CATHY: I'm Cathy Murphy, a chemistry professor here at U of I.
PATTY: I'm Patty Jones, the Associate Director for Research at the Beckman Institute.
TOGETHER: And we are twins!
PATTY: I've always been interested in people and how people interact with the world
and how people make decisions.
So, when I was thinking about what to major in in college, I was interested in Psychology.
But then, once I became a Psychology major, I quickly realized I didn't want to just do
that, I wanted to go also
into Engineering and look at the development of technology.
CATHY: Well, I think people are too messy to study. So I liked science and nature starting back,
oh boy, second or third grade.
I've always been interested in the natural world. But, when I was in high school, I realized
I liked Chemistry, as opposed to Physics or Astronomy or Biology...
again, Biology, too messy. So I became a chemist pretty early on.
We were pretty bookish when we were young. We went to the library quite a bit. I remember
our mom would order boxes of books from Scholastic. She would order boxes about this big, you
know, just full, and full, and full of books.
And we would just read, and read, and read, and read.
PATTY: I remember mom telling me and Cathy at one point that we really helped Tony and Beth,
our siblings, learn to read because we were doing stuff with them all the time.
CATHY: Oh, I do remember that. I remember my brother...when I took a Biology class in sixth-grade,
I made him memorize all the parts of a cell. You know? Like "Golgi Apparatus." You know, "Mitochondia."
I made him say all these words. I don't remember why I made him do that.
We are the first generation to graduate from college. So, when we went to college, it was
a big deal for the family that two of us were going at once. And we had to fill out all
these financial aid forms. And I remember this. When we were filling out all these forms,
our father was going through all this stuff and he said, "I can't believe we have to do
all this. You're just going to get married and never use this anyway.
Do you really have to go to college?"
I don't remember him saying that.
Well, he did. And so our mom and we turned on him and then he backed off pretty quickly.
Which is funny because now we use our bachelor's stuff all the time.
PATTY: I remember mom giving us advice like this when we were starting to date in high school.
She said, "Well, make sure that you let him do most of the talking and make sure he knows
how smart he is. You know?" I think that there were old-fashioned ideas about gender roles
back in the day. But that was starting to break down in the seventies and we were kids
in the seventies and so, going forward into the eighties and nineties, it seemed like
it was easier to do those things.
CATHY: But I don't remember us having deep conversations about how we were managing to do this
whole science and engineering thing. We just sort of did it.
Well, thinking about when I wanted to be a scientist, that came pretty early. I was having
trouble in our Chemistry class. So I go to my TA for help and I'm looking around his
lab, because that's where his desk was, and I'm asking all these questions about, "Ooh,
what's this and what's that?" And he could tell that I was clearly interested. So he
talked to his professor who became my mentor and then I started doing research. I really
liked being in the lab. I really liked collecting data. I had fun with the crew in the lab.
So I just was really comfortable in that environment. And then it became quite natural, after being
in the same lab for three-and-a-half-years, to continue on to graduate school.
And that's how you become a professional scientist.
PATTY: I became an Assistant Professor here at U of I in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering.
I really enjoyed the scientific process of saying you have a question about how people
learn or how people make decisions and then you have to formulate an experiment and you
have to actually collect data and analyze it to come up with something that is reasonable.
So I enjoyed that a lot.
But then in 2001, I took an opportunity to go live in California and work at the NASA
Ames Research Center where I was the Deputy Division Chief of Human Factors. I eventually
became the Deputy Director of Exploration Technology for both space-flight and aviation
type missions. I was at NASA for eleven years. So lots of really interesting experiences
and I met a bunch of astronauts. And an astronaut was one of my mentors. So it was a really
good experience.
There were a number of women who, you know, had been first-line feminists in the seventies
and they had gotten hired by NASA back in the day and they were still there. And so
they had lots of good stories about how things used to be.
But, even so, NASA as an organization had put a lot of emphasis on diversity. And so,
really, as I went through my career at NASA, there were a lot of other women in management
and a lot of other women in senior positions.
CATHY: When I was younger I was certainly oblivious to most social forces around me. I just did
what I wanted to do. So, even if there were any kinds of comments about,
"why are you here?" or whatever, I would not have listened to them at all. The whole
human interaction things doesn't come into it when you are focusing on your little molecules.
So it wasn't until I was on my own as an Assistant Professor at the University of South Carolina
when I was the first woman hired on the tenure track in Chemistry in 1993... that's when
it hit me that, "Oh, this is what people are talking about when there is some climate that's
a little different from what you are used to." Because I was the only women in a room
full of twenty-five men; most of whom were a lot older than me. So that's when I felt,
"oh, it's a little different." But, again, you just keep going forward.
So nowadays about forty-percent of the Ph.D.s graduating in Chemistry in this country are
women; which is a big change. When I got my Ph.D. it was more like twenty-percent.
PATTY: In Industrial Engineering, there are a fair amount of women relatively speaking.
There's maybe thirty-percent women, which is pretty good for Engineering. When I was an Engineering faculty member myself,
I always remember talking to one of my department heads about this and he was like, "Yea. The
women who are seniors in Engineering are amazing. Because they are the ones who have gotten
the straight A's are are running all the student organizations, and organizing all the clubs,
and doing everything." So he was, like, "Yea, when we finally have mediocre women engineers, then
we are going to be at equality. Because the ones that stick with it are amazing and you
lose a lot of good ones which you shouldn't be losing."
CATHY: I think we have been very fortunate. We have both been in very good professional environments.
But that is not true, certainly, for all women scientists and engineers. There are places
that are not good. And you hear about them.
PATTY: Yea, I think that is important. If you are a women alone in a certain professional environment
and things seem to be really difficult, you may not be crazy and incompetant. It might
be that you are just not in the right place. There are lots of good places where you can
grow and be successful and, if you're not in a place like that, you should get to be
in one. Because there are many places like the U of I that are fantastic to be in.
We live four blocks away from each other and our usual practice is to walk to school. And
my kids love their aunt Cathy and uncle Bob. And so it's really great to have that family
connection here.
CATHY: It's hard for me to imagine that not being there. It's good to have someone who has a
similar mindset as do you, but has different experiences. Because they might have run across
something that you haven't yet. And then, when it hits you, you can ask the other half
of your brain what's going on and then there's some insight there.
Actually it's also very helpful that she's not a chemist. I think if we were both chemists...
I don't know, that would just confuse a lot of people!
PATTY: Nowadays it is so much easier to find examples of mentors or cool videos that pique your interest.
And there's lots of programs to help encourage kids to go into robotics or environmental
science or whatever. And so I think that, what I would say to like my daughter, who
is nine, if she told me she was interested in science, I would say, "That's great. Let's
read some books about it. Let's join the Four-H Club or some other activities... your elementary
school is starting a Lego robotics club, so let's join that. Let's try a bunch of things
and see which things you like best. And then that will help us figure out what you should
keep exploring."
CATHY: If I had to give advice to a young girl who is thinking about becoming a scientist,
I would want to talk to this young girl a lot and find out what she was exactly interested
in, what parts she likes about science. Because science is big. You can be a theory person.
You can be an experiment person. You can be a data person. There are lots of things you
can do as a scientist. It doesn't mean you have to be doing all of them at once, or even
enjoy all of them. So I think a lot of one-on-one conversations with this young girl would be
great. And trying things out would be marvelous. Again, the university environment, here especially,
is very big and very open to having all kinds of groups come through.
So, the sooner you can talk to a real scientist about stuff, the better.
[MUSIC]