[Geoldept] the first woman professional geologist in the US

[George Mustoe]

Sue,

Ada Swineford was a sedimentology professor at WWU from 1966-1977. She has previously had a long career as at the Kansas Geological Survey, where she was head of their petrology division. Ada earned a PhD in geology from the University of Chicago in 1942, when few women studied geology. Here's a story she told me:  One morning she wanted to visit an outcrop a few miles from a Kansas town.  It was a pretty day, so she decided she would walk to the site. Part way there, a state patrolman pulled over and asked why she was walking alone out in the country. Ada explained she was a geologist out doing field work. The officer believed a woman could not possibly be a geologist, so he hauled her off to a mental hospital for a psychiatric evaluation. She managed to gain her freedom after convincing the staff to make a phone call to her boss at the Kansas Geologic Survey.

George

________________________________
From: Geoldept <geoldept-bounces at kula.geol.wwu.edu> on behalf of Susan DeBari <Susan.DeBari at wwu.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, May 20, 2015 8:40 AM
To: geoldept at kula.geol.wwu.edu
Subject: [Geoldept] the first woman professional geologist in the US

A pretty interesting overview of the career of Florence Bascom in the late 1800s/early 1900s. Can you
imagine having to sit "behind a screen" during classes so as not
to disrupt male students?

http://www.geosociety.org/gsatoday/archive/7/7/pdf/i1052-5173-7-7-8.pdf

-Sue DeBari



***********************************
Susan DeBari, Ph.D.
Geology Department and Science Education Program, MS 9080
Western Washington University
Bellingham WA 98225

Phone:  360-650-3588
http://faculty.wwu.edu/~debari/web/susan.html



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://kula.geol.wwu.edu/pipermail/geoldept/attachments/20150520/1917ca41/attachment.html>