Low Numbers of Women Faculty

Title

Low Numbers of Women Faculty

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Identifier

GrimmE_01_20190806_Clip01

Publication Date

8-6-2019

Publisher

The Making Cancer History® Voices Oral History Collection, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

City

Houston, Texas

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Transcript

T. A. Rosolowski, PhD

What was the environment that you stepped into? Where you were thinking about research, and research design, and collaboration, was it in line with the context you found here?

Elizabeth E. Grimm, PhD

Pretty much. I knew it would be different from the NCI. As you know, we didn’t have to write grants (laughs) at NCI. It’s one of the reasons I wasn’t so eager to move. But also at the NCI they’re employees for life there, and so I inherited all these FTEs, and that was great, six FTEs. If I can get six FTEs at MD Anderson I’ll be golden, but, of course, that doesn’t exist. But the opportunity to grow was here, and so I thought, well, if I don’t do well then I’ll contract, and so will the other people if they don’t do well. If I do well, I can expand because they contract. I mean, that was in my mind. I didn’t think the government job was for me for the long term anyway because of that. So when I got here, it was small, and I think everyone knew everyone. (laughs) In the halls, we’d walk up and down, and it was just the hospital building. The clinic part was being built, but there was none of the South Campus, other than the Smith Building. And so there are several things I can comment on. First of all, we knew everyone, but sometimes we knew more about them (laughs) which we didn’t need to. And it took an environment in which … We were assertive. Everybody was speaking up and doing things directly, and I felt empowered. I felt like I could speak … I was, for a long time, the only woman in my department, the only faculty, woman faculty, and for many of the programs in graduate school. I was in the MD PhD program, on their faculty, and worked with, actually, Mike Davies’ dad, Peter Davies, MD PhD [as I enrolled an MD PhD student who joined me] right away. There were very few women in any of those things, and I just felt like this is great, they all want me to join. Of course, pretty soon I realized I was stretching too thin. (laughs) And there were a few other people around that I did meet—Liz Travis [oral history interview], of course, and Margaret Kripke [ ] and we were all friends, we all did things together, but I did have the feeling about being the only woman [in my immediate environment], and issues with that, and I think it was advantageous from my perspective. I mean, I really think it was great, but—

T. A. Rosolowski, PhD

How so?

Elizabeth E. Grimm, PhD

Because I could speak up, and I did, and I had—I mentored … Lots of guys came to my lab. I didn’t feel that it was any different for me, but then this whole women’s movement started making me realize it’s not that for everyone. So I mentored a lot of women, even women surgeons who came to my lab, (laughs) and many of them are still here in Houston. I know Emily Robinson was in your time—

Charles Balch, MD

Yes.

Elizabeth E. Grimm, PhD

—timeline, but before then you had a woman faculty, Eva Sing—

Charles Balch, MD

Eva Singletary.

Elizabeth E. Grimm, PhD

—Singletary. But that was probably the only one [that’s true?]—

Charles Balch, MD

Yeah, and let me add: I’ve always championed women in medicine, especially in surgery, partly driven by the fact that my wife was driven out of Georgetown Medical School because she was a woman. That was clear that—

Elizabeth E. Grimm, PhD

Correct.

Charles Balch, MD

—it was a gender bias. And so hiring Liz was—had a double value to me of being a woman faculty member, the first research woman faculty in the Department of Surgery. At the same time, I hired Eva Singletary, who was the first woman to come on to the faculty in surgery in its fifty years, so—or forty years at that time. So this was part of another agenda of beginning to bring women into faculty positions, and to promote their careers as yet another essential part of the social changes within—

Elizabeth E. Grimm, PhD

Mm-hmm, exactly, exactly.

Charles Balch, MD

—MD Anderson, which I think we can all report is really doing well, and the women have thrived, provided leadership. Margaret Kripke, of course, became the Executive Vice President after me, so... But this was part of the agenda, as well, and—

Elizabeth E. Grimm, PhD

Yeah. Yeah, no, it was wonderful, so I want to make a note, because I don’t know (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) before he did this.

Low Numbers of Women Faculty

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