Margaret S. Petersen
Place in Civil Engineering
A Wotnan
You already mentioned the problem you had with Dean Dawson, who had tried to discourage
you from going to school there. How did you find the environment while you were working
on your degree?
It was fine. It really was. Once Dean Dawson saw that we were serious, he was very
A:
supportive. The first year we were at Iowa in the fall of `44, there were perhaps ten young
women in my classes, but I don't think any of them stayed more than one year.I think Irene
and I were the second and third women to be graduated from Iowa in engineering, and two
young women finished about a year after we did. Now, when I look at Iowa newsletters and
alumni publications, I note that most of the honors in civil engineering go to women. They
apparently have a larger percentage of women at Iowa in civil engineering than we do here
at the University of Arizona.
That's quite a change in
years, isn't it?
Yes. I don't know whether the younger women today are really having a problem with
discrimination in school and in the work place or whether they are overly sensitive. To some
extent, the school atmosphere today may have to do with foreign professors who dominate
many engineering faculties now and who have a problem with women in engineering. But,
no, at Iowa the faculty and the students were very supportive when we were there.
So once you got into it and showed what you could do, they had no problems.
A:
Once they saw that we were serious, yes. We were a little older, too, because we had worked
several years. In `44, when we began studies at Iowa, I would have been twenty-four. At
that time all undergraduate women were required to live in dormitories, and it was very
difficult to get an exception. We petitioned to share an apartment and we eventually received
an answer saying that "because of our advanced age," permission would be granted.
Advanced age of twenty-four. Did you ever find any problems in the Corps?
A:
No, really not. Again, there were not very many young hydraulic engineers in the
even in the '60's. I used to say that if you could do the work, the Corps wouldn't care if you
had two heads.
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