00:00:00A.B.: I'm Amy Brainer, associate professor of Women's and Gender Studies and coordinator of LGBTQ studies at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.
00:00:07M.B.: I'm Marilee Benore. I started out here as Marilee Benore Parsons. I am a professor of Biology and Biochemistry. Emerita. I have been a faculty member for 35 years. Officially retired, but still active as a co-PI on an NSF grant. Still working with research students and in my lab.
00:00:24A.B.: Now you were very involved in Women’s and Gender Studies throughout your time here. You also served as the director of WILL, Women in Learning Leadership, from 2006 to 2009. Does that sound right?
00:00:36M.B.: Yes. [See the index for Marilee's annual reports from some of those years.]
00:00:38A.B.: I just want to ask you to tell me what you remember about how you got involved with Women’s and Gender Studies and how you became the director of WILL.
00:00:45M.B.: I came here in 1989 as an assistant professor of Biology and Biochemistry. But my interest in Women’s and Gender Studies goes much farther back. I grew up Catholic, went to a Catholic school, and I was involved in Girl Scouts even until high school. So the leadership that I saw throughout grade school into high school and in my social activities was women, strong women. Nuns who were very smart, loved science and math, and Girl Scout leaders who took charge of troops. We'd go camping, we'd go canoeing. I met so many people. To me, women were more than capable of doing whatever they wanted. I have four sisters and one brother. So very comfortable in the presence of women.
00:01:33M.B.: I was never a fantastic student, but I just liked doing things and I liked learning and I loved science. When I went to college, there were still a lot of women. The chair of my Chemistry department was a nun. In high school, I decided to coach grade school girls in basketball and volleyball. You have to understand I'm a terrible athlete, but coaching is different. In grade school it's not about amazing skills, it's more about motivation and having fun. I'm a good coach. At one point I realized that's probably why I'm a pretty good mentor. Then when I got to college I volunteered in Girl Scouts because it had been so important to me.
00:02:15M.B.: Then I took a job as a co-op in industry, in the ink industry. That I think is one of the first times I saw overt bias towards women. When I applied for a job, I was flat out told that they would love to hire me, but I'm a female. They weren't going to because women ended up getting married and having children and not being successful. From that co-op, I took a job, but even then, there were a lot of things that happened that made me even more aware. The sexual harassment was out of control. I would go out into the plant, and they would hoist me up on a barrel and shake me so they could see my body parts jiggle. My boss would kiss me on the cheek, hold my hand. My colleagues would put gross notes - When I was in college, my roommate died, and I got a box of roses as consolation, and they put a disgusting poem about oral sex in the box so that when I opened it, that's what I found immediately instead of the roses. Even my boss's boss's boss asked me out. So I decided to leave.
00:03:19M.B.: And I'd always wanted to study biochemistry, so I decided to go to grad school, so I could actually get a job. Not in the ink industry, but in biochemistry. When I got to grad school, I was stunned. There were only a few women and like 30 men. I had no idea that women didn't go into science because that is all I had ever seen. So I continued to work with Scouts and things like that. Then after I graduated, postdoc'd in industry, also taught a class at nighttime, then came to U of M-Dearborn. At U of M-Dearborn, as an assistant professor, I really wanted to work with young women again and give them the support I thought they needed to go into science. So my second and third years here, together with two other female faculty members, Judy Heady and Linda Fisher, we ran Scout camps. It was wonderful. We did it. The girls were great. They were like sixth and seventh grade, an age group that I just find fantastic because they're so enthusiastic.
00:04:20M.B.: We did that for a few years, but I was still an assistant professor. My colleagues actually told me, "We love what you're doing, and we'll miss you when you're gone, because if you keep doing this, then we're not going to give you tenure, because we want you to be in the research lab every second." So I quit doing that. And then the second I got tenured and promoted, and I had a chair that was very supportive, I contacted Women’s and Gender Studies so I could team teach in Women’s and Gender Studies.
00:04:45M.B.: Luckily, I had a chair that allowed me to do that. That was when Suzanne Bergeron arrived. I was assigned to team teach with her, because at that time Women’s and Gender Studies was a team-taught class. That was the most amazing experience in the world because Suzanne knew everything and knew everybody. It was a wonderful pairing where we would feed off of each other. Clearly, she was the expert, but my part was bringing in health, science, other aspects. We were in great sync in terms of how to run the class. Team teaching is actually just as much work, if not more than a regular class because you each grade everything, you're each in the classroom all the time, you're each reading all the papers. It's such a wonderful model for students of how you approach education and discussions in a safe and informative manner. We did that for a few years.
00:05:39M.B.: As part of that class, I brought in some feminist newsletters that I had worked on in college. [See the index for the Women's Studies Student Alliance Newsletter created by UM-Dearborn students who were inspired by the newsletters that Marilee brought to that class.] I hadn't really mentioned that. Let me go back to college. I had a really progressive undergraduate institution. It was a small Catholic school, which is why I continued to have nuns. My major was chemistry. I have an associate's degree in psych that I got there. You had to also create your own area of focus. The area of focus I created for myself was women's studies. That was before it was women’s and gender studies. We had a couple classes taught by nuns like Women in History and Women in Literature. It gave me some freedom. I took a class, Women in Photography, over at the University of Cincinnati. So I got to experience some other campuses. There were several classes like that. Then you were supposed to write a thesis. I really don't like to write. What I did instead was I decided to do volunteer work, and they allowed that, and write up a summary.
00:06:47M.B.: So I did two things. One, I acted as an evening phone counselor at a place called Women Helping Women, which was in downtown Cincinnati. I would take the calls primarily for women who were being abused and who needed some support or to get away. I would help set up some opportunities for them to do that. The other thing that I did, as part of that, is if a call came in for a rape victim, I would go meet the rape victim and accompany them. Through that work, I also joined a group of women, and we were putting together a newsletter called Every Woman's View. You have some of those copies.
00:07:28A.B.: Yeah. Right here!
00:07:30M.B.: Every Woman's View was run off on a ditto machine. And we wrote articles, and it was probably half a dozen of us that put it together, and we would distribute it around Cincinnati. I loved meeting and working with those women from a cross section of Cincinnati. Cincinnati's a big enough town that they had great exhibits, art museums. It's the first time I heard Sheila Tobias talk. Sheila Tobias is a big name in science reform. The book, They're Not Dumb, They're Different, could have been written for me. [Subtitled] Stalking the Second Tier. Because I was not an all-A student. But I'm a great researcher. I just didn't care about grades. In science, quite frequently, what they want is an A student. From that lesson, I learned that my favorite student in the lab is usually a B student.
00:08:16A.B.: I remember you saying that. That's always stuck with me.
00:08:20M.B.: Because they're just like, "I'm in here for the joy of the science." Anyway, so that experience really impacted me. Listening to Sheila Tobias talk about not just what was wrong, but how to approach it differently, has always been the approach I wanted to take. Instead of just scuttling what was terrible. So I brought some of those newsletters in, and the students were rather appalled by the poetry, and I think shocked that the Equal Rights Amendment - I'd written an article like 50 years earlier about that, and it was like, "Seriously? We've been talking about this for like 50 years or whatever?" It was depressing. From that, a couple students wanted to form their own group.
00:09:03M.B.: Then Suzanne formed the WILL [Women in Learning and Leadership] group. And so as much as I could, I participated in that. Suzanne did that for three years and then stepped down, and I took on being director of WILL. [See the index for the WILL handbook for members from that time.] Because I loved the students, I'd had many of them in classes. And WILL at the time - its focus depends on the members. The events, the collaboration, the community is critical to the success of students. I thought it was the perfect model of how to build a cohort. At the time, they used to do some things with SOAR [Support, Opportunities, Advocacy, and Resources for adult learners]. I don't know if they still do or not.
00:09:39M.B.: Suzanne had started a program, and I continued, where the students would go out to one of the grade schools, the Phoenix Academy, every Friday and work with girls. Then at the end of the year, the girls would come here to see what a college experience would be like. We had a couple sponsors, and we also worked with [someone] who is now a pretty well-known photographer, and we did photovoice. The girls would write about some experience or write a poem, but we would also give them a camera. Then they would have like a little gallery showing of their poem and art and the reflection of that. It was really a very cool day on campus. At the time we were also bringing more of Bring Your Daughter to Work Day, so I was participating in that. Although we don't do that so much anymore. That was a big deal, a long day, we would run labs and do all kinds of things. So that is how I got involved in WILL. It's a long answer.
00:10:36A.B.: Great answer. That's what you want in an interview.
00:10:39M.B.: Is it?
00:10:40A.B.: Yes. You're an ideal interviewee. Tell me a little bit about yourself at the time. What did you specifically bring to the role? This could be your academic background, you already shared a little bit, your personal background, or something else.
00:10:56M.B.: My academic background was only briefly women's studies and women’s and gender studies. So I learned so much from Suzanne [Bergeron]. That was a big part of my journey. I love taking classes, I love learning. It was kind of like being in the classroom myself. I mean I was, but I was also the student. I loved the variety of the students. How would I put this? I'm probably a little bit ADD on occasion. I've had my colleagues - one called me a bubble head. I'm not a bubble head, but I'm a tangent thinker. If you think about people as either being linear or tangents, I'm definitely a tangent. I used to give lectures on this. A linear person is like my old boss, who, if I were to bring up a topic, I literally had to learn to bite my tongue and not say anything else like, "By the way, how are your kids?" Because we would have to start over. I am completely juggling 10 thoughts in my head at the same time and coming back to them and finishing them. I think it's allowed me to be very creative. So I am, I think, a creative person.
00:11:54M.B.: I love to do hobbies. I love to do art. I'm not great at any of them, but I like that. I think those aspects are the heart of our college. I love being a scientist, but without the joy of art and music, I wouldn't be here. What else about me? I'm odd, and I mean that in the best way. I grew up in a large family. My father had served in World War II. Things were different. But he was still the breadwinner and came home. Life wasn't perfect, but most of the time I thought it was perfect. I just felt like I had a lot of freedom. Maybe because we had so many kids. [Laughter] I was allowed to just wander. I think because things were different. I was in grade school when I realized that I'm a little different than a lot of other people. More importantly, I realized I was okay with that. That if I didn't fit in, it was okay.
00:12:50A.B.: A lot of people, I feel like, and this could be - I could be wrong about this, but I feel like particularly in past generations, a lot of people didn't get okay with themselves being different as early as you did. What do you think enabled you to do that?
00:13:06M.B.: I don't know. Maybe some internal confidence. I know that you're supposed to be happy with yourself, but I am somebody that usually wants someone else to say, "You're on the right track," or "This is good," or "I agree with you." I think I just - honestly, I think I enjoyed it. The other thing is, maybe because we had so many kids, we were hauled off to the library all the time. At one point in my life, I didn't think there was a book in my age group I hadn't read. What I particularly loved were biographies. I read a lot of biographies and fictional books, particularly about women. In particular, I read biographies about people who had achieved in some strange way that other people didn't think they would be successful. I read biographies about women in medicine. I'm trying to remember who I read about. Some of the presidents. I remember thinking Abraham Lincoln was very different. And he grew up so oddly. I remember thinking that was kind of inspiring, that he could move beyond something. But in particular, it was women in science and women who as girls, in particular, overcame some aspect or learned to create.
00:14:16M.B.: I think that perhaps folding myself into books was a big part of understanding that it was okay to be who I was. That other people had done that. I knew I was reasonably smart, which I guess is not an appropriate thing. People always feel like you shouldn't say you were smart. I did not get good grades, but I was reading at like a college level in early grade school. I was constantly told I wasn't working to my ability. So I knew I had potential even if I just was never achieving it, which didn't bother me either. If that makes sense.
00:14:50A.B.: The beat of your own drum.
00:14:51M.B.: I was absolutely beating my own drum. And I was taking music at the time. I was playing guitar. My mom was a violin teacher. I think that partially led me there, having a large family in which I felt always loved.
00:15:08A.B.: What expectations and goals did you have going into this role? And then how did your expectations and goals change, if at all, as you did the work? [This question] is framed around being the director of WILL. You can answer it that way, but I know you've done a lot of other gender related programming at the university, so if you want to include some of that as well, you can.
00:15:32M.B.: I think that's twofold because my intention was always to support women. I can later tell you how I'm trying to sort of continue to do that. Remind me to tell you about the necklaces.
00:15:47A.B.: Okay. The necklaces.
00:15:48M.B.: The necklaces and the corn.
00:15:50A.B.: The necklaces and the corn. Okay.
00:15:52M.B.: Yes. My goal on one hand was to make sure that anybody who wanted to do science, felt that there was a path for them to do that. Maybe not all the same path, but to make it possible for them to feel comfortable and included. After WILL, I taught an honors class, which was kind of a test, which I called Global Health because I wanted to look around the world at people's experiences, race, culture, gender, all those things. That was part of it. With WILL, in particular, I loved the cohort, and I loved the fact that there was some objective, and part of that was building leadership skills.
00:16:39M.B.: One of the things that happened, Suzanne [Bergeron] started a group, an advisory board of women, who were just fantastic. I don't know if Suzanne talked to you about those women? Their tales of storming the places downtown that didn't let women in. They were like at the front doors - "You will let us in!" - to clubs that didn't allow women. It was fantastic listening to all those women. I think that was a big part of it.
00:17:04M.B.: From that spinoff of that class, I developed a class that is called Diversity in Healthcare, and now it's called Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Healthcare Research and Treatment. It was a biology class. I loved teaching that because it meant bringing gender into our understanding of who was not being properly treated. Also then to make sure that people in the class felt included, that that's where they could make a difference. Around the same time, Judy Heady, who had been teaching Gender and Science for many years, retired. A couple years later, since I wasn't team teaching anymore, [I] rejuvenated the class Gender in Science and Engineering. I loved the students in that class.
00:17:46M.B.: In all of those, part of the goal was to bring in leadership opportunities. Part of that we did through what we're now calling practice-based learning, but it was really looking at a community problem and solving it. Letting the students figure out how to solve it. Letting them figure out how to get their own courage and their own understanding of their skills. I love doing that in all of the classes because students are often quite astonished at what they can do. Be it bringing talks about breast cancer information to a mosque or going out there with some other kind of campaign that is for the community. Maybe that's always been part of what's been critical to me, is bringing it to the community. It's probably why I didn't like making ink. It seemed less exciting than working on medications and biochemistry.
00:18:39M.B.: So that was - all of those things kind of tied together. I think Suzanne brought in a speaker who had written a book called The Earth Knows My Name. It was about communities and groups of individuals who had come to the US either by choice or - you know, diaspora. And they brought some aspect of their home country in the way of plants, because that was critical to them to connect to their homeland. [See the index for the flyer for this event.] I could see the connections. I could see how education has got to have all the other aspects. You know, we get a lot of heart through the programs that are Women’s and Gender Studies, African and African American Studies, Arab American Studies.
00:19:22A.B.: When you were directing WILL, tell me about an aspect or aspects of the directorship that mattered a lot to you.
00:19:30M.B.: I think that the day we brought the [Phoenix Academy] girls to campus was really important to me because most of them had no idea what a college was like. To see it was a place where they could feel comfortable. To give them an opportunity to almost kind of pretend to be a student a little bit and see what the students did, meant that was an experience that would resonate with them later. Because I knew a young woman once who had signed up for college classes and never went. Her parents only found out later. Because she thought it would be intimidating.
00:20:10M.B.: We made a big deal about these students because they WERE a big deal. We actually had a stow away once that got on the bus who came here without permission. That was a little tricky. At their school, they just wanted to be part of it, and I don't know what happened that they just got on the bus - [Laughter] Some of these kids, their experiences were rough. They were at risk girls, some of them. I think that's the aspect I liked, was showing the girls different things. Going to the school each week, the students - you know, they loved the students. And I loved watching the [WILL] students work with the [Phoenix Academy] students because it's just so cool to see them.
00:20:46M.B.: So I guess the opportunity then was not just for the girls to come to the campus, but for the WILL students to run the day, to organize the students, and to share that joy and feel like they made a difference. I think that's probably the most important part of the WILL program, is that regardless of how confident you are, when you're in a cohort like that, you can accomplish things, and it's a great pride to learn how to do that. Strategic thinking, everything, communication, follow through. That day or those days when we did that is one of the standouts.
00:21:26M.B.: That, and some of the sessions where they got to meet the advisory board. Meeting with the advisory board was like this emotional sync and chaos that was fascinating. The women were so excited, I mean the advisory board, to meet the students. The students just wanted to feed off of the experiences that were slightly foreign, and recognizing how much things had changed. Even now, I think, students expect that when they graduate, a lot of these problems are solved, and they won't be harassed or they won't be turned down for things. It's really not completely true. It's better, it's not perfect yet.
00:22:06A.B.: Did you feel like when you were director that there was alignment between what mattered to you and how you spent your time?
00:22:15M.B.: There was a great alignment with what mattered to me and how I was spending my time with WILL. I cannot say that was true for the rest of my department and how they felt about me. There's kind of this perception, outside of what I'll call the interdisciplinary College Wide Programs, to stay in your lane. I never really wanted to stay in that lane. I feel like everything else informs me. Without Women’s and Gender Studies, I would have a much more difficult time in the role I currently have as editor-in-chief of an international education journal. Without that, I would not have really understood, I don't think, gender bias, colonialism, bias in social status. All of those were things that I appreciate primarily because of team teaching with Suzanne [Bergeron] and being part of Women’s and Gender studies. The colleagues I really love are those who are also involved in a lot of other things. The social constructs of why any of this is important. Making a difference. Women’s and Gender Studies has been critical to me.
00:23:19A.B.: Did you face obstacles to being able to do this because some people didn't support it?
00:23:24M.B.: I'm sure it took me a long time to be promoted. [Laughter] I also was a single parent, so it just took a long time for me to get stuff done. Within my department one colleague once said, "You're a really great scientist. I don't understand why you care about Women’s and Gender Studies." I said, "You think I'm really smart, and you think I'm really a great scientist. And so I'm doing something dumb? Because it's not dumb. It's really important." I don't know if that was the answer, but I said, "Women’s and Gender Studies is really important. It's important to me. It's critical to the world." People have that opinion, yeah. Luckily, I think I relied on all that confidence I saw with all those nuns. Growing up Catholic, I love nuns, I respect nuns. I love the nuns down in Monroe at the nun house who are politically active. I didn't see much of priests, and they didn't seem very useful to me. To me, the Catholic church is run by nuns. [Laughter]
00:24:22A.B.: Did being the director of WILL and your involvement in Women’s and Gender Studies change your life outside of academia in some ways?
00:24:32M.B.: Let's see. Outside of academia -
00:24:36A.B.: Or just outside of work?
00:24:38M.B.: Outside of work. Well, a lot of my work has actually been - even in my science, gender, and women's and gender studies, has been an important part of what I do. For several years, I was on the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology [committee on] Women in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. When it actually came to gender issues and gender issues in science, they didn't know about the books. They didn't know about the history. They didn't know about programs that were already in place. I had a friend and she would say, "It gets very old being the bitch that's always bringing up bias."
00:25:13M.B.: It's been important. I mean I went to France, my sabbatical, not to study biochem, I went to study women’s and gender studies. [Laughter] At one point I wanted to change my focus. This is a lot of what I'm trying to do now, is - I didn't want to encourage women going into STEM, I wanted to understand why women stayed in STEM. If they stayed in STEM because they loved it in spite of obstacles, if they left it, why? Was it microaggressions, or was it because there was truly an opportunity that presented itself that was within what they suddenly realized they wanted to do? So I took my only sabbatical away. I went to France for three months and interviewed women in France about their experiences.
00:26:01M.B.: Now their system is very different. They actually thought that women here in the United States suffer tremendously, primarily because of the lack of childcare. I said, "No, that's not the only reason we suffer tremendously in the United States. There's lots of reasons women are not being promoted." I talked to astronomers, historians. I love science, but it's the heart of what goes on in society that keeps me going. I'm still in the groups that look at the history of women in STEM. What's been lost, what's been gained.
00:26:31M.B.: Those interviews, I wanted to put together in a book, but that's kind of coming along very slowly. [Provisionally titled] Stories of Resilience and Success. I was going to try and do it on my own, but a couple of other women have connected with me that said, "Let's just work on this together."
00:26:45A.B.: That might help it get done.
00:26:46M.B.: You know, I was telling people, let me come and sleep on your couch. So I have these videos of these women I interviewed, and I just need to put it together. I've also been reading books. My favorite one from history is Alice Hamilton, the mother of industrial health. Who also worked at Hull House. It's an amazing story, all these people. A lot of them, again, are just different, right?
00:27:07M.B.: So I'll tell you about the necklace.
00:27:10A.B.: Yes. And the corn.
00:27:12M.B.: The necklace and the corn go together. Barbara McClintock is a Nobel laureate who thought very differently. I don't know if you know her story? She worked on maize, and she specifically worked on the kind of corn that you would have at Halloween. That's the name for it because it's got all those different colors of kernels. What she discovered was that some genes can jump in the genome. She was pretty much told she was an idiot, that she was wrong, her entire life. She didn't really seem to care because she was also different. I don't think she got her Nobel Prize until she was probably in her 70s or 80s. Whereas everybody else is all dressed up, she's just in this little skirt and sweater going up to get it. She was very different. Reading her story was important to me.
00:28:01M.B.: She [Barbara McClintock] obviously thought about supporting other people, and I was helping run a small conference once down south and met a woman. She was an older Black woman, biochemist. She told me that Barbara had wanted to encourage her in science, and Barbara had given her three ears of her corn. She hadn't done anything with them. But having ears of corn from Barbara McClintock, that's very cool. Unfortunately, the mice had eaten two of them. So she put it in an iPhone box and mailed it to me. I got them, and I tried to make like a little pair of earrings, and it didn't work. The corn, I'm afraid it's like self-destructing.
00:28:39M.B.: So I took that cob and with my daughter, made a couple of resin necklaces with little corn kernels in them, and gave them to a couple women at my conference that I liked or that I felt had done something. A couple of them cried. One told me they took that necklace into a classroom and talked about women in STEM and Barbara McClintock and adversity and believing in yourself. So I have to make some more. I still have some kernels, so I'm going to make some more. They're ugly as all get out. [Laughter]
00:29:09A.B.: [Laughter] They’re meaningful.
00:29:10M.B.: You can only do so much with a corn kernel. It's not all that exciting. But I thought - I couldn't believe a couple people literally cried and said, "This is like a badge of honor to wear a necklace." And it's bad art, which I like to do.
00:29:24A.B.: I feel that you've already touched on this question a bit, but I'm gonna still ask it and see if there are things you want to add. What were some things going on socially, culturally, or politically that shaped the programs - Women’s and Gender Studies and Women in Learning and Leadership - during your directorship?
00:29:42M.B.: From [the directorship], I think I learned enough about what I loved the college was doing at the time, that I became associate dean, which is why I stepped down as WILL director. At the time the dean was Katie Anderson-Levitt. The other associate dean was Jennifer Zhao. So there are three women in the dean's office. That, I think, really - my experience shaped then how I approached that position, because I felt like I knew a lot more about the value of the interdisciplinary programs, the value to students. The fact that those groups were some of the most active and bringing speakers and relevance across the spectrum to campus.
00:30:28M.B.: Interestingly enough, that dynamic of three women surprised a lot of people. I remember we were in a meeting once and some guy walked in, and he looked back and forth and looked back and forth, and he finally said, "You're all - " I said, "Brunettes. Yep. Isn't that amazing? We're all brunettes." I just thought, I'm not even gonna let him say it, right? So I don’t know if that really answers the question.
00:30:51A.B.: Yeah. So the next question was, how did you see the programs grow and change in respond to these things, or not? But I think we could also say, how did you see the college grow and change in response to these things?
00:31:03M.B.: I saw the college grow in terms of people like Lora [Lempert] [who] were actively doing things like taking students into classrooms in prisons. People were widely recognizing the significance of reaching out to the community. [Gap in audio] somebody that was doing service learning. I felt like a lot of people were doing more of that. I don't know if you knew that we created a program that never really ran called Metro Scholars?
00:31:28A.B.: You know, I think I've heard this, but I don't know -
00:31:31M.B.: A couple of us put together a program that required students to do outreach and community action. It was more accepted. Around the same time, then it kinda got transformed into Honors Transfer Innovators. That was the seed for it. But I kind of felt like we were ahead of the game. We were already doing that. I felt like CASL had driven the Metropolitan Vision more than any other college on campus. I think that attracted a lot of faculty as well. I think if you kind of indirectly draw a line from what I learned from WILL and community outreach, then to service learning and practice-based learning, to what became essentially the mission of the campus, that we have a Metropolitan Vision, implemented in kind of different ways. So that was really important to me, again, because I come from science.
00:32:27M.B.: Around the same time, after I stepped down off of WILL, Ghassan Kridli, who was the advisor for the Society of Women Engineers, asked me to be the advisor to Society of Women Engineers. I could see the same passion in them that was with WILL. They would run things for girls and stuff. I just loved that there was a synergy across campus, which I think was driven in large part by what happened over here [in CASL].
00:32:52A.B.: Tell me about the students. What were they like? For example, what priorities did they bring to the program? What needs did they articulate? What did you learn from them or about them?
00:33:03M.B.: Well, I think there's two ways to look at the students, the individuals and the cohorts. Because the cohort had goals, they didn't always agree on them. The leadership of WILL made a big difference. It's a kind of rather non-traditional group. They're learning from each other as part of the cohort and making these connections and in some cases lifelong friendships.
00:33:25M.B.: Then as individuals, they were really finding themselves. Age, religion, gender, sexuality, everything. It was a really important safe space for them. That might not have been a safe space at home or among their other friends. We could see that happening. I used to think that, especially for students between the ages of 19 and 21, there's just sudden opportunity to rethink everything you ever thought about before. I see that you can go through all these mental gyrations of what didn't occur to them before. Friendships, careers, choices. I loved that about the students.
00:34:13M.B.: I loved that the cohort gave the individuals confidence. I loved that the cohorts themselves achieved things. Now, each year they seemed to have different priorities. Like one year it was more like the Phoenix program. Other years they had other priorities for what they wanted to do and who they thought they would serve best. That's absolutely critical, because you want them to have their hearts in it, so that's what should be done. If it was leadership, if it was learning, if it was writing, if it was making a newsletter, those were the things that you want the students to decide that is their priority and that's what they want to learn, because it is women in learning and leadership, so they developed both.
00:34:50A.B.: How were you supported as director and by whom? I'm thinking about practical support, like compensation, but also emotional support, like mentoring and friendship.
00:35:01M.B.: Let's see. Practical support. At the time, there was some compensation for it. I didn't want to take a release time because that really would've upset my department. I think I got $3,000 a year or something like that. It wasn't much. It wasn't even as much as a course release would cost. But that was really important because a lot of the work we did was during the summer. At the time, what we were doing was interviewing students regularly and keeping track of - asking them about their experiences during the year in case we needed long term assessment. Also, during that time we were assessed. I did a lot of - at one point I added up, I was doing like 20 hours a week of service, if you took the summer and added all. I think that was important.
00:35:41M.B.: The staff was really supportive. The dean's office staff and the people assigned to help the programs were fantastic. They helped with advertising. They helped run organizational events. It was kind of like everybody was all in. There was support and respect. At least within that cohort, there was respect for what we were doing.
00:36:03A.B.: How do you perceive that changed over time?
00:36:06M.B.: Well, clearly a lot of the financial support is gone for the College Wide Programs. I understand there's budget constraints. I understand things have to be done differently. But a lot has been lost, and it can't all be run on the backs of the faculty who are now being told that they have to have more research to be done. I remember one time a few years ago writing out a whole document, and I found sponsors who would support a center for interdisciplinary studies that addressed the issues that were addressed here, but it didn't go anywhere. I'm a grant writer, right? I'm a good grant writer. So I had put together how this would be, what companies were already doing this, where they were supporting centers. I thought that might be the one way for people to see the value and also to have an organizational center, which I think was part of the problem because College Wide Programs were considered kind of separate.
00:36:58A.B.: Were your home disciplines and departments supportive of your work with WILL and Women’s and Gender Studies?
00:37:05M.B.: I think people are always happy if you make them look good. But no, this would never have been how they wanted me to spend my time. But I was doing plenty so nobody could complain. I think they just didn't understand the need for it. My colleagues within it - and I can name them. Charlotte Otto was hugely supportive. Sheila Smith has been hugely supportive. Simona Marincean has been hugely supportive. Melissa Bowlin, Melissa is the one that now presents Darwin Day, the whole thing on, you can't base sex on chromosomes kind of thing. And people are really uncomfortable. Actually, even in biochemistry. I just wrote to a woman who sent me a paper on indigenous populations in STEM. The majority of my colleagues in science are really uncomfortable talking about anything that has to do with bias or prejudice or social constructs in any way. Yet all of that -
00:38:01A.B.: Why do you think they're so uncomfortable?
00:38:02M.B.: Because they don't know it. They're uncomfortable with it. They're afraid they're gonna say something wrong. It's really hard to have those difficult conversations where you say, "Look, am I screwing this up? Am I saying this stupidly?" I'll give you an example. One of my colleagues who is Black, I was talking to her about stuff one day and she went, "Okay, Marilee, you have got to quit saying 'my Black friend' because you don't need to tell me what color everybody is when you talk to me about your friends." I was like, "Oh my God, I didn't even know I did that." So I think people are just uncomfortable, but they don’t know what to say. Thank God she said that to me, right? How stupid am I? It was like, "Duh." Anyway, so I think that it's just not part of science education. Slowly changing.
00:38:57M.B.: In any area, you have foundational things you need to study. In chemistry, it's gonna be atoms. In biology, it's gonna be organisms. Students need to learn that. It's challenging for people who don't have the examples to figure out how to bring in the other stuff either overtly or surreptitiously. Like, just through examples. Or to openly talk about it. Darwin Day is one thing that does a little bit of that. I don't know. Did that answer the question? Kind of?
00:39:35A.B.: Yeah. I have so many questions I wanna ask you that are not from the interview. [Laughter] We might have to have a separate conversation where we talk more.
00:39:46A.B.: Was there support you felt like you needed but didn't get as director of WILL?
00:39:50M.B.: I think that the limits weren't so much my limits as director, but what I could offer to students or what we could offer to students who needed it in terms of support, and I still feel that way. That a lot of what WILL achieved as a cohort was solidarity, communication, social construct. But what really hurts a lot of students, in addition to that, or in contrast to that, is the support they need for family life, for finances, and I don't know how well we do that yet. Part of that is because we're a commuter school, and we don't see the students when they're home. I have had students who couldn't come back to school because their parents wouldn't let them anymore. I'm not sure that we're always connecting with students in a way that we know what their needs are for them to succeed. Amy [Finley] in the Dean [of Student]'s office has always been very supportive when I have contacted her and said, I have problem here. Or if I have a student that has mental health needs, I just walk them over to the office. I don't even call anymore, I just walk them over because then I know that they go.
00:41:01A.B.: That first physical connection is important.
00:41:03M.B.: Oh, it's awful. Anyways, yeah. Sorry.
00:41:07A.B.: No sorrys. What are some things you learned about yourself as a result of this work?
00:41:14M.B.: Well, certainly as part of WILL, I got to explore that part of myself that I had to pat down as a member just of a science department. Being told, "We love what you do, but we'll miss you when you're gone." Which was good hard advice, because if they hadn't told me that, I wouldn't have known that I was not meeting their expectations of spending every second in the lab.
00:41:37A.B.: How did it feel? Can you remember that moment?
00:41:40M.B.: Oh, absolutely.
00:41:41A.B.: What did you say or do afterward?
00:41:44M.B.: I didn't run the camp anymore in the following years.
00:41:46M.B.: You took the advice.
00:41:47M.B.: Well, thank god that faculty member told me that, right? Because too often people don't tell you what you need to know, especially with tenure and promotion. You get this letter, but people aren't sitting down. We didn't really have mentors. That was somebody I actually team taught some other classes with later, and that I really respected. And thank god they said that. And put it in a kind enough way.
00:42:08M.B.: When I wanted to run that camp, it was kind of interesting because we had a dean whose name I don't even remember. I went and said, “I want to run this camp.” And he said, "What do you need for it?" I went, "I don't need anything from you." He was stunned. He was like, "Absolutely!” A faculty member coming in here not asking me for money in order to do something. I think Don Bord was the chair. And I really like Don Bord. He has always been one of my biggest supporters. Except that he made all the parents sign a waiver that if there was death or dismemberment, that we wouldn't be sued, which I was like, "Really? Seriously?" [Laughter] They all signed it. Who knew? They just signed it. Okay. Death and dismemberment. Could happen.
00:42:47M.B.: I'll tell you another story. Do you wanna hear it?
00:42:49A.B.: Yes, I do.
00:42:51M.B.: At the national meeting in biochemistry, we have the women's networking dinner. It's become probably the biggest event of the organization. Like 500 students show up. Those of us that can - and it's like 10 bucks, so we try to pay for the students because they had to charge something. It used to be just like a lunch thing. There's always these fantastic women who would get up there and talk about what they'd invented and how great their careers were. One year, a friend of mine, who's at Wellesley, asked me to be one of the speakers. The first speaker had, you know, started her own business, doing amazing, patents.
00:43:31M.B.: I got up and I said, "You know, I feel like I've accomplished some things, but here's the way things are going." I said, "I'm taking baby steps." I said, "In the beginning of my career, things were going great." I said, "Then my husband developed some mental health issues and some addiction issues. And I had to get divorced. I would've lost my house. I mean I lost my house. We had to move out." I said, "That's a step back." I said, "But I'm still here, and this is what I'm doing, and this is how I've just tried to keep stepping forward and do what I need to do for my career and for my family." Afterwards, a number of people came up and said, "Thank you. That is what we really needed to hear. That it's not some race." At a conference like that, when you've got Nobel Prize winners, you always feel like you haven't quite made it through the goalposts, in terms of your career. But it's always wonderful then to hear from other people that you've still done something valuable. And I think with WILL, as director, I felt I was doing something valuable. I think the students felt they were doing something valuable. And there is almost nothing that can compare to that sense.
00:44:53A.B.: What are some things you learned about Women’s and Gender Studies as a result of this work?
00:44:58M.B.: Oh, kind of everything about the world. I think that everything that I learned about the world, how it varies from country to country, from continent to continent. I grew up thinking everyone in the world was Catholic. I've learned everything about the way the rest of the world operates outside of science from my Women’s and Gender Studies colleagues. I feel cooler being part of it.
00:45:26A.B.: [Laughter] You also bring cool factor.
00:45:29M.B.: Oh, thank you.
00:45:30A.B.: What are some things you learned about the college or university as a result of this work?
00:45:35M.B.: The college. I think that there was so much going on and people were suddenly recognizing that social change had to be a part of everything else that we need to do. At least among certain groups. And everyone's experiences were part of our experiences, at least through WILL I thought that. I was then more connected with people who actually dealt with those issues. Talking to faculty who had been part of marches, part of real history. Doing things that were fascinating to me and very risky and very cool and very aspirational. I think I saw that in the college because it was a time - in between financial crises, which occurred on and off.
00:46:23M.B.: But I remember when I was a new faculty member, I went over to engineering - I love to tell this story. I went over to talk to somebody about doing some collaborative work. He only opened his door this much, he opened it like a crack. I'm going on and on about what we could do together and how we can collaborate -
00:46:37A.B.: Through the crack?
00:46:38M.B.: Through the crack. [Laughter] He finally said, "Whose secretary are you, anyhow?" I went straight to the dean. Tony England, I used to talk to a lot. He came here and a lot of his work at Ann Arbor had been trying to make a more inclusive engineering program. That was a big part of his goals here with both students and faculty. I really admired that. So I guess I saw the college change, and part of that was [Provost] Kate Davey wanting to be more inclusive on campus.
00:47:07A.B.: You really were a bridge person.
00:47:09M.B.: I was what?
00:47:11A.B.: A bridge.
00:47:12M.B.: I don’t - well. Yeah, I like to talk. I like to wander.
00:47:18A.B.: [Laughter] Well, wandering and talking. Those are important ingredients -
00:47:22M.B.: Once again, I'm not offensive. And I am funny.
00:47:26A.B.: Yeah, you are. You are funny. This question feels like, in a way, it's been the whole interview, but maybe there will be something else that comes up for you. What memories of Women's and Gender Studies and WILL do you cherish?
00:47:39M.B.: I think I cherish when I taught with Suzanne because we would have these conversations. And when you're communicating with somebody else in a discourse that way, and the students are watching and sometimes getting involved, it was so invigorating. I was both learning and arguing.
00:47:59A.B.: It sounds amazing.
00:48:00M.B.: It was. It was just so amazing. I think that was a really cherished memory. A memory that sticks with me was that we were supposed to have class the day the towers fell in New York. That was an emotional thing where - trying to connect with students was not a memory I cherish, but a really important memory of trying to - People were just panicking, so we were just sending students home.
00:48:32M.B.: What other memories do I cherish? I cherish when we were in Cincinnati. That was a fun memory. There was a dance. Did I tell you that with the dance, I decided to show off?
00:48:44A.B.: What did you show off?
00:48:45M.B.: For all the people that were there. I attempted to do the splits, and people were staring, and somebody went, "That didn't sound good." [Laughter] It didn't sound good. I was so bruised the next day, I could hardly drive home. That's what you get for showing off at a Women’s and Gender Studies meeting.
00:49:02A.B.: I've done things I regretted at dances at Women’s and Gender Studies meetings as well. [Laughter]
00:49:09M.B.: I think I've always cherished - I cherished, like last year you had that lovely, lovely luncheon. In years past we had some luncheons that brought in different kinds of entertainment, where we really celebrated the students. There was like a little bio on each one. I felt like the students left not just with an award, but a point of pride. I think that's something I'd like to see again because it was kind of an over-the-top celebration.
00:49:39A.B.: What advice would you give to a director of WILL today?
00:49:43M.B.: To wander and talk to people. To collaborate. To find out who has something to offer but might not just have made the connection to offer that. Sometimes when I run workshops, I actually put out Post-it Notes and I say, "We can communicate best if you write on this your name and what you need. On another one, write your name and what you can offer." Otherwise, people don't know what you need and they also don't know what you can offer. They don't know the experiences you've had. As WILL director, I think I would try to find out what I can offer to people as WILL director, and I would ask people what they can offer me as WILL director. Even if it's just bringing cookies, or if it's mentoring a student, or if it's being someplace.
00:50:33A.B.: What do you hope changes, if anything, for future directors?
00:50:37M.B.: Clearly the support for the program has to be in place. I am hoping that for this director, if there's something they need, that between the dean's office and between the faculty, they will help achieve that. Does that make sense? If it comes from writing a grant, if it comes from writing a paper. I don't think on our campus, we do a very good job of highlighting what people are doing. I don't know why. Just how great we are in terms of like what people are doing.
00:51:11A.B.: What do you hope stays the same, if anything, for future directors?
00:51:14M.B.: Oh, I hope that the convergence of ideas and support remains the same with the faculty that are involved. I do hope that it continues to be a connection across all the colleges, because all that diversity of foundational stuff - in combination with the goals and societal objectives and desires - can come together that way. So I do hope - I want there to be support. I want there to be a director that feels like they can ask people things but isn't always begging for things. I want my colleagues to know how good it is and to say, "Oh, we have this cool program called WILL." I want my colleagues to tell students that.
00:52:03A.B.: This is the last question. But I will give you a chance to add other things you think of. How do you see the Women's and Gender Studies and WILL programs fitting into the larger picture of your career and life?
00:52:16M.B.: The larger picture of my career?
00:52:18A.B.: And life.
00:52:19M.B.: Well, I'll put it this way. Another thing I always wanted to write was my third third. I'm in the third of my third. I feel like this last 30, that I'm somewhere in, are about what else I can do when I'm not primarily supporting my own goal. It's been critical to my decision - You know, I can't keep doing biochem forever. I can make bad art forever, but bio comes a little harder to do at home, legally. [Laughter] The whole idea that what I want to continue to work on is Women’s and Gender Studies, and how can we take this forward? I think that without all this experience in Women’s and Gender Studies, I would be a much less rich individual, in terms of what I know and how I view the world and what I want to do with that. I feel like there are still things I have to say, and they’re because of what I've learned from Women’s and Gender Studies needs to be said.
00:53:16A.B.: Thank you so much. Is there anything else that I didn't ask you about, that didn't come up, but that you wanted to cover?
00:53:25M.B.: No, I just want to say when I go to Women’s and Gender Studies meetings, I just love hearing what other people are doing. I love the connection. I love feeling that people care. Women’s and Gender Studies, I feel like that's the most caring group of faculty of which I'm a part. I have my friends in my department, but there's not a sense of purpose like there is in Women’s and Gender Studies. There's not as much support for you as an individual.
00:53:57A.B.: What does care and support for you as an individual look like, concretely?
00:54:02M.B.: First telling me how cool I am, so thank you. [Laughter] No. So care and support. Well, part of it is just people telling you, "This is good work," which you don't hear often enough in your own fields even sometimes. "This is good work, and it's cool work." That they've learned something from what you do, and you’ve learned from them. The care is simply that there's concern for you. That retreat that we had a couple years ago was really important.
00:54:27A.B.: Thank you again.
00:54:30M.B.: Thank you!
