In January 2005, Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers caused a media firestorm with comments about how “innate differences” between men and women help to explain the lack of top-level female professionals in science and engineering fields.

Summers maintains that he did not say – and does not believe – that girls are less intellectually able than boys, or that women lack the ability to succeed at the highest level of science. Summers also notes in a letter on the Harvard web site that the deluge of e-mails and calls he received “have made vivid the very real barrier faced by women in pursuing scientific and other academic careers.” While there have been some strides in attracting more women into science fields, he notes “the progress overall has been frustratingly uneven and slow.”

Fortunately, this is not
the case at Albright.

Today, of 205 Albright students majoring in the sciences, 125 are female. This year, six out of nine seniors who presented senior honors projects in the sciences were female.

Stacey L. Krout ’06 worked with Andrew I. Samuelsen, Ph.D. on her honors project titled“In Search of the GAD CaM-binding Domain and Active Site in Mutant vs. Wild Type Tobacco Plants.” Krout, a biochemistry major who plans to pursue a career in research, says that gender discrimination was never an issue for her at Albright, especially since most of her classes were predominantly female.

But this is 2006.

While Albright has been a co-ed institution from the beginning days at Union Seminary, Eugene Barth’s Discovery and Promise: A History of Albright College states, “Both ladies and gentlemen were admitted to Union Seminary, although women had more restrictions on their education. After completing three years of course, women were then entitled to a diploma. They were also allowed to substitute the higher math courses during their third year with other studies in their stead.”

The male population, according to Barth, was faced with a more rigorous program, which prepared them only for admission to a college where a degree could be sought. Science organizations such as the Science Seminar were also male dominated. A description in the 1917 Speculum reads: “The Science Seminar is composed of the best scientific students of the College and is one of the most active bodies of men in college.”

As years passed, academic restrictions for women lessened and more and more entered fields that women did not traditionally pursue. Although, chemistry major Mary Eschwei ’46 admits, “There were not too many women in the science fields” in the 1940s, and gender discrimination often was a challenge. That didn’t stop Eschwei.

Employed for 46 years as a research associate with Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, Eschwei conducted research in physics, electrophysics, acoustics and optics. Fortunately, Eschwei was lucky at Polytechnic and never felt any kind of discrimination, but she says she knew that female friends in the same field at other companies did. “At Polytechnic we were on the same level as the guys, but my friend at Atlas, she was getting paid the same as the guy carrying the supplies up from the basement.”

Mae Jean (Picking) Rosser ’45, a biology/ medical technology major, says her decision not to go to medical school was a conscious one. “I realized that I was as good as they (the men) were, but not better than they were. At that time you needed to be better than they were. I also knew that I wanted a family and didn’t know how I would do that and be a doctor. So I went
into medical technology.”

For eight years following graduation Rosser worked as a technical intern at Bryn Mawr Hospital doing microbiology and intestinal paracytology work. Taking a 15-year break to raise her family, she went back to work in her mid-40s after her husband was in a serious car accident. Working as a medical technologist at the Coatesville (Pa.) VAMC, Rosser says she became fed up with being discriminated against.

“After I had been there two or three years I found out that all of the men got pay increases but I did not. So I questioned it and was told that they were the breadwinners of their families. I thought, well, so was I. I had supported my family for three years at that point and then for 10 more years after that.”

Rosser finally did get her pay increase, but it was not without a fight.

Chemistry major JoAnne Woodward ’54 chose to go into paper chemistry rather than bench chemistry because “that’s what
was most available to women at the time,” she says.

After receiving a master’s degree in library science from Drexel University, Woodward worked as a technical librarian at the DuPont Company in Wilmington, Del. from 1955 to 1961.

Working in the textile fibers department, where fibers such as DacronTM and LycraTM were produced, she says, “it was a good ’ole boys network.”

Woodward left DuPont in 1961 “because you couldn’t be seen in maternity clothes,” she says. “It was just one of those things. You just weren’t pregnant in the lab.” Staying home to raise her family she went back to work in 1984 at DuPont’s central research lab. This time, however, was very different.“Women were much more advanced,” she says. “They were more respected, like they possibly could know something.”

Kathleen C. (Carroll) Hittner, M.D. ’69 definitely knows a little something about anesthesiology and hospital administration. Hittner is president and chief executive officer of Miriam Hospital in Providence, R.I. She is clinical professor of anesthesiology in surgery at Brown University School of Medicine, and among her many honors she was named one of the “Top Docs” in the state by Rhode Island Monthly in 2000, 2002 and 2004.

But Hittner didn’t think she had a chance when she applied to medical school. In an earlier talk with The Albright Reporter, Hittner said her medical school interviewer asked, “What makes you think you can be both a woman and a doctor?” The interviewer went on to say,“Women waste valuable time putting on makeup. You don’t belong in medical school.”

Clearly, Hittner belonged there. Under her leadership Miriam Hospital has grown considerably and surveys show a patient satisfaction level in the 80th percentile (up from a former 37th percentile), and a physician satisfaction level in the 100th percentile. Miriam is also host to a new Women’s Cardiac Center, part of a program pioneered by Hittner to improve cardiac care for Rhode Island women. It’s the first of its kind in the state.

In January 2004, Senator Jack Reed recognized her as a “Local Legend in Rhode Island” for her accomplishments as a female physician.

The sands of time have leveled the playing field for women in the sciences. But Jacquelyn Fetrow, Ph.D. ’82, Reynolds Professor of Computational Biophysics at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., says there are still challenges. “The biggest one is lack of role models,” Fetrow says. While she says Freida Texter, Ph.D. ’72, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, was the perfect role model at Albright, role models in her subsequent training experiences were few. “Without role models women don’t see themselves in a particular career. Lack of role models also creates a lack of ‘network,’ so as women move through their career, they don’t have the network to fall back on, or the network that would help them to be nominated for positions or awards.”

Prior to teaching at Wake Forest, Fetrow served as chief science officer of GeneFormatics, a San Diego-based company that developed software of use to the pharmaceutical industry. She co-founded the company in 1998. However, in 2003, she successfully merged GeneFormatics with another San Diego biotechnology company to form Cengent Therapeutics.

While Albright is proud of the many successful women who have graduated and gone on to careers in scientific fields (see sidebar) Janet L. Gehres ’54, assistant professor emerita of biology, points out that in her classroom through the 1960s, 70s and 80s, it was always about “people in science” rather than women in science.

“If you could do the work,” Gehres says, “it didn’t matter.”