Reactions of UNC professors to the influx of women students
Powell discusses some of the various reactions professors at the University of North Carolina had to the influx of women students during the mid-1960s. She vividly recalls one professor who thwarted her efforts to ask questions and suggested that Powell "get [her] MRS degree and get out of this school!" Nevertheless, Powell remembers that most of her professors were much more supportive of women students, holding them to high standards and encouraging them to excel in academics.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Sharon Rose Powell, June 20, 1989. Interview L-0041. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- PAMELA DEAN:
-
While you were talking about you're advisor, it reminded me of
the story you told me earlier about a professor and the MRS degree. I
wanted to be sure to get that one on tape, and we almost forgot it.
- SHARON ROSE POWELL:
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Oh, that's right. You're absolutely right.
- PAMELA DEAN:
-
Sort of the other side of
- SHARON ROSE POWELL:
-
The flip side. My freshman year, I was taking a French class, and the
professor, he spoke fluent French obviously, and he spoke so quickly
that I sometimes would miss parts of what he was saying. So I would
raise my hand. I was the only girl in the class, and I would raise my
hand and ask him to please repeat whatever he was saying or I would ask
questions if he was raising a topic, I would ask questions about it. I
think he just became so exasperated with me. He hadn't been
teaching there very long, and I don't think he had been
teaching very many women. He took the French book, and I was in the back
of the room, and he took it, and he threw it at me. It came very close
to hitting me, and he yelled at me, he said, "Sharon Rose, why
don't you get your MRS degree and get out of this
school!" And that attitude was actually, I don't
know how widespread it was, but I'd heard it on more than one
occasion, that the women who were coming there were there for one reason
only. Get that degree and leave us men to our important work, so that
was something I didn't forget. But I have to say, in all
honesty, that the majority of professors were really quite responsive, I
think, to women's needs, although I
do remember, I think his name was Dr. Dixon in the Art History
Department. Is there still a Dr. Dixon there?
- PAMELA DEAN:
-
I'm not sure.
- SHARON ROSE POWELL:
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Oh, he was wonderful. He was a wonderful teacher, and I was running for
President of the Women's Residence Council, and I was
campaigning and I had this Art History exam. I just knew that I
wasn't prepared for it, and I never ever wanted to go into an
exam unprepared. So I remember going to his class, to his office, and I
had never done this before, but I asked him whether he would give me an
extension on the exam of one or two days because I was just so exhausted
from campaigning and that I really wanted to do well on the exam. And he
said no, and I remember sobbing in his office, and I just could not stop
crying. He was taken aback, but boy, he did not change his mind. He just
would not let me, and so I took it, and I remember I got a B on that
exam, which was devastating at the time, but I got over it. There were
some wonderful teachers, Professor Boyd, Professor McCurdy, some of the
really inspiring professors in religion and psychology that really got
us all to think about things in a way we never had before.
- PAMELA DEAN:
-
Was there any particular professor who encouraged you to go to graduate
school?
- SHARON ROSE POWELL:
-
Absolutely. Barry Hounshell. Barry Hounshell is the one. I'd
never ever thought of going to graduate school. It was in the winter of
my senior year, and I had already missed a lot of deadlines for graduate
schools because it had not occurred to me, and I
guess I had the option of going right into teaching, but Barry
Hounshell's the one who recognized that certainly with my
interest and dedication in education that going for the
Master's would be something that would really benefit me,
both educationally and, later, professionally. No one in my family would
have encouraged me to do that or even thought of it, and none of my
friends, my boyfriend was in graduate school at Princeton at the time,
but I didn't know any women who were going on to graduate
school. They were all getting married, and probably if Bob had decided
to marry me at graduation, I probably would have done that and not gone
to graduate school, but we were not at the place where we were going to
get married, and graduate school seemed like a wonderful way to spend my
year after college, so that's what I did.