Pioneers break molds. They challenge the status quo. They
exceed expectations. They swim upstream. The women in the SD Mines class of
1969 are no exception.
For years the
male-dominated demographic at Mines has mirrored the science and engineering
professions. The university has had women students since the school’s founding
in 1885, but actual graduates were sporadic prior to the 1960s. History began
to change in 1965 when the largest group of freshmen women to date registered.
Four years later Mines witnessed the largest cohort of women graduating when
ten bachelor’s degrees were granted. Many of the women who attended Mines in
the 1960s lead amazing careers and we caught up with three of them for this
article.
“We went there because it was a very good school and I
didn’t think about it being a guy’s school even though women were a big
minority,” remembers Kathy (Kutcher) Stechmann (Math 69). “We were there to get
a degree, but also to have fun, and we did both of those things.” “I found Mines to be very welcoming,” says
Dianne Dorland, PhD (ChE 69 MS ChE 70). “I worked to get along with my male
colleagues and I just enjoyed those years in college.”
Being at a school with
so few other women was intimidating at first, and not without some challenges.
“I think there weren’t more women at the time because it had a reputation of
being rigorous academically and male-dominated and perhaps women felt that they
couldn’t go through that. However, that wasn’t accurate and the women in our
class did well,” Diane (Gleason) Hammond (Math 69) recalls. Hammond, Stechmann,
and Dorland dove headfirst into the college life, getting involved in
extracurriculars (there were no sororities), tutoring, and working on campus.
“It was a lot cheaper to go to school then, but I still had to make my own
way,” says Dorland. “I ironed shirts and
painted for $1.25 per hour. Then in my sophomore year, I began to work for the
Institute of Atmospheric Sciences. I got to fly around in the airplanes that
seeded clouds and eventually got my master’s degree working on an analysis of
liquid water content in clouds.”
Hammond and Stechmann were also the first female residence hall
advisors. The school didn’t have dormitory space on campus for women until they
were juniors when the top floor of Dake Hall was converted. They jumped on the
opportunity to be advisors and enjoyed taking part in Mines longstanding
traditions. “Walking into a class with only men inspired me to work harder,”
Stechmann says.
Things were still slow to change in the business world. At
the end of their senior year, when companies came to campus to interview
students, a couple of companies interviewed them for jobs like ‘statistical
typists’, while the men were getting more serious, highpaying offers. “It was
very frustrating,” Stechmann says. “They weren’t interviewing us for the same
level positions that they were interviewing the guys. I doubt that any men were
interviewed to become typists,” says Stechmann. After complaining to a campus
official, Stechmann says the group realized there was little they could do to
fix the unfair situation at the time. But in following years, this group of
women of the Mines class of 1969 were part of an initial wave creating change.
These women credit their time at Mines as an integral part of the successful
careers they went on to lead. After graduation, Hammond moved to Minneapolis
and landed a position in market research at General Mills. She got her MBA at
the University of Houston, and then worked at the University of Denver doing
research studies for corporate and government entities, including
socio-economic analyses for some of the largest mines and power plants built
during the 1970s and '80s. She ended
her career as Director of Planning and Public Policy for a major telecom company.
Her time at Mines taught her the enduring values of perseverance, hard work,
and patience. “Not only did I learn
math, but I also learned that if you kept at something, you’d eventually be
where you want to be,” says Hammond.
Stechmann went into education after finishing her math
degree at Mines. She taught in Minneapolis for 34 years and was widely
recognized in her district and by parents as an exceptional math teacher. She
also was highly renowned as a mentor of new teachers beginning their careers.
“I was in a field that had mostly guys in it, and I knew I could do just as
well as they could. I didn’t think about it until, after 20 years of teaching
math, someone asked me ‘is it uncomfortable teaching with only men?’, because I
was one of the only women. I hadn’t really noticed, because I had worked like
that at Mines and in my career otherwise,” Stechmann recalled. Following
completion of her master’s degree in 1970, Dorland went on to a career that
included work for Union Carbide, Dupont, and the US Department of Energy. She
earned her PhD from West Virginia University in 1985 and moved to the
Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, where
she served as Chair of that department from 1990 to 2000. Dorland then served
as Dean of the College of Engineering at Rowan University in Glassboro, NJ.,
before retiring. During her long career,
she served as a role model to many women engineers and scientists. “I think you
can teach that you don’t have to settle for less, and you don’t have to let
your goals and the path you’d like to follow become second best to someone
else,” says Dorland. Today, female students have an abundance of resources at
Mines. Efforts like Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE) and the Society of
Women Engineers (SWE) both seek to inspire and empower a new generation of
female scientists and engineers. Young
women continue to be pioneers, overcoming barriers in what are still
maledominated fields, but they can take heart in the women who came before them
who forged a path.
Were you among the early women graduates at Mines? Reach out and tell us your story. Email: mike.ray@sdsmt.edu.