During the years that followed the split from Radford College, Virginia Tech was transformed into a major university. Increasingly, women became a real part of the university, forging into academic, social, and work areas heretofore closed to them. Rapid accomplishments in the 1960s and 1970s and a women’s movement in the 1970s and 1980s helped set the scene that exists today.
The split precipitated a huge increase in enrollment of women at VPI. By 1966-67 the number of women reached 639 and nearly doubled the following year--to 1,168. By 1971, 50 years after the "First Five" arrived on the Blacksburg campus, the number of coeds studying at Virginia Tech had jumped to 3,491 in a total student body of 13,282.
But the Radford-VPI years had taken their toll on the Blacksburg campus. According to Harper, "This 20 year restriction was most detrimental to programs for women here, and especially so for women in home economics. A full generation of women students were thus prevented from studying at Virginia Tech."
As their numbers swelled following the split and, consequently, their presence on campus became more visible, the women continued to forge into new arenas--and to look after their own interests. During the 1960s they recorded a number of firsts for women on the Virginia Tech campus. In 1961 they organized Chi Delta Alpha, the first service and leadership organization for coeds. The sorority provided a channel for coeds to serve their school. Six years later they formed the Garnet and Gold, a women’s honor society, and founded Delta Rho, a social sorority. In 1967 Sue Ann "Susie" Shertzer became the first woman student to be elected president of the YMCA (the YWCA and YMCA had merged about two years earlier), making her the only woman in the country to head a chapter of the organization.
Throughout most of these years, none of the coeds, faculty women, or Extension professionals were African Americans. Another milestone in the history of women at Virginia Tech was recorded in 1966, when six black women enrolled as students: Linda Edmonds, Freddi Hairston, Marguerite Harper, Jackie Butler, Linda Adams, and Chiquita Hudson. Like the white coeds on campus, the black coeds enrolled later than their male counterparts, who had first begun studying on the campus in 1953. Black professional women first began working in the Extension Service with the appointment of Heidi Ford, followed by the first faculty appointments in 1974: Louise Bates in the College of Human Resources and Johnnie Miles in the College of Education. The early 1970s also marked the beginning of the appointment of black women as administrative support personnel.
At least some of the progress made by women on campus after 1962 can be attributed to T. Marshall Hahn, who assumed the presidency of the school that year. Harper calls him "[v]ery likely the greatest positive force for increasing opportunities for women students." In a speech Hahn made after being named president of VPI, he said that one of the ways the school had failed to fulfill its land-grant charter was the lack of educational opportunities provided to women and that he intended, as president, to right the wrong. By 1967 he could say, "Although women were first admitted in 1921, we were not fully coed until a few years ago. All the university’s programs are now open to women, and we are building women’s dorms at approximately the same rate as men’s dorms." But just a year earlier, Techgram, the faculty/staff newspaper, had reported the difficulty of altering the school’s male image.
Three years after Hahn became president, Audrey Rentz was appointed the first Dean of Women, followed in 1966 by Martha Harder. In 1969 the Office of Student Affairs was reorganized, and the men’s and women’s student affairs programs were combined. According to Harder, "At that time the Dean of Students, Dean of Women, and Dean of Men positions were all abolished. I became Dean of Student Programs and the Dean of Men--Gordon Brown--became Dean of Student Services." The reorganization, Harder says, "signified the end of many segregated activities on the campus and was also the first time that student affairs had a woman who was supervising male staff members."
The young president wanted VPI to become a university and succeeded in 1970 when the Virginia General Assembly changed the name of the school to Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
The first 10 years of Hahn’s presidency saw a tenfold increase in the number of Virginia Tech coeds, from about 300 in 1962 to approximately 4,000 in 1972. Increased housing for women students and the addition of approximately 40 new undergraduate and graduate degree programs helped draw these women to the university. English, history, and political science, added in 1962, were popular with the coeds, and by 1967 the largest enrollment of women was in the College of Arts and Sciences: 575 women in 2,556 total students. That same year, the College of Home Economics had 279 women students and no men students, the College of Engineering had 37 women in a student body of 3,443, and the College of Business’s 1,689 students included 62 women. The coed student body passed the 1,000 mark that year, with 1,168 women enrolled.
By 1966 the Techgram says, the coeds’ "most vociferous complaints centered around the need for more recreational and social facilities." Virginia Tech responded by appointing in 1967 the first full-time female health and physical education instructor: Shirley Ann Mell. In addition to teaching, Mell was responsible for setting up a women’s intramural program, and that same year coeds fielded their first official intramural teams--12 basketball teams. It was 1970, however, before Virginia Tech provided women with an officially sanctioned intercollegiate competitive sport: swimming. By 1972 the enthusiasm of the Women’s Swim Club precipitated a turning point in women’s athletics, or at least in the planning for women’s athletics. "In the future, Tech hopes to have more intercollegiate competitions in other sports for its female population," said The News Messenger: The Virginia Tech Centennial Edition on March 16, 1972. And it did. Women began playing varsity basketball in 1972, coached by John H. Ristroph, a graduate student in industrial engineering and operational research. During that first year, home games were open admission events, but attendance was sparce."
For all their progress and growth in numbers on the campus, women were not allowed in the corps of cadets until 1973. The first two to sign up were Deborah J. Noss and Cheryl A. Butler. A total of 25 women joined the corps that year, becoming the first full-fledged female members of a corps of cadets, not only at Virginia Tech, but in the entire nation. Brig. General David S. Henderson, commandant, said the women’s unit was started so that Virginia Tech women could have the opportunity to participate in the ROTC programs being opened to them by the military services. Since the number of men electing on-campus military life had declined when the corps was made voluntary in 1964, General Henderson also anticipated that the inclusion of women "might reverse the declining trend of recent years."
The women--22 in Air Force ROTC, two in Army ROTC, and one a non-ROTC member of the corps--lived in Monteith Hall, formed L Squadron, and followed much the same routine as their male counterparts. They wore royal blue uniforms, created especially for them by the College of Home Economics’ Department of Clothing, Textiles, and Related Art working with military service people in the university’s ROTC units and the coeds themselves. Deborah J. Noss of Falls Church, Virginia, served as squadron commander, and Captain Sonya Shipman, an assistant professor of aerospace studies and a member of the Air Force for seven years, worked with the women.
Still, however, the women were not allowed in the Highty Tighties, the regimental band, although students from Radford College had been allowed to play in the band on a temporary basis during World War II. In 1971 a women’s drill team--attired in white hot pants; sleeveless, navy blue tops; white boots; and white tams--was organized to march with the band. In 1975 the decision was made to admit women into the band because of their outstanding record since joining the corps. Stephanie Hahn was the first of eight women to join the band that year. The female members of the band, who resided with L Squadron, wore the same uniform as the male members.
By 1975 the women’s ranks in the corps had grown to 45 out of 400 members, and the following year, although their numbers had dropped to 34, they could boast of placing first in the Homecoming Review and winning first place for their entry in the variety show. Also in 1975 Butler became the first black woman to command L Squadron.
In 1979 the female cadets began purchasing grey uniforms on an individual basis on a schedule set by the VPI Tailor Shop. According to General Order No. 32 from the Office of the Commandant, written on January 25, 1979, "Upon purchasing these uniforms, the female cadets may begin wearing these to classes and meals on individual initiative. The grey uniform will not be worn by female cadets to formations, drill, or whenever the unit or Corps is assembled for special ceremonies."
The same year, Selina S. Daughtrey became the first woman to command a company--F Company--comprised of both male and female cadets.
It took the women 15 years to reach the top. In 1987 Denise Shuster, who had worked her way up through the corps to the rank of cadet colonel, became the first woman to hold the highest student rank: regimental commander. During her first year at the university, her achievements in academics and physical fitness and participation in Navy activities earned her the designation "Top Shipman of the Year" for the Navy ROTC unit, and by her junior year, she was a squad leader. Even then, Shuster said, "Many women [in the corps] feel they have to be tougher, work harder, and prove themselves."
The decade of the 1970s also brought other firsts for women on campus. The Class of 1974 elected Jean Harshbarger as its president, making her the first female class president at Virginia Tech. That same year the university abolished separate curfew rules for men and women. In 1979 Margaret Dawn Serrell, a sophomore in mechanical engineering, became the university’s first licensed female nuclear reactor operator and one of about a dozen such women in the country.
Even though coeds were moving more and more into all phases of student life and were hammering away at barriers, women were still poorly represented on the faculty--particularly in the higher ranks--and those women who were on the faculty often were paid less than their male counterparts. By 1977 only 12 percent of the Virginia Tech faculty were women--one-half the national average of 25 percent women.
Women were also poorly represented in the administration, but a few did hold important positions. Harper headed the School of Home Economics (now the College of Human Resources) in 1958 as acting dean and then as dean from 1960-80. Mary Elizabeth Quam was named director of Summer School by 1975. In 1975 or 1976 Margaret Lee Driscoll became the first woman appointed the associate dean of an academic college--the College of Education--other than the College of Human Resources, and in 1974 Dorothy Buckton James was the first woman appointed to head an academic department--political science--in an area other than home economics. In athletics, Jo Kafer, a member of the health and physical education staff, was named assistant athletic director. Kafer, whose charge was to develop women’s intercollegiate athletic programs, was the first woman with "athletic director" in her title.
During the late 1970s and early 1980s, faculty and staff women began pushing for equal opportunities, particularly within the faculty and administrative ranks. The activism took its toll. Few of the untenured women faculty involved in this "movement" remain at the university: some were denied tenure; some left in frustration. But like the coeds, women faculty and staff eventually forced Virginia Tech to take them seriously.
The Women’s Network was formed in 1978, building on a support group of women faculty and administrators in the College of Education that had been meeting for several years. The Network was a campus-wide organization of women faculty--mostly untenured--and several graduate students. According to Pat Hyer, one of the early graduate student members of the Network and now associate provost, "Many of the recently-hired women faculty were recruited from institutions in other parts of the country where women were better represented and women’s issues commonly discussed and dealt with, but the Women’s Movement had made few inroads at Virginia Tech up to this point. The isolation and treatment of women here, as well as the lack of programs such as women’s studies, gave the organization a substantial agenda for change."
The women activists met with university administrators to seek support for changes, particularly more aggressive recruitment of women faculty, salary equity, and the establishment of new programs to meet the needs of women and to give them more recognition for their achievements. The Network produced a major report in 1982-83 on inequities in hiring and salaries and collaborated with staff in Institutional Research to conduct a campus-wide survey of perceptions of gender equity. But, Hyer says, "Relatively little substantive change occurred as a result of those efforts." At least not immediately. Over the years, however, the Women’s Network or its members helped initiate or expand a number of programs, e.g., Women’s Studies, Women in Development Program, Women’s Week celebrations, the Women’s Research Institute, and the Child Care Resource and Referral Service.
A multi-disciplinary group of women faculty interested in global women’s issues wrote the first grant for federal funds in 1978 to develop a course on women in development, and Mary Rojas developed a proposal to establish a program on Women in World Development at Virginia Tech. John Perry, assistant vice president for academic affairs, responded with funds for the establishment of the office with Rojas as director in 1982. WID programs, which continue today as part of the Office of International Research and Development, are based on the premise that gender equity is a key catalyst for developing a world of social equity and economic prosperity. In addition to her WID work, Rojas was named acting director of the Office of International Development in 1989.
In 1982 a Child Care Task Force of the Women’s Network began gathering information about child care options for the university community and lobbying the administration for the establishment of a campus daycare center. A University Child Care Committee, appointed five years later, issued its recommendations in 1988. This work resulted in the establishment of the Child Care Resource and Referral Center, with Ann Francis hired in 1989 as the center’s first director.
According to Hyer, more significant institutional support for women’s programs came in the late 1980s when Perry was interim provost. Just before his retirement in 1989, Perry told a Spectrum writer: "One agenda item that reflected my own concerns more than any other was the support I tried to provide for programs involving women." Perry, like President Burruss, had experience working in a women’s college and said that experience "may have influenced my recognition that the status of women, particularly on a campus traditionally male-dominated, needs special attention."
Evelyn Newlyn, associate professor of English, and a number of her colleagues developed and taught women’s studies courses starting in the early 1980s as part of the humanities program. Perry appointed a study committee to consider establishing an independent program with resources dedicated to enhancing the curriculum and administering the program. The committee’s report and Perry’s support led to the creation of a position for a director and staff in 1988. "Women’s Studies offers an academic concentration to undergraduates, open to women and men, and is the nucleus of a vital and growing community of feminist scholars on campus," Hyer says.
Money from an anonymous donor was the impetus for establishing the Women’s Research Institute in 1989. The Institute proposal was largely the work of women studies faculty who convinced Perry and Gary Hooper, then vice provost for research and graduate studies, of the importance of supporting feminist research at the institution. Using the donor’s gift, the Institute offered small grants to support research by, for, and about women and later became involved in encouraging young women to pursue studies in science and engineering. On January 1, 1990, Carol J. Burger became the institute’s first director.
Meanwhile, the percentage of women students continued to climb, reaching nearly 40 percent of the student body. And the coeds continued to open new doors. In 1986 Lisa Williams became the first black woman to serve as regimental band commander. The decade of the 80s also saw the university crown its first black homecoming queen--Marva Felder. In 1987 an African American student and basketball star, Renee Dennis, became the first woman to have her jersey retired at the university. By the end of the decade, coeds were enrolled in nearly every program at the university, although their numbers were small in the traditionally male-dominated areas of engineering and science.
Additionally, two historic "firsts" were recorded in the university administration. In 1982 Sandra Sullivan was named vice president for student affairs, becoming the first woman to hold a university-wide executive position on the campus. She resigned in 1988. Her successor, Thomas G. Goodale, recreated the Office of the Dean of Students, and in 1990 Beverly H. Sgro was appointed dean of students, the first woman to hold that title.
Much of the support from the university in the 1990s for women’s issues can be attributed to E. Fred Carlisle, hired as provost in 1989. Carlisle, now the William E. Lavery Professor of English, understood diversity issues and was genuinely committed to change. "There is perhaps no more defining issue for the future than Virginia Tech’s ability to reflect the profound changes in the demographics of American society--both in its faculty and enrollments and academic programs," he writes. Carlisle pushed for equal opportunity throughout the campus, not only for women but also for minorities; he sponsored seminars about valuing gender and racial diversity; and he supported programs that met the needs of these groups, including creation of a Black Studies Program, the Black Cultural Center, and the Exceptional Opportunity Program, which concentrates on the appointment of senior women and minorities. Although the university’s nine colleges were all headed by men when Carlisle came to Virginia Tech, during his tenure, two women were appointed deans: Patricia K. Edwards in the traditionally male-dominated College of Architecture and Urban Studies and Peggy S. Meszaros in the College of Human Resources. He also hired and promoted women and minorities within the Office of the Provost.
The 1990s also saw the creation of a sexual assault education coordinator position in Student Affairs. This coordinator worked with women students to participate in the national "Take Back the Night" rally and promoted the education of students in date rape.
Women’s Week, first celebrated in 1982, continued to bring the diversity of women’s interests and achievements to the fore every March with such events as guest speakers, small and large seminars, a film series, and performances and displays by women artists. In 1995 the event was expanded to a month-long celebration, and the new Women’s Month offered over 70 programs.
"New campus organizations developed with the growing interest and participation of women students and staff members," Hyer says. A Coordinating Council for Women’s Concerns, which included the leadership of campus women’s organizations and university-funded women’s programs, was organized in 1989. The council looked for ways to act collectively to improve the status of women at the university. After conducting focus-group interviews of students, faculty, staff, and community members, the CCWC formally proposed in 1992 and lobbied for the establishment of a Women’s Center to improve the culture and climate on campus for students, faculty, staff, and the surrounding community. Women students gathered thousands of names on a petition of support, and Carlisle, despite serious budget reductions, reallocated funds for the center and renovation of Price House to accommodate it. The Women’s Center opened in 1994, with Penny L. Burge as director. The center, whose services are available to men and women, provides educational programming; information and referral; support services, advising, and advocacy; and sexual assault prevention education.
The women’s athletic scene also began changing at a more rapid pace in the 1990s. In 1993 members of the women’s swimming team, faced with the elimination of their sport, threatened to file a discrimination suit under Title IX. Soon afterward, the university rescinded the decision to cut the men’s and women’s swim teams pending further review and formed the Non-Revenue and Women’s Sports Committee to look at issues of fairness and equity. The committee noted that "the percentage of female athletes and of female scholarship athletes in relation to male athletes and male scholarship athletes at Virginia Tech constitute [sic] one of the worst comparisons in Division I athletics." At the time, although females comprised 41 percent of the undergraduate student body, they represented only 18 percent of the participants in varsity sports and only 19 percent of athletic scholarship aid recipients. The committee issued 19 recommendations to achieve gender equity in athletics.
The study resulted in the development of a plan to expand women’s intercollegiate athletics over a four-year period. By the time the plan was released on May 16, 1994, soccer, which was part of the plan, had been added for women students. The plan called for increasing scholarships for women’s cross country and track, soccer, swimming, and lacrosse and adding women’s lacrosse and softball to the sports offerings. Coeds fielded their first lacrosse team in the spring 1995, and plans were under way to field a women’s softball team in the spring 1996.
Meanwhile, three women, the first ever, were inducted into the Virginia Tech Sports Hall of Fame: Lucy Hawk Banks, a track star, in 1993; Ginny Lessmann Stonic, a volleyball standout, in 1994; and Linda King Steel, also a track star, in 1995.
The atmosphere created by Carlisle may have become his most enduring legacy . Two months after he stepped down as provost in December 1994 to return to teaching, the university appointed Human Resources Dean Meszaros as senior vice president and provost, the first time in the history of the school that a woman has held that position and the highest administrative position ever held by a woman at Virginia Tech.
Today, women comprise 41 percent of the student body. About 19 percent of the corps of cadets are women, a higher percentage than at any other military college, including the service academies. About 70 percent of the entering classes of veterinary medical students are female, while the national average is 65 percent. Peter Eyre, dean of the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine, calls the increase of women in the field "the most dramatic shift of all the medical/allied medical professions" and says it "certainly outstrips engineering and most other areas of traditional male domination." Another historically male-dominated area of study that has seen an overwhelming influx of women is agriculture. In the fall 1995, 687 women and 691 men enrolled in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and 73 percent of the students in animal and poultry sciences are women.
In the tenure-track faculty ranks, 32 (5 percent) of the 608 full professors, 105 (20 percent) of the 511 associate professors, and 80 (37 percent) of the 217 assistant professors are women. These 217 women represent slightly over 16 percent of the tenure-track faculty. In addition to one dean and one interim dean, eighteen women serve in administrative faculty positions in deans’ offices. Of the 685 administrative and professional faculty, 295 (43 percent) are women.
From 12 coeds to 9,737 coeds. From no women on the faculty to 217 women on the faculty. From no female administrators to a woman in the highest academic administrative position. From exclusion to inclusion, rejection to acceptance in many areas of the university. All during 75 years--one lifetime. The numbers in many areas may not yet be representative of the greater society, but if women at Virginia Tech continue to tear down barriers and meet challenges at the pace they set during the most recent 25 years, perhaps 2021, the centennial of women at Virginia Tech, will bring a celebration of total inclusion in all facets of university life.
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