Arizona Daily Star from Tucson, Arizona • Page 57

(Mm gjje Areana Beiiln Star Tucson, Sunday, May 26, 1985 Art 5E By J.C. Martin Tha Arizona Daily Star UA's highest-ranking has earned her way woman there Js? I'Uvmfc) I rf uu71 offer women very little in the way of a faculty future at that time. "If the truth be known," says Wilkening, "I was radicalized at the University of Chicago." At UCSD she'd had "a couple of incidents" in which she suspected sexual discrimination. "I shrugged them off and sailed on." But looking around for a job, the problem of women's equity in academia came into sharp focus. "I was in the vanguard of the baby boom.

If you got a job, you were, taking it away from a man. And you were probably just going to get married and quit." At the UA, she joined the Committee on the Status of Women. Within a year, she was its head. After eight years at the lunar lab, known affectionately as "the loony lab," she was its director. A year later she was named acting dean of the faculty of sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences in her opinion the most difficult job she has ever had.

In 1983 she was named vice provost of the UA. Kassander, who has known Wilkening since she arrived at the UA, points out that the time was right in the 1970s for women to move up with the help of affirmative-action programs. So, she was lucky. "And we were lucky," Kassander adds quickly, "that she was interested in doing this." "It is a great advantage to be a woman in science," says UA political scientist Helen Ingram, a Wilkening colleague from their days on the UA's committee on the status of women. "Women are still relatively rare in administration." For Arizona to have one who is both a good administrator and a good scientist, Ingram believes, produces the kind of visibility that few schools can claim.

To date, Wilkening's principal achievement in the struggle for women's rights has been achieving salary equity for faculty women and professional staff. hen you ask people who work with Laurel Wil-kening to list her strengths, the inevita ble first answer is, "She's very, very smart." But the world is full of smart people who couldn't punch their way out of a paper bag. Wilkening has worked her way through the University of Arizona administrative hierarchy to become a member of the team at the top. On Aug. 1 she will become vice president for research and dean of the Graduate College the highest-ranked woman in ad- ministration in the history of the school.

For a week last summer when her job was still what it is vice provost and Provost Nils Hasselmo and President Henry Koffler were out of town, Wilkening was acting president of the University of Arizona. And this from a woman whose favorite way to dress is Levis and a T-shirt, who loves to teach undergraduates, and has described her formula for success as simply, "You've got to enjoy what you're doing." The American Council on Education's Office of Women in Higher Education in a 1983 study found 224 senior women in administrative positions in American colleges and universities with enrollments of 20,000 or more. This comprised a modest 7.3 percent of the total number of administrators. Wilkening's colleague at Arizona State University, Betty Turner Asher, appointed vice president for student affairs in 1982, says she is one of five in her office in the country in schools with enrollments exceeding 15,000. Donna Shavlik, who with Judy Touchton compiled the ACE report, says she knows of only one other woman serving as a vice president for research, Frances Horowitz at the University of Kansas.

The field is, as Asher puts it, "a very male-dominated field in every sense of the word." Twelve years ago, the University of Arizona had one woman walking the same corridors as its principal academic power brokers and she, the dean of the College of Nursing, at some remove. Things are moving fast. What else could it be that equipped Wilkening for the pace? The next answer? "She is a scientist." "An international-class scholar," says Richard Kassander, a retired UA vice president for research and one-time head of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics. "An absolute first-class scientist in the forefront of her field." Her male colleagues, Kassander says, "recognize and evaluate that excellence." Myra Dinnerstein has worked with Wilkening since 1976, and the two are credited, Kassander says, with "virtually inventing" the UA's Women in Science and Engineering program. Dinnerstein sums it up more candidly: "Her achievement as a scientist legitimizes her in the eyes of a lot of the guys." Wilkening's special field in science is also awe-inspiring space.

Her interest areas include meteorites, asteroids and comets. Recently Laurel Wilkening is the highest-ranking female administrator in the UA's history senior, Wilkening realized that "although the experience in the laboratory was fun," chemistry was really disconnected from "anything I con-' sidered reality" the great, wide-open spaces of New Mexico. (In talking about why she chose Reed College, Wilkening will say she "didn't want to go back East to school," then pause and add, "although I did consider Her senior year at Reed she graduated in 1966 was also a period when hot debate was going on in international scientific circles about meteorites. Wilkening reasoned if meteorites "could get luminaries so cranked up, they must be interesting," so she chose them for one of her senior projects. And she was hooked.

Everybody you talk to, she once told a reporter, "whether it's collecting (meteorites), mining them or trying to find life in them everybody becomes wrapped up in them." College in Portland, to become a doctor. Encouraged by the Wilkening family physician, she spent the summer between high school and college working as a medical technician's assistant in the Socorro County Hospital. She loved it. But, as Wilkening recalls, particularly when talking to young women in the UA's Women in Science and Engineering program, she "didn't know any women who were M.D.s." And at Reed, she met two "fantastic women" who were chemists. One was "a blue-eyed blonde," a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate, "who was brainy, personable and gorgeous." "Who wouldn't want to be just like her?" And the other, who "was less spectacular," but "pleasant, helpful and smart," made the goal of becoming a top-flight chemist seem reasonable even if you had plain brown hair and a mouthful of uneven teeth.

she turned down an invitation to be in Heidelberg, West Germany, to analyze the new incoming data on Halley's comet. In March, President Reagan appointed Wilkening to the National Commission on Space. Before that she was appointed to the advisory council for the Congressional Office of Technical Assessment. And before that, during a six-month stint with NASA in Washington, D.C., she was that agency's choice for someone to join President and Mrs. Carter in viewing Voyager I photographs from Saturn.

"Carter is a scientist, too," says Kassander sternly. "She couldn't get away with telling him bedtime stories about space." likening did not grow up in Socorro, N.M., with plans to be a space scientist. True, her fa ther was a professor of geophysics at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. Her mother had taught English and math as a young woman. But Wilkening went to Reed Still, by the time she was a Reed Wilkening was no exception.

She Jobs, salaries of leading UA female administrators Jan. 1, 121 female fac- I ulty members shared in $342,672 in raises. The raises brought their sal ary levels up to those of male faculty members in similar jobs. Another 58 female professional staff members won $181,204 in equity adjustments. For more than a decade, UA female employees had been struggling to get data from the administration that would allow them to compare their qualifications and salaries with male counterparts.

At the UA Committee on the Status of Women, Wilkening was "visible early on," says Shirley Fahey, director of Social Perspectives in Medicine in the College of Medicine. "Comfortable to work with, academically and scientifically very good and she had a sincere interest in promoting good things for other women." Information, however, did not flow on command from the administrative rock. "But Laurel wouldn't quit," says Mary Doyle, associate dean of the College of Law. "She is calm in the face of controversy. She is knowledgeable about the workings of the UA.

She made it happen." Dinnerstein believes that another Wilkening strength is that "she is extremely logical and fair. She thinks things through, does what's best and doesn't look back." It meshes well with what Wilkening, when pressed, says of herself. "I'm well-organized. I'm a fast reader. I can integrate information.

I have no problem in making decisions. I seem to be able to inspire people to do things when the chips are down. "I try not to be threatening. That never gets anything done." She believes that the hardest thing she has ever had to do in her professional life is negotiate her own salary. She knows she is not alone in facing this.

Part of her job as vice provost requires that she deal with a lot of people on salary issues. "Most everyone just hopes that See UA's WILKENING, Page 2E pointed to seek a replacement tor David Hawkanson, who will depart ATC for the Hartford (Conn.) Stage Company on July 1. ATC board members Henry B. Sargent, executive vice president of Arizona Public Service in Phoenix, and Jon R. Young of Peat, Marwick, Mitchell Co.

in Tucson, will chair the search committee. Gregory Kandel of Management Consultants for the Arts Inc. in Greenwich, has been retained to assist the search process. ATC is completing its ISth season in Tucson, and its eighth season in Phoenix. I 11 Elizabetti Mamelsdorf, The Arizona Daily Star has called herself "a nut" about meteorites.

Wilkening went on to graduate study at the University of California at San Diego. The lab where she worked was next-door to the office of chemist Harold Urey, a Nobel laureate. Her major professor was a noted German scientist, Hans Suess. Her dissertation committee had not one, but two, distinguished Nobel laureates: Urey and Hannes Alf-ven. These days it's a funny story, but at her doctoral seminar Urey and Alfven quarreled so strenuously about Wilkening's dissertation on meteorites that the audience of friends and colleagues, including Wilkening's father, had to be asked to leave and the presentation ended in a shambles.

It was two weeks before the dispute was patched up and Wilkening received her doctorate. She went to Europe to study at the Max Planck Institute in Mainz, West Germany, and later to teach in Bombay, India. Among her UA friends, Wilkening is known not only for her intellect and scientific accomplishments, but for her continuing commitment to women's rights. "Now that she's a success," says an admiring colleague, "she hasn't abandoned other women, saying 'I've made it, you can, too. So She realizes it's a systemic thing and everyone needs help." Wilkening was doing postdoctoral work at the University of Chicago when Gerard Kuiper hired her in 1973 to become a member of the UA Lunar and Planetary Laboratory faculty.

She became one of the two women on the staff. Even so, Wilkening decided, that was better than the University of Chicago, where her field seemed to Lerner and Loewe's "loverly" musi-calization of Shaw's "Pygmalion," add some stately London charm to ATC's dramatic landscape. Subscriptions for the 1985-86 year are available now at a pre-season discount. Season tickets range from $38 to $90, and are available until June 30 at the ATC box office in the United Bank Plaza. The company has launched a "quick but thorough" search for a new managing director, according to Betsy Bolding, ATC board president.

A search committee has been ap Myra Dinnerstein, head of women's studies committee, $48,000. Mary Doyle, associate dean, College of Law, $61,291. Shirley Fahey, director of social perspectives in medicine, College of Medicine, $50,295. Marilyn Heins, vice dean. College of Medicine, $91,843.

Rebecca Kellogg, associate dean, College of Arts and Sciences, $39,060. Sharon Kha, director of public information office, $39,927. Jeanne McCarthy, head of special-education department, $51,075. Alicia Colombi-Monguio, head of Spanish and Portuguese department, $59,000. Mary Roby, associate director of physical education and athletics, $52,681.

Gladys Sorenson, dean of nursing school, $69,000. Jane Underwood, assistant vice president, research, $56,500. Pat Van Metre, associate dean, College of Fine Arts, $40,392. Jean Weber, head of statistics department, $53,759. Laurel L.

Wilkening, vice provost, $70,000. (When Wilkening becomes the vice president for research and dean of the graduate college her salary will be $72,000.) Listed in alphabetical order are the top women in appointed administrative positions at the A and the University Medical Center. Women hold 94 out of 488 appointed administrative jobs. Adela Allen, acting head of reading department, $34,000. Ellen Altman, acting dean of education college, $55,000.

Phyllis Bannister, director of scholarships and financial aids, $43,870. Sarah Blake, associate vice president for finance, $58,000. Alethea Caldwell, chief executive officer. University Medical Center, $90,000. ATC to cover many bases in next season's productions series includes no undiscovered work, it's a varied and adventurous grouping.

Mamet's "Glengarry Glen Ross," winner of 1984's Pulitzer Prize for drama, is a viciously funny and exact study of small-time real estate hustlers, a murderous microcosm of the American business world. Shepard's "Fool for Love," a fierce, freewheeling duet of emotional violence between a man and woman bonded too deeply to ever break free, ranks among the playwright's most potent creations. These two new American plays arm the ATC season with an explosive charge. Ross" and the Lerner-Loewe "My Fair Lady" are also in the wings. Gisselman's selections have been endorsed by the ATC board of directors, subject to successful negotiations for performing rights.

Exact production dates remain to be set, but the local season is expected to run from late October to mid-May at the Tucson Community Center Little Theatre. Each play will open in Tucson for a 3Vrweek run, followed by 2'2 weeks in Phoenix. A seventh play is under consideration, according to ATC, "if scheduling and production details can be worked out." Although the six-play subscription Brecht's ironic, expansive "Galileo" is a complex and sardonic analysis of the conflicts among individualism, orthodoxy and scientific objectivity. Written in the 1940s, "Galileo" remains an intriguingly unromantic look at the forces underlying human history. Gogol's classic satire "The Inspector General," recounting the adventures of an obscure clerk mistaken for a powerful official, explores the folly and corruption of 19th-century Russia with an eye as sharp as Brecht's.

Coward's breezy "Blithe Spirit," in which a man must contend with two wives one living and one ghostly and "My Fair Lady," By Bob Campbell Tha Arizona Daily Star Sex and obsession in a Southwestern motel room; the politics of science in 17th-century Italy; smalltown scandals in Tsarist Russia. These are three of the dramatic worlds the Arizona Theatre Company will travel through in the year to come. Sam Shepard's "Fool for Love," Bertolt Brecht's "Galileo" and Nikolai Gogol's "The Inspector General" represent only half the schedule planned by ATC Artistic Director Gary Gisselman for the 1985-86 season. Noel Coward's "Blithe Spirit," David Mamet's "Glengarry Glen.