Working Women
Introduction
Women experienced strict rules governing conduct that emerged from women’s roles at the time. Dorm life, curfew, dress codes, and travel restrictions created a more restricted life for women than for men on campus. Women recounted freshman initiation, wearing beanies, and the role of Big Sisters on campus. While punishments for breaking the rules could be severe, women tested the limits of dorm life on a regular basis.
Building Relationships
“I think the chief thing I remember as a faculty member . . . we had a person on our staff who I liked an awful lot and she did. Her name was Rose Binkley. She worked under me as a cataloger and we collected a certain amount of money and we wanted a memorial for her, but we didn’t know what to get. She was Scottish. She had been born in Scotland. I was going to Scotland that summer. So it happened to be the week of the National Arts Festival in Edinboro. Went down town that morning and into the museum where the art gallery on Princess Street, which is that the whole length of the street was given over to the arts festival. And the moment I saw in the distance a big oil painting that I thought was striking, so I had the money to buy it and I used to find that it was a kind of modern art representation of the Clyde Valley. That’s were Rose was born...in Glasgow, which is in the Clyde Valley, the River Clyde. And it just seemed like the sort of thing that would be best to memorialize Rose.”
Laura Buller Doering, Class of 1935, Faculty, Library, 1953 - 1976
“The faculty was very small at that time, when I first came here. We used to have faculty picnics, once or twice a year, so you knew all the faculty and you knew the families. I would say that the men probably outnumbered the women. There were 3 or 4 women faculty that I knew when I first came here and they kind of took me under their wing and we became friends for all those years. But they were all single too. They had all lived in the dormitories when they first came to Millersville. Then eventually they all bought their own homes and were responsible for conspiring me to buy a home and move out of an apartment. I never lived in the dormitories. Those days were over by the time I got here.”
Jane L Reinhard, Faculty, Art, 1958 - 1991
Opportunities at Millersville
“I have always thoroughly enjoyed working at Millersville. I never had any desire to go anywhere else. . . I didn’t see any opportunities beyond Millersville that I wasn’t already experiencing here because I got involved with campus laboratory school, I taught college classes, I was involved with closed-circuit television for a number of years when that first started on campus, teaching large groups from a TV studio. Then I got involved with the program with Jenkins Elementary School which was a . . . progressive type of program where it was not graded and the children worked under contracts, they progressed at their own speed. It caused me to totally change my approach in teaching art to young children. Then eventually when that closed down, I started supervising student teachers and there was just always so many things going on that it was a very happy and satisfying experience”
Jane L Reinhard, Faculty, Art, 1958 - 1991
“I did mention the big move of the books from the old library to the new. . . I consider that kind of a highlight of my professional career, being the chairman of that committee and getting all of those books moved. Because there were some faculty members, men that said you will never get the students to come out and do it. I said that I had great faith in Millersville students and they were wonderful. And we got them moved.”
Isabelle Huston Binkley, Class of 1945, Faculty Library, 1958 - 1979
Choices and Expectations
“I could see the big advantage of having an education because . . . It was during the war and we went to Endicott-Johnson, Johnson City and . . . I applied for a job in Levington Rand. And sitting across the desk of course was a personnel manager who hired and he said to me . . . ‘Why did you quit college?’ And I said . . . ‘Oh, I quit and got married.’ He said . . . ‘Well, had you finished college, I would start you at $60 a week. Since you didn’t finish college, I’ll put your resume on file . . . period.’ So now I got on the bus and went down to Binghamton and got a job in the BVD factory, Endicott-Johnson shoe factory....Binghamton Busy Boys...for $20 a week. There is a tremendous lesson there. And then the bells started to ring in my head. I thought wow . . .”
Doris Hosler, Faculty, Library, 1968 - 1988
“So I chose business education because I thought if I didn’t want to be a teacher or there wouldn’t be jobs, although there were plenty of them . . . I would be able to get a job in the business field. So that was why I chose that. And women could go into most of the professions. But limitations...not particularly, but there was still this . . . even when I came to Penn Manor, still this idea that men rather took precedence. But that rapidly, rapidly disappeared in the teaching field and other than a little bit in the beginning, I never felt any different at all being a woman.”
Doris Hosler, Faculty, Library, 1968 - 1988
“I regretted never going on for my doctorate. I would highly recommend that, particularly in today’s world . . . when you can do it.”
Doris Hosler, Faculty, Library, 1968 - 1988
“From ’58, to probably a good 10-15 years, I was the only . . . woman in the art department. How did I react to that? I was always treated with the greatest respect. I was never treated as a second-class citizen. I was definitely one of equal standing. We had weekly staff meetings, our department shared, which got to be rather tedious sometimes, but, and I was the secretary all those year, I guess, being the only woman in the department. But I never complained, and if I had complained, I know definitely that it would’ve been remedied. Because then when another department chair took over, he was rotating the job of secretary. I said to him, ‘I will not do any secretary duties, I did them all those years’. So, I never wrote any more minutes after that; everyone else took a turn but I was excused.”
Jane L Reinhard, Faculty, Art, 1958 - 1991
“It was mostly men in particular in the physical education department and at that time it was a full position, you coached and taught and of course back then there were a lot more sports for men so predominantly they were all males. In fact I think when I came here it might have been 3 other women. . .in the department.”
Marjorie Trout, Faculty, Health & Physical Education, 1964 - 2004
“As far as dress codes, back in those days was more of . . . a professional dress code. but you know life today is, you can chose a gown, dress and so forth but I was always very cautious of that particularly being in athletics I really felt as if that was important . . . back in those days, coaching basketball, thank god slacks came in because it was difficult on the bench but . . . I still feel as though professional dress is important but you can now be dressed and not have to be in suit . . . even when I was Director of Women’s Athletics I really impressed upon my coaches to dress accordingly and they would not. . .wear jeans and so forth. Now on a day that they weren't traveling or representing Millersville, that’s something different. but I really always had thought dress code is important.”
Marjorie Trout, Faculty, Health & Physical Education, 1964 - 2004
Persistence
“I attended Millersville as a non-traditional student. I guess you could define non-traditional in many ways in that I didn’t attend here full-time, I attended part-time. I worked here during the day and then attended at night, or because I worked on campus, I also took some classes during the day and I attended from 1984 until 2002, May of 2002 when I graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Speech Communication and a minor in Sociology.”
Joyce McEwan Whitehead, Class of 2004, Staff, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, 1984 -
“I have a 13 year old and obviously she was growing up as I was taking classes. There were days I would sometimes have to leave work, run to her school to do something because I participated a lot in her schooling during the elementary school years. In the middle school, unfortunately, there aren’t too many opportunities for parents to do things during the day. But during elementary school years, I would go in and read stories to the kids, participate in maybe a Thanksgiving dinner that we gave for the entire school as a PTO parent or help out with the book fair, so I would be doing all kinds of things all the time. But I manage my time very well. I have things in order pretty much."
Joyce McEwan Whitehead, Class of 2004, Staff, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, 1984 -