood as the criterion of culture.”

The central idea of the seal was light. The laurel suggested honor or success, and the scroll signified written language. “The ‘morning’ of life was indicated by the figure of a young man,” Davis writes.

Today, CU uses two versions of the University Seal. The “official seal,” which features the motto in Greek letters, is used on diplomas, official transcripts, and officially certified regent actions. It is also featured on the president’s chain of office, the university mace, commencement programs, regent regalia and print and electronic publications of the Board of Regents.

The “commercial seal” is identical except that the motto is in English. That seal may be used on official CU stationary, envelopes, websites, signs, vehicles or clothing. It can also be used on business cards of CU employees.

Sources: Sources: Glory Colorado, A History of the University of Colorado, 1858-1963; CU system brand and identity guidelines.

Women’s history snapshot: From 1893 to 1908, the University Seal featured an image of a Greek female and the ‘Let Your Light Shine’ motto.

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First woman elected a CU regent was a prohibitionist

Anonymous — Mon, 21 Mar 2022 22:34:17 +0000

First woman elected a CU regent was a prohibitionist Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 03/21/2022 - 16:34

Women’s history snapshot: Anna Louise Wolcott Vaile argued that social ills harming women could only be rectified with political power, which relied on women’s suffrage

Colorado recognized women’s right to vote in 1893, but state voters did not elect a woman to the University of Colorado’s governing board until 1910. That pioneer was Anna Louise Wolcott Vaile.

Born in Providence, Rhode Island, she was one of 11 children and earned her education in Wellesley College, a private women's liberal art college in Massachusetts.

Vaile dedicated much of her life to education. She was principal of Wolfe Hall, a women’s seminary school, in Denver from 1892 to 1898. She was also founder and principal of the Wolcott School for Girls, where she served from 1898 to 1913.

At the top of the page: The American Issue, a newspaper owned by the National Anti-Saloon League, reporting that the 18th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution had been ratified, making the manufacture, sale and transportation of intoxicating liquor illegal. Above: Anna Louise Wolcott Vaile became the first female regent for the University of Colorado.

Vaile campaigned for women’s suffrage and remained politically active after suffrage was achieved. Like many crusaders for suffrage, she favored prohibition. The motivation was clear. Alcoholism was rampant through the 19th and early 20th centuries. At its zenith, in 1830, American consumption was the equivalent of 90 bottles of vodka a year, National Geographic reports.

Women suffered as a result, historians note. Men routinely spent money on alcohol rather than food for their families, and rates of domestic violence soared.

Women knew they needed food for their families and safety in their homes, but they could accomplish only so much social change as long as they were barred from voting; Vaile and others made this point explicitly. But even after women gained the vote, Colorado would not ban the sale of alcohol until 1916, four years before the United States followed suit.

Prohibition begat unintended consequences. A vibrant black market run by criminal syndicates sprang up, increasing violence and tax evasion. Prohibition also led to an unanticipated new development: women choosing to become bootleggers and then getting prosecuted for the crime.

As historians have observed, saloons in the pre-Prohibition era were closed to women, unless those women were entertainers and prostitutes. But once producing and selling alcohol became a crime, there was no social convention to keep women from seizing a new way to earn a living. Bootlegging was not only a criminal enterprise but an equal-opportunity one.

As the Longmont Ledger, a then-newspaper, reported in 1923, Vaile remained committed to using political power to vanquish alcohol abuse.

“Needless to say, one of the matters closest to my heart is the prohibition question,” the newspaper recorded Vaile as saying. “Although it is my earnest belief that the solution to this problem lies in the home, it is an undisputed fact that the only effective method in which the drink evil can be ended is by having a living, powerful, active organization to combat it.”

“No matter how high the ideals of the American woman, she is powerless to act effectively without the cooperation of a political organization able to foster the legislation she favors. It is my belief that the women of the state can best bring about the complete end of the drink evil by working through the Republican Party, which first put Colorado in the prohibition problem.”

“It is my hope that Republican women of the state will be ready to present their views, of this and other questions, through me to the national committee, and I am already receiving suggestions which I hope to present at the next meeting of the national body.”

It was another decade before the nation adopted the 21st Amendment, in 1933, repealing Prohibition.

Vaile did not live to see Prohibition repealed. She died in 1928 and is buried in the Fairmont Cemetery in Denver.

Sources: Glory Colorado, A History of the University of Colorado, 1858-1963; National Geographic; Colorado Encyclopedia; History of Colorado, edited by Wilbur Fisk Stone.

Women’s history snapshot: Anna Louise Wolcott Vaile argued that social ills harming women could only be rectified with political power, which relied on women’s suffrage.

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Surprised by depth of bias, physicist works to bring more women to science

Anonymous — Wed, 16 Mar 2022 23:32:08 +0000

Surprised by depth of bias, physicist works to bring more women to science Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 03/16/2022 - 17:32

Women’s history snapshot: Patricia Rankin initially assumed when told that she didn’t ‘look like a physicist,’ they were complimenting her on being well dressed

When Patricia Rankin became the sole female faculty member in the Department of Physics at the �鶹ӰԺ, in 1988, she did not expect to become a leader in the efforts to recruit and keep more women in science. But she rose to meet the moment.

Rankin, who later served as CU �鶹ӰԺ associate vice chancellor for research and now chairs the physics department at Arizona State University, said she was initially unaware of some forces that discouraged women from pursuing a career in physics. Later, she looked back on her early days in physics:

When people told her she didn’t look like a physicist, “I assumed they thought I was much better dressed than many of my colleagues and wore fashionable clothes. It was a long time before I realized they were surprised to meet a woman physicist.”

As a university student in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, Rankin’s professors actively encouraged her to stay in physics, hoping she’d become a role model, she said. Once on the faculty, she was not prepared to learn that “not all women were having such great experiences.”

Professor Emerita Patricia Rankin was the only female faculty member in the Department of Physics at the time when she became an assistant professor in 1988.

Similarly, she did not expect students to assume she was an administrative assistant when she showed up to give a lecture, “nor to be asked to bring a dessert to the physics Christmas party—since that was ‘expected’ of the other women coming to the party—all of whom were faculty spouses.”

An internal review of the CU �鶹ӰԺ physics department completed in 2008 noted the improvement made in gender and ethnic diversity since the 1980s and emphasized the progress yet to be attained.

In 1990, two women were on the department’s faculty, Rankin and Anna Hasenfratz. By 2001, the number had doubled with the addition of Margaret Murnane and the late Deborah Jin. By 2010, nearly 17% of the faculty was female. In 2020, 18% were female.

The physics department tripled the number of women on the physics faculty in the intervening through careful hiring processes and mentoring, the report said. Additionally, the department reported actively searching for qualified candidates rather than simply waiting for them to apply.

“The department recognizes that there is fierce competition among universities to hire women, and we cannot wait to attract outstanding candidates only in regular searches,” the report said.

Rankin’s passion for equity led her to become one of 17 committee members who provided advice and input to a report from the National Academy of Sciences published in March 2020. The effort outlined new strategies for reversing the disparities between men and women in physics and other scientific fields, all in the hopes of getting more women into the field.

As Rankin was setting up her lab in CU �鶹ӰԺ, women earned just 10% of the PhDs awarded in physics in the United States, according to the American Physical Society. Today’s numbers aren’t much better. In 2017, fewer than 20% of all doctoral degrees in physics went to women—a far cry away from the roughly 40% in fields like earth sciences and chemistry.

There are a lot of reasons for that shortfall, Rankin explained.

Some of it comes down to culture. Physics, for example, has long held a reputation as being a pursuit that’s suited only for geniuses: You’re either born a physicist or you’re not. Research suggests that such an attitude can disproportionately discourage young women and members of other underrepresented groups from getting into the field.

“If you believe that to succeed in physics you have to be a genius, that belief is going to attract a different group of people than if you believe you can succeed in physics by working hard and, ultimately, getting through it,” Rankin said.

Sexism and sexual harassment also play a big role, she added. In 2017, for example, a team of researchers conducted a survey of hundreds of undergraduate women studying physics. Nearly 75% of respondents reported that they had experienced some form of sexual harassment in their careers.

“For me, that report was a wake-up call,” Rankin said. “It is clearly not acceptable to have that level of sexual harassment in any field.”

If you believe that to succeed in physics you have to be a genius, that belief is going to attract a different group of people than if you believe you can succeed in physics by working hard and, ultimately, getting through it.”

Recently, Rankin said, many institutions have tried to fix this gap by providing women with skills to survive in a male-dominated world—a strategy that Rankin calls “the fix-the-women era.”

She said it’s time for a different approach.

One of the biggest hurdles to nationwide success may come down to honest conversations, Rankin said. She said faculty members should start talking openly about difficult issues like sexism, racism, homophobia and transphobia in meetings—even if it risks ruffling a few feathers.

“If you don’t have those conversations,” Rankin said, “you don’t get things on the table, and you can’t discuss them at all.”

“Over the past few years, I’ve moved toward thinking that the slow and steady approach is not going to get us there anymore,” she said.

“I think we’re seeing a switch now to the realization that women are not just randomly dropping out of science,” Rankin said. “They’re dropping out because of the accumulation of negative experiences.”

Addressing the imbalance is good not only for women but also for everyone, she said. When it comes to the big challenges facing the world, she added, “you’re not going to solve them with only half the population, and you’re certainly not going to solve that with a vanishingly small demographic.”

Sources: Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine archives and CU �鶹ӰԺ Today.

Women’s history snapshot: Patricia Rankin initially assumed when told that she didn’t ‘look like a physicist,’ they were complimenting her on being well dressed.

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After 100 years, university recognized a pioneer

Anonymous — Tue, 08 Mar 2022 21:44:03 +0000

After 100 years, university recognized a pioneer Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 03/08/2022 - 14:44

Clint Talbott

Women’s history snapshot: Lucile Berkeley Buchanan graduated in 1918 but wasn’t allowed to walk across the stage with other graduates because she was Black

History overlooked Lucile Berkeley Buchanan, the first African American woman to graduate from the University of Colorado. A dogged CU journalist brought her back to the fore.

Tipped off by a newspaper story, Polly McLean, a CU �鶹ӰԺ associate professor of media studies, spent years exhuming Buchanan’s story and, finally, correcting history. For decades, the university’s official history erroneously stated that the first Black woman to graduate from CU earned her degree in 1924.

In fact, the first Black woman to graduate from CU did so in 1918.

In 2018, a century after Buchanan’s alma mater barred her from walking across the Macky Auditorium stage to accept her degree, Buchanan was more fully recognized. During the May 2018 commencement, Philip P. DiStefano, the campus chancellor, recognized Buchanan. McLean symbolically accepted Buchanan’s degree. Onstage.

At the top of the page: Lucile Berkeley Buchanan, photographed at the time of her high school graduation, was the first African American woman to graduate from CU �鶹ӰԺ. Above: In this 2007 photo, Polly McLean, associate professor of media studies at CU �鶹ӰԺ, is seen in front of the childhood home of Lucile Berkeley Buchanan while holding a portrait of Buchanan that was probably taken at the time of her graduation (Photo by Glenn Asakawa, the Denver Post/Getty Images).

Thus it was that the first African American woman to graduate was honored because of the efforts of McLean, the first Black woman to earn tenure at CU �鶹ӰԺ and the first Black woman to head an academic unit.

McLean preserved a record of Buchanan’s trailblazing life in a book, Remembering Lucile: A Virginia Family's Rise from Slavery and a Legacy Forged a Mile High.

The daughter of emancipated slaves, Buchanan was born in 1884 in Denver. Her family lived on land purchased from P.T. Barnum, the noted circus mogul and cynic.

She became the first in her family to graduate from not one but two of the state’s top institutions of higher education: In 1905, she was the first African American to graduate with a two-year degree from what is now the University of Northern Colorado. In 1918, she was the first Black woman to graduate from CU, earning a degree in German.

After a long career as a school teacher, she lived in Denver until her death in 1989, at the age of 105.

McLean found the story by chance: In 2001, she was doing background research for an assignment she’d given her women’s studies class.

During a visit to the CU Heritage Center in Old Main, McLean was handed a copy of a newspaper article from eight years prior. The story, in the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News, bore this headline: “She was CU’s first Black female grad: A pioneer buried without a headstone.”

The News quoted Doris and Larry Harris, who had purchased Buchanan’s Denver home after the state of Colorado had forced her into a nursing home. The Harrises noted that they’d bought the home for $70,000 and wondered why her estate didn’t yield enough money for a headstone.

The News also quoted a CU spokeswoman as saying that the university would correct the incorrect record “wherever it appears.” Eight years later, the official record was still wrong.

As McLean writes: “A desire to understand the university’s reasoning for dismissing her achievement motivated me to dig deeper, and thus began my search for Lucile.”

The search spanned 10 states and more than 10 years.

By the time McLean was on the story, Doris and Larry Harris had divorced and moved, taking Buchanan’s memorabilia with them. With tenacity and cajolery, McLean unearthed a portrait of the pioneer.

Buchanan applied for her first teaching job in 1905 in a company coal town in Huerfano County, Colorado. She didn’t get the job, but her cause was taken up by a newspaper editor who condemned the racial discrimination that thwarted her hiring.

Buchanan left Colorado and taught in Little Rock and Hot Springs, Ark., then in 1915 enrolled in the University of Chicago, where she studied German, Greek and the British poets Robert Browning and Alfred Tennyson.

At CU, she continued her study of German, and McLean underscores a reason: “The Black intelligentsia at the end of the 19th and into the early decades of the 20th century viewed Germany as a ‘spiritual fatherland,’” McLean writes.

Additionally, Buchanan had studied the work of W.E.B. Du Bois, the sociologist, historian and activist who studied in Berlin.

At CU in 1918, Buchanan’s mother, two sisters and a niece came to campus to watch commencement, which was supposed to be a happy occasion. After being barred from the stage, Buchanan left CU and vowed never to return. “She kept her promise,” McLean writes.

We remember Lucile Berkeley Buchanan not only to honor her life, but also to reflect on what we once did and what we could now learn.”

Buchanan went back to school in 1937, enrolling in graduate studies in English literature at the University of Chicago. She was 53. And in 1949, she retired from teaching and returned to Denver to live in the home that her father, the former slave who became a teamster and street commissioner, had built.

There she lived until she was 103, when Colorado Adult Protective Services deemed her a danger to herself, physically restraining her and placing her in a Denver nursing home. The agency asked a court to appoint a conservator to sell Buchanan’s home and pay her bills.

Buchanan was blind and had no family willing or able to help.

Even in old age and confined to a nursing home, Buchanan remained a faithful voter. The News interviewed her and other centenarian voters in 1988, when she was 104 and voting, with assistance, from the nursing home.

Noting that Buchanan did not live to see the university admit its error, James W.C. White, acting dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, observed:

“These gestures are symbolic, but symbols matter. However meager and tardy, the university’s recognition is a kind of reparation. We remember Lucile Berkeley Buchanan not only to honor her life, but also to reflect on what we once did and what we could now learn.”

Women’s history snapshot: Lucile Berkeley Buchanan graduated in 1918 but wasn’t allowed to walk across the stage with other graduates because she was Black.

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On lonely �鶹ӰԺ ‘prairie,’ Mary Rippon saw glory

Anonymous — Thu, 03 Mar 2022 18:44:38 +0000

On lonely �鶹ӰԺ ‘prairie,’ Mary Rippon saw glory Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 03/03/2022 - 11:44

Women’s history snapshot: CU’s first woman faculty member, now a university icon, hesitated to come West

Mary Rippon was a bona fide pioneer who became a University of Colorado icon, but CU almost did not become her home.

CU’s first president, Joseph A. Sewall, invited Rippon to teach at the University of Colorado, which had just opened its doors in September 1877. Rippon initially declined, noting that she’d just accepted a high school teaching job in Detroit.

Rippon—whom history books conspicuously call “Miss Rippon,” thus underscoring the fact that she was not married—had already led a vigorous academic life by the time Sewall recruited her. After graduating from high school, she studied abroad for five years, spending two years apiece in Germany and Switzerland, plus one year in France.

While in Detroit, a minister who’d just returned from �鶹ӰԺ urged her not to go. As the clergyman told it, the university comprised nothing but a single building “way out on a prairie.” Further, he warned, that one building would soon collapse, killing all inside.

Rippon ignored this advice, accepting an appointment to join the faculty in January 1878.

At the top of the page: Completed in 1876, Old Main was the first building on CU �鶹ӰԺ campus. Above: Mary Rippon was the first female professor at CU and is believed to be the first female faculty at a state university (Photo courtesy of CU �鶹ӰԺ Archives).

As the story goes, three things changed her mind. One was news that Charles Buckingham, a �鶹ӰԺ banker, had donated $2,000 to purchase books for the new CU library. Another was Helen Hunt Jackson’s inspiring writing, accompanied by watercolors paintings, of Colorado wildflowers. And the third was President Sewall, whose repeated invitations helped persuade her to come.

She took the train from Detroit to Cheyenne, Wyoming, then south to �鶹ӰԺ, where Sewall met her. As Rippon observed, “The daylight had faded, but a new moon cast enough light to show up the wonderful line of the snow-clad mountains.”

In the crisp January air, Sewall asked Rippon how things looked to her.

She recalled: “With eyes turned toward the silhouette at the west, and thoughts on the Alps, my one word was ‘glorious.’”

Sewall appeared relieved and said, “Well my spirits have risen 100%. My wife had told me that you would not stay two days in this lonely place.”

But stay she did. Her job was to teach French and German, plus to give “some instruction in the branches of math and English grammar.” On this then-remote outpost, with a handful of college students, she became the first woman to be a professor at CU and is thought to be the first female faculty member at any state university.

Nine men and one woman had entered the inaugural first-year class of students in 1878, but only six, all men, continued to graduation. For the young men, it was easy to leave school to find good-paying jobs as cowboys. It is not clear, but not hard to imagine, what prompted a woman to leave.

When Rippon joined the university, having studied abroad and lived as an independent person, she was entrusted with the education of the young, yet she did not have the freedom to vote. That right was not recognized until 1894, after a statewide referendum recognized female suffrage.

She also received unequal pay. President Sewall had an annual salary of $3,000 in 1878. The first faculty member, a man, was paid $2,000. Rippon, hired at about the same time, got $1,200 a year.

The six men who composed CU’s first graduating class in 1882 might not have thought such inequity amiss. As one of the graduates wrote, two of the six graduates “would vote for ‘women’s rights,’ meaning the suffrage, one would not, one is for woman’s rights—rights to manage the household—while two are lukewarm as to the whole question.”

Further, the graduate said, one of the six graduating seniors was opposed to “co-education,” in which women and men studied together.

These shades of information suggest the contours of life for Mary Rippon, who remained at the university until she retired in 1909. Today, the campus’ outdoor theater, home of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, bears her name. It is an homage to her pioneering spirit, which, in other ways, endures.

Sources: Glory Colorado, a History of the University of Colorado, 1858-1963; The University of Colorado, 1876-1976.

Women’s history snapshot: CU’s first woman faculty member, now a university icon, hesitated to come West.

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