“Um, yes, of course. Your letters are quite supportive and a Ph.D. from Cornell is, well, in your favor. Most of our faculty are, uh, not from such, uh, distinguished institutions, and one of my goals at Harrington is to elevate the, uh, regard in which our faculty are held by others. However, I have some concerns. It appears that your doctorate is in botany, whereas we are seeking a biologist, a generalist.”
“Oh, that’s a peculiarity of Cornell’s genetics program, sir. They have a rule—a silly one, if you want my opinion—that women may not receive degrees in genetics, so I was compelled to take a degree in botany.”
“Um, yes, but genetics is also rather too specialized, Miss Hansen. Harrington is an undergraduate institution, as you surely know. Our candidate must be able to teach a wide range of topics in biology: general biology, zoology, anatomy, bacteriology, embryology, as well as botany and genetics.”
“You have examined my transcript, Dean Woodrow. You can see that I am broadly trained in all those areas of biology. Also, I have several years of teaching experience in high school and as a teaching assistant at Cornell. My interest in genetics is strong, of course, and I would like to continue doing research in genetics here at Harrington. But I certainly expect to teach biology, broadly defined, and I look forward to it.”
Woodrow’s eyebrows rose. “Research? You understand that this is not a university, but a teaching institution. Undergraduates only. You would have a substantial teaching load, little time for research.”
“I understand. However, I would like to maintain a small program of research. In part, I want to provide an opportunity for bright and motivated advanced students to do research projects under my supervision. I believe that there is no more effective way to teach the true nature of science. Mere presentation of facts and generalizations is inadequate without providing an understanding of how scientific knowledge is arrived at. That is by observation and experimentation, of course.”
“Um, yes. Provided that you are appointed to our faculty. We do value scholarship here at Harrington. Our best faculty have published scholarly work. But you must understand that your research activities would be on your own time and at your own expense. Unless you can raise funds from external sources.”
“Yes, I understand that. I am prepared to make the effort.”
“Let me be candid with you, Miss Hansen. We thought this position had been filled, but our candidate withdrew recently without advance notice. Um, most unprofessional.”
“I see.”
“So, we are compelled to fill the vacancy very quickly to, uh, meet our teaching needs. I will be very frank. I would have preferred to hire a man. Men are naturally superior leaders and command respect in the classroom. Whereas a woman . . .”
Her cheeks growing hot, Emma dared to interrupt. “Sir, I only ask to be judged by the quality of my performance, not by my sex. If I am offered the position, I assure you that the college will not be disappointed.”
“Um, well, I hope not.” The Dean studied the papers on his desk—or pretended to, it seemed to Emma—before he finally spoke. “Shall we proceed? I am prepared to offer you a position as Instructor in Biology, renewable after review annually. The salary would be twenty-six hundred dollars per annum.”
“Dean Woodrow, please understand. I am keen to join the faculty of Harrington College, but the position was advertised as for an Assistant Professorship at a salary of three thousand dollars. Surely, with my credentials . . .”
“Ah, yes, well, that was for a male appointee, who would have to support a family. And who would, ah, you will recognize, be in, uh, greater demand.”
Emma hesitated. God knows, I want this chance, but if I allow this man to run over me now, what can I expect in the future? “Very well, I will accept the lower salary for the first year, but I require appointment as an Assistant Professor. With the opportunity to earn tenure. That costs the college nothing. You can still do your annual review. I believe I can earn tenure. It is my intention to make the college very, very glad to have me on the faculty.”
Woodrow leaned back in his chair. Emma knew that the college had to have an instructor ready to teach its biology classes in three weeks. It was obvious that she was tougher than he expected or liked, but she was well prepared. She wondered if he had received any applications from men who were as well qualified. Still, he stretched out the wait.
“Very well,” he said. “Don’t make me regret taking a chance on you, young lady.”
EMMA WALKED QUICKLY down the hall, the wooden floor creaking under her feet, and descended the stone steps leaving MacAllister Hall. Her white blouse clung to her damp body. Because there was no one walking on the campus at the moment, she removed her suit jacket.
For the first time since leaving the Dean’s office, she breathed deeply and took in the world around her. She permitted herself a tiny thrill of joy. At last. This stately academic grove would be her home for the coming years. In late summer the campus was deeply shaded by mature elm trees and, in the absence of the eight hundred or so students who would soon return, it was quiet, green, cool. MacAllister Hall, behind her, stood at the south end of a grassy quad. It was a handsome four-story stone structure with high narrow windows and a mansard roof, built in the Second Empire style that was popular in the 1870s. Other brick and stone buildings in various styles surrounded the quad and two other adjacent lawn-like areas.
Emma felt tension slowly easing from her body. The campus comforted her as Hancock College had years earlier. Harrington College was about twice the size of Hancock and enjoyed a strong reputation among small liberal arts colleges. Founded shortly after the Civil War by Presbyterians, the college was now secular and well endowed. It began admitting women around 1900, and they were now about a quarter of the student body. Yes, Emma could feel at home here.
Still, the frosty negotiation with Dean Woodrow and his obvious reluctance to hire her rankled. It polluted her pleasure. Why was each achievement so hard-won? Even when she had finally received her Ph.D., it had felt anticlimactic. Her emotions were more akin to those of an exhausted runner than the exhilaration of victory that she had imagined.
Perhaps it was because the faculty had seemed more grudging than congratulatory. During the long and tedious oral defense of her thesis, “A Preliminary Genetic and Cytogenetic Characterization of the Heterothallic Ascomycete Neurospora crassa,” the examining professors had seemed disengaged. She knew that most of them considered the object of her researches to be of minor scientific and no practical importance, but in the end they agreed that her work was sound and original and that she had a thorough understanding of genetics.
She was asked to step outside of the room while the committee deliberated her fate. One of the professors had an unfortunately loud voice because of his poor hearing, and Emma was stung to hear him say, “Well, she’s not as brilliant as McClintock, but, frankly, more capable that one expects of a woman. I don’t see any future in her research, but since she will end up teaching in a lady’s academy somewhere, I don’t believe she will embarrass Cornell.”
Besides, Emma had been disappointed that she had no one to share her achievement with. Rosa Levin had returned from Germany, much embittered by Stalin’s crushing of his rival Leon Trotsky, whose ideas she had favored. She returned to Herschel’s arms, and Emma and Herschel pretended that they had only been friends. He slipped quietly out of her life.
She had heard nothing from Victor in over two years. Emma sent invitations to the graduation ceremonies to her family and to the Oosterfelds. She wrote notes telling them that she understood that it was impractical for them to come to Ithaca, and, indeed, they wrote back politely declining. But Emma was damned if she would forego the pleasure of donning a black robe with three velvet hashmarks on the sleeves and having the long doctoral hood placed over her shoulders in the formal ceremonies held in June 1928. Barbara McClintock attended the ceremony and congratulated Emma warmly. Bernard Dodge was not able to be present, but sent
a telegram that ended with the words, “You will make Cornell and me proud.”
EMMA TOOK THE train back to Ithaca to take her leave of her friends and colleagues and pack her belongings for her return to Harrington. She bundled her books and papers into boxes. Her clothing all fit into a single suitcase. It was a sad little collection, very worn. She would need some better clothing for teaching. The Dean had advanced her two hundred dollars from her salary, so Emma bought two more simple suits, tan and pale blue, to go with the dark blue suit she had worn for her interview, and two white blouses. New shoes would have to come later.
At the lab Emma packed her cultures and research materials for shipment to Harrington. Since she had been forced to buy all of her own supplies and equipment, she was entitled to take them with her. She said goodbye to Professor Hutchison, who congratulated her.
“You are very fortunate, Emma,” he said. “Harrington is a good small college.”
Then she sought out Barbara McClintock, who was in her lab as usual, and shared her good news.
“I want to thank you, Barbara. Your assistance with my cytogenetic work was really a very important part of my thesis.”
“Good luck, Emma. I wish you well. I don’t suppose you will be able to continue your research with Neurospora there. Too bad. You were off to a good start.”
“Oh, I’m going to try. I know I won’t have much time or support, but I’m determined to try.”
“Well, I’ve been holding out for a professorship at a research university. Some place that will allow me to keep working on maize genetics, but so far, no one will take me.”
“Oh, that’s too bad. You are so capable. Much more than I am. Do you think it’s because . . . ?”
“Because of my anatomical ‘deficiencies’? Yes, I do. They just won’t hire a woman.”
Emma returned to Harrington the next day. There was so much to do and little time to get it done. She rented a room by the week in a campus rooming house for single women. A search for a suitable apartment would have to wait. Dean Woodrow had suggested that she live in Franklin Hall, the women’s dormitory, but when Emma learned that she would be required to serve as a house mother to the co-eds—“resident faculty supervisor” was the formal term—she declined.
“I lived in a women’s dorm for four years,” she told the Dean. “I need a quieter, more private place to work. Besides, I expect to be in my office and laboratory in the evenings and weekends.”
The next order of business was to meet with her colleagues and get settled in the Biology Department and to learn more about her teaching assignments for the fall semester. Emma had, rashly she now realized, accepted her appointment without meeting them or seeing where she would work.
The Science Building faced the central quad on the west side. It was a stolid, three-story brick building with a vaguely English Gothic stone façade built in 1890, and Emma would soon learn that its laboratory facilities were antiquated. She entered the office of the department chairman, Professor Morris Foster, at nine in the morning on her first full day on campus. Foster’s office was a spacious second floor corner room with tall windows looking out over the quad. He rose to meet her, but did not offer his hand.
“Ah, Miss Hansen, welcome. We are glad to have you here.” His deep and resonant voice carried a New England accent.
With a full head of white hair he appeared to be about sixty. Dressed in a three-piece suit and with aromatic white smoke curling from his pipe, he looked most professorial. Emma fought feelings of intimidation.
“This is our colleague, Mr. Rothermel,” he continued.
A small, bald, nervous-seeming man rose from his chair and nodded without speaking.
“In the normal course of events we would have become acquainted before you were hired, of course, but, as you know, the Dean was rather in a hurry,” Foster rumbled. “I . . . we . . . reviewed your credentials, of course. Ph.D. from Cornell, most impressive.”
It occurred to Emma that the introduction of Rothermel as “Mister” indicated that he had not earned a doctorate and that he might feel threatened by her.
“I am eager to get started, Professor Foster,” Emma replied. “Could we discuss my teaching duties first, because I don’t have much time to get prepared.”
“Indeed. Let’s see now. We will expect you to take over General Biology I this fall and General Biology II in the spring. Three lectures a week. Not much to it. Just grind through the textbook, two chapters a week. About twenty-five students. Most are taking the course to meet their general education requirements in science, not biology majors. You’ll need to give frequent quizzes and exams to force them to keep up with the reading. Quite a bit of grading, I’m afraid. Here’s a copy of the text we use.”
“I see.” Emma hoped to do much more than grind through a textbook. “Is there a laboratory section?”
“Yes, once a week. Mostly dissections.”
Emma leafed through the textbook. It had been published in 1916, the year she graduated from high school. “I was a teaching assistant in courses like this at Cornell. Is there any problem if I make changes? Adopt a new textbook? Introduce new lab exercises?”
Foster shot a glanced at Rothermel, who shrugged, but did not speak. “Well, there’s no time for changes this fall, but after that, it’s up to you. I’d like to review your proposed changes, of course. Um, there’s a bit more, Miss Hansen. I see that you specialized in genetics, so naturally, we’d like you to take over the genetics course. Frankly, neither of us like teaching it. We don’t really know much genetics, rather arcane subject, seems to me.”
“Oh, there’s a lot new that’s happening. I’d be excited to teach genetics. Is that in the spring?”
“Uh, no, this fall. And, um, one more thing—bacteriology. You seem to have worked with microbes, so we’d like to assign that course to you also this fall. There’s no laboratory for that.”
“Oh, there should be. But I’ll have all I can handle as it is for now.” It was a staggering load for a new faculty member, but Emma chose not to protest. She’d have to do the best she could by following the content previously used in the courses this fall, then revise them in the future. “And what will you gentlemen be teaching?”
Foster drew deeply on his pipe and exhaled a white cloud. “I take care of the courses in botany. My doctorate was in botany. One naturally prefers to teach in one’s specialty.” More smoke.
“I do embryology and comparative anatomy,” Rothermel said. “Used to do gross human anatomy, you know, dissection of cadavers, but we discontinued that. Most of the students who took the course were going on to medical school, where they made them do it all over again.”
“Oh.” It was clear to Emma that her colleagues had reserved small, specialized courses for themselves, and that their teaching loads were much lighter than hers. “May I see the teaching laboratory? My office? And, another thing: I’d like a small laboratory space for my own research.”
Rothermel and Foster exchanged glances and frowned.
“Well, I should hardly think that you will have time for research . . .” He pronounced the word “research” as though it were an unclean activity.
“Not at first, I realize that, but later. I’ll have weekends and more time in the summer.”
“Hmmmm. I take it that you are not married.”
“No.”
“Of course, you are still quite young. Perhaps . . .”
“May I see the laboratory now?”
The main teaching laboratory for biology was a large, poorly lit room equipped with three rows of wooden benches topped with soapstone. Wooden stools lined the aisles between the benches. Cabinets with glass doors held a few microscopes, dissecting equipment, and several jars of specimens—worms, starfish, frogs, and large grasshoppers—floating in preservative fluid, awaiting dissection. A large stone sink stood at the end of each bench. Emma stalked the room as though she were considering buying it. The lighting was poor. She would have to press for
improvements.
“Is this where I would teach bacteriology lab?”
“Yes.”
“Well, do you suppose we could arrange for more electrical outlets for microscope lamps and gascocks equipped with natural gas for Bunsen burners to be installed? An incubator? And an autoclave? A big one. I’ll have to have one for my research anyway. Could we put in a request to the Dean to have these improvements made as soon as possible?”
Foster and Rothermel rolled their eyes at one another, but Emma ignored it. “Now where do you propose to put me? My office, my lab?”
“Well,” Rothermel offered, “we discussed that. You can have my old office. When Professor Whisnant retired, I moved to his second floor office. And I’ve been thinking about this business of your lab. We hadn’t planned on that, but you could have the old gross anatomy room. Since we don’t use it any more. It’s just down the hall from your office.”
“That would be good. May I see them?”
The office was small, but suitable. It was equipped with a desk and chairs, two bookcases with glass doors, shelves and a wooden filing cabinet. A hot water radiator stood under the single window, an ornate accordion-like apparatus coated with silvery paint. Emma would discover that it hissed and groaned during the winter months and was difficult to adjust. Her office was often too cold or stiflingly hot.
The human anatomy room that was to become Emma’s laboratory reeked of formaldehyde embalming fluid. A large zinc topped table stood in the center of the well-illuminated room; a large porcelain sink and shelves and cabinets lined one wall. There were only two half-height windows; the floor was concrete, not wood as in all of the other rooms, with a drain set into it.
“I think this can be made to do,” Emma said after a careful inspection. “But some modifications are required. Can this large cabinet be removed and replaced with a lab bench with shelves over it?” She pointed to the cabinet in which cadavers had been stored. “And I’ll have to have electrical outlets installed from my microscope lamp, and for two incubators. Oh, and a couple of gas outlets for Bunsen burners on the benches. I’ll make a list and ask the Dean to make it part of the work done when the teaching lab is updated.”
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