Campus Women Lead
Sue Rosser, Dean of Ivan Allen College, Georgia Institute of Technology

My experiences as a feminist and a scientist prepared me for most of the challenges that deans face. For twenty-three years, I had served as Director of Women’s Studies in three quite different institutions, with my tenure home in departments ranging from biology through family and preventive medicine to anthropology. Feminist baseline knowledge such as understanding and respecting diversity, looking at situations through the intersections of race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexualities, and other forms of identity, and understanding systems, power, and hierarchy prove useful on a daily basis as I deal with diverse constituencies at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

My background as a scientist—managing a laboratory, writing grants, and analyzing data—prepared me well for understanding the culture of a technological and scientific institution and its emphasis on making data-based decisions. In addition, directing Women’s Studies taught me how to package non-traditional and even radical approaches and ideas into acceptable categories and language familiar to academia.

For example, in cases of promotion and tenure, as Director of Women’s Studies I needed to demonstrate how the cases in Women’s Studies fit the classic criteria of research, teaching, and service valued by the college. I provided the acceptance rate or listing of top tier journals in Women’s Studies, as that was standard practice in other departments for judging the quality of refereed publications. I explained how supervision of the Women’s Studies internship students or practicum in activist service constituted teaching similar to that in schools of social work, nursing, or education, where supervision of students who work under the guidance of professionals in the community has a longer tradition of counting as teaching. I drew parallels between a faculty member in Women’s Studies who served on the executive board of the local battered women’s shelter to faculty members in business who served on the board of a local hospital in terms of real-world expertise.

My colleagues recognized that these years of experience in making some of the non-traditional aspects of Women’s Studies fit the criteria of academia helped me as a dean to see issues from a variety of perspectives and present them in ways likely to garner the resources and acceptance that benefited both individuals and the College. Most colleagues viewed my feminism as a positive contribution to my administrative skills as dean and scientist.

There were some faculty, staff, peer deans, and other administrators, however, who were less sanguine to discover that not only was I a feminist, but my research also focused on women, gender, feminism and science, medicine, and technology. Drawing from unfounded stereotypes, they expected me automatically to favor all women and discriminate against all men. I had to prove over time that such behavior did not characterize feminist leaders and would not characterize me either.

Despite a few skeptics, most faculty, staff, and other deans appreciated my background and expected me to use it to help the institution. When, in 1999, I became the first woman academic dean ever hired at the Georgia Institute of Technology, I wondered whether they really knew what they had gotten. Although my curriculum vitae provided clear clues—at the time it included seven books and eighty articles on women and science, not to mention indicating my more than twenty years as director of women’s studies—I wondered if they fully understood its implications. 

During the interview process, I tried to determine this by asking questions of different individuals and groups, in ways that I hoped were discreet: Of the other deans I inquired, “Do you think the institution is ready for a woman dean?” Of the Provost, I asked, “What strategies has the institution developed to attract and retain women faculty?” 

Keenly aware that being the first woman dean obviously focused their attention on gender, I didn’t want to overemphasize my own research interests on science technology, women, and gender. But I did want to ascertain their readiness to engage in institutional transformation to create a comfortable climate for women, including me. With my questions, I attempted to walk the fine line between appearing obsessed and focused only on women’s issues and finding out what I needed to know. I did not want to take a job at an institution where they wouldn’t take seriously my work on feminism and science. I also intended as dean to develop and implement policies and practices for women, which has been one of the many aspects that attracted me to the upper level administrative position of dean.

The reassuring answers to my questions convinced me to take the position. When I arrived on campus, several of the women faculty, including some in other colleges, made it very clear that not only did they know what they were getting, but that they also had pushed hard for me. They anticipated great advances for the campus as a whole would come from my leadership on women’s issues.

As part of my start-up package, I negotiated three years of funding to support a center for women, science, and technology. During the first year, I convinced Housing to provide a dorm for sophomore women in science, as a variation on a learning community. Pleased with our initial progress, the other women faculty and I began to strategize about ways to insure the permanence of these efforts, as well as a much larger project to advance women faculty to senior and leadership positions.

Because this larger effort would focus on promotion, tenure, and hiring for the entire institution, success would not be possible without the support of key male top administrators, especially the deans, Provost, and President. Very aware that this would serve as the real test of how committed the institution was to advancing women, I approached the most powerful male dean of the largest college.

His response was among the strongest institutional and personal support I have ever received. He not only agreed enthusiastically to support the proposal, but he also offered to approach the Provost to serve as the principal investigator (PI) on a major grant being written. Known for his conservative views, the Provost would be more likely to endorse the project if approached by the powerful male dean than by me. Centered on issues nearest and dearest to faculty purviews and power such as promotion, tenure, hiring, and collecting data on sensitive issues beyond salaries, including start-up packages, space, and salary supplements, the Provost had to serve in the critical role of PI to obtain these data and to insure genuine transformation of the entire institution.

By the time the grant funding arrived, the powerful dean had become Provost and served as the PI himself. Working with him in that position allowed us to push the institutional advancement of women beyond even my own hopes and expectations. His confidence and support of me also enabled the college to accomplish outstanding achievements, unrelated to gender, while I was dean.

Because my scholarly work for the last quarter century has focused on the intersection of women, feminism, science, health and technology, people tend to be aware of my background and hold expectations of how it will influence my approaches and decisions as an administrator. In a few instances when individuals had a personal political agenda or grudge, they could appropriate words from my extensive writings and speeches, take them out of context, and use them to paint me as a “radical,” “fringe” feminist who would discriminate against men. More commonly, people see my work in feminism and science as an institutional advantage. They understand it has led to my expertise in building bridges across disciplines, embrace of diversity, and my commitment to initiating programs to attract underrepresented groups to science, technology, mathematics, and engineering in ways that benefit women, the institution, and science and engineering as a whole. On balance, being a feminist and a scientist has provided more opportunities and positive choices than challenges and problems for me as an administrator. All this suggests that times have improved for women seeking academic leadership positions.