Volume 5, Number 3
AWF Spring Dinner
The Spring Pot Luck Dinner and general business meeting took place in Hurst Lounge, Duncker Hall, on Monday, May 1. About 30 people attended the meeting. The food was great as usual, and the festivities included celebration of the winners of the AWF Graduate Student Award (see below) and the new AWF Appreciation Award to Mary Ann Dzuback for her contributions to the Association over the past 6 years. Mary Ann noted that she has worked closely with a committed group of long-time and more recently arrived women faculty who have done a great deal of the work of organizing and maintaining AWF.
Graduate Student Awards
Fatemeh Keshavarz (with nominators)
AWF’s Board has selected the winners of the annual Graduate Student Awards, designed to recognize scholarly excellence and leadership potential among women students in the second year of graduate school or beyond. This year, AWF received 19 letters nominating candidates for the awards. Given the impressive records of the nominees, the board chose four honorable mentions along with the three award winners. The following descriptions provide a glimpse of what makes these graduate students so outstanding:
Professional Schools
Beth Burke, Heather Leawoods and Michelle Michelson of the School of Law approached the dean with the idea of starting a tradition in which members of the Women’s Law Caucus would offer a course in women and law every year as “public service” to the university. Women’s Studies had been offering such a course for many years, and was considering whom to appoint to teach it (after the faculty member most recently teaching it left last year). These students worked closely with Helen Power to reorganize the course to continue to offer it through the Women’s Studies program. Beth has been chosen to serve as the editor-in-chief of the Washington University Law Quarterly next year. Heather currently serves in this position and Michelle is one of the university’s distinguished Olin Fellows. The award went to the project and the three women who undertook it.
University College
Jean Kersting, final-semester student in the MA degree program in International Affairs sponsored jointly by University College and the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, is co-owner and vice-president of an insurance agency in Kirkwood, chairperson of the Special Business District, chairperson of the Citizen’s Finance Committee, president of the Kirkwood Rotary Club and the 1999 Kirkwood Citizen of the Year, “all the while maintaining a high G.P.A. In her studies, she undertook several international activities in the Middle East, Mexico and Cuba; she is and will continue to be a community leader and will remain a lifelong learner.”
Arts & Sciences
Jessica Logan, second-year graduate student in the department of Psychology, works on projects related to cognitive processing in healthy young and older adults and in individuals with early stage Alzheimer’s Disease.”She is an academic star in the psychology graduate program and has been a central figure in the program both within the department and at the university.” This year, she is the president of the Graduate Student Senate. As president, she has developed an award for outstanding faculty mentor and a committee that will focus on increasing administrative awareness for graduate career planning.
Honorable Mention
In Arts & Sciences, third year graduate student in the department of Chemistry Robin Lammi has pursued totally independent work on Molecular Electronic Applications.”She has demonstrated scholarly excellence in all aspects of her work and clearly has the leadership potential that we all desire to see in our students.”
In University College, Elaine Killmer is a biology teacher at John Burroughs School and a part-time graduate student in the Master of Liberal Arts program, sponsored jointly by University College and the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. At Burroughs, she worked on the construction of a general biology textbook and was chosen Biology Teacher of the Year for the State of Missouri in 1999. “She studies American drama, philosophy and literature . . . and represents perhaps the best in adult education: the trained professional who seeks more, who is never through learning.”
At the School of Medicine, Emily Garabedian, MD/PhD student in molecular biology and pharmacology, produced a novel transgenic mouse model of metastatic prostate cancer for her thesis project. “She has an intrinsic energy that allows her to push complex projects forward and has played a large role in organizing activities for student and faculty participants in the Developmental Biology program.”
Sofia Hirakuri, JSD candidate in the School of Law, has already made substantial contributions to the field of international environmental law, particularly in the area of sustainable forestry management, “combining rigorous intellectual analysis with focused and insightful critique of environmental policies and practices and is fluent not only in her native Portuguese, but also in English, Japanese and Spanish.”
Activities of the AWF Executive Board
The members of the executive board have completed much of their work through committees. In addition, the board has selected the recipients of the Graduate Student Award, fielded the Report on the Status of (Tenure-line) Women Faculty at Washington University and responses to it, encouraged and publicized the University Senate Committee on Child Care’s deliberations (headed by Richard Roloff), and established the AWF Appreciation Award for contributions to women at Washington University. At this point, the board is working on a formal response to the Arts & Sciences Faculty Council treatment of the Report on the Status of (Tenure-line) Women Faculty, with specific requests for updates and timeliness on university initiatives in recruitment, mentoring, promotion and so on. In addition, the board is in process of forming a task force on mentoring. A number of people have agreed to serve on this task force, including Linda Nicholson, Helen Power and Patty Jo Watson. Board member Sally Goldman has been working on the AWF webpage, primarily making available on the site the Family Resources Handbook, created by the Academic Women’s Network in the School of Medicine along with past copies of the AWF News and other documents connected with AWF.
Brown Bag Luncheons
Alison Wylie and Ingrid Monson
One Brown Bag Luncheon was held on March 14 discussing non-tenure-track faculty concerns. Another was held April 17 to welcome Linda Nicholson, the Stiritz Chair in Women’s Studies, to the campus and to AWF. Both were well-attended. [Ed. note: Alison and Ingrid, thank you for your hard work and great ideas!]
Child Care and Family Responsive Committee
This committee followed and conveyed to the board and the membership the deliberations of the Faculty Senate Committee on Child Care.
Mentoring and Social Interactions Committee
Mentoring and social interactions were handled by the AWF executive board. This involved organizing the Brown Bag Luncheons (Alison Wylie and Ingrid Monson), the AWF Spring Pot Luck Dinner and General Business Meeting (Fatemeh Keshavarz) and the Mentoring Task Force (the full board).
Nominating Committee
Rebecca Copeland
As always, members of the Nomination Committee appreciate the support and cooperation received from the AWF membership. We are pleased to be able to introduce the new AWF board:
- President: Vivian Pollak
- President-elect: Susan Rotroff
- Secretary: Sally Goldman
- Councillors-at-large: Rebecca Copeland, JoEllen Lewis, Angela Miller, Akiko Tsuchiya and Alison Wylie
We would like to take this opportunity to thank Milica Banjamin and Ingrid Monson for their service to the board in 1999-2000.
Non-Tenure-Track Faculty
JoEllen Lewis
At this time, the committee is drafting a “Report in Progress” regarding concerns brought to the committee and suggestions for addressing those concerns. The committee determined that, as a result of discussions throughout the year, the concerns of the committee are more complicated than first suggested; we will continue to work on finalizing a report during the next academic year.
Publications Committee
The committee sent out the February AWF News and is happy to report that, in the future, Fatemeh Keshavarz will be in charge of submissions; Angela Miller will serve as copy editor; and Rebecca Copeland will be responsible for production and layout (after next year). Mary Ann Dzuback will continue to publish the directory, collect and publish the membership forms and update the mailing list and the AWF list.
Tenure and Promotion Committee
The Tenure and Promotion Committee, chaired by Mary Ann Dzuback, has not met for two reasons: first, the Report on (Tenure-line) Women Faculty’s recommendations have been under consideration by the various school committees, and, second, the AWF board has taken up the issue of mentoring and is currently planning a response to the Arts & Sciences Faculty Council’s report on the report. The Tenure and Promotions Committee will likely be reconstituted in a different form in the next academic year. In the meantime, the executive board is in process of organizing a mentoring task force to develop mentoring strategies that will be of help across the Danforth Campus.
Report on the Non-Tenure Track Faculty Brown Bag Lunch Meeting
JoEllen Lewis
The Brown Bag Luncheon was well-attended. It was encouraging to see several faculty I had not met before, many of whom have been with the university for many years and could add a historical perspective to the issues. Not surprisingly, several of those women, although non-tenure-track (NTT), hold high-ranking administrative positions within their respective departments in addition to teaching significant course loads. The Brown Bag Luncheon participants raised the following concerns and ideas with respect to the categories listed on the agenda:
Work Environment
- Develop a consistent system for titles within the university, which would actually aid in preparing administrative reports
- Enable participation in faculty committees and in the broader area of faculty governance
- Provide basic requirements to do the job need to be provided (computer support, individual phone access and sufficient office space)
Faculty Development
- Invite new faculty to university/department orientation programs
- Provide monetary and other support for publication and professional development activities
Organizational Policies
- Develop categories of non-tenure-track positions and the benefits/responsibilities associated with each such category
Proposed Solutions/Best Practices Example
- Consider using a university similar to ours, rather than a specific department within the university, as an example
In addition to the specific points above, it was suggested that the committee draft a “Report in Progress” to forward to AWF that will then be forwarded to the university administration. We are still in the process of identifying the issues, which are more complicated than we first thought. In addition, it was suggested that we should ask the university to hire a half-time staff person to analyze these issues in greater detail, including their exact scope (statistics on numbers of student taught hours vs. number of non-tenure-track faculty) and to develop a system of standardized titles, benefits, responsibilities. The non-tenure-track survey from last year was raised; if anyone has any of that information, even just the anecdotal comments section of the survey, it would be appreciated if you could forward that information to JoEllen Lewis, Campus Box 1120. I will take the first cut at drafting a “Report in Progress,” which I will then forward to the committee and anyone else who would like to review it for comments.
Child Care Survey
The Child Care Survey is being conducted right now by phone and online. AWF members who are interested in answering the survey should do so at www.philopsgroup.com The committee is hoping to have a minimum of 500 responses. The Child Care Committee will meet on May 15, 2000, to discuss the results of the survey, so please respond as soon as possible before May 15th. As Mané Lagos, of the Faculty Senate Committee on Child Care, noted to us recently: “I am writing in response to the questions that have arisen regarding the child/elder care referral services that were announced in The Record (March 30, 2000). These services will be paid by the university. If someone needs child/elder care, they can contact the company, provide them with a profile of what is needed, and the company will find out what the options are for that particular person/family. The advantage of this service over the information provided in AWN’s booklet is that the referral service will do the actual job of making the inquiries, which saves a lot of time. Also, since they have an expertise in this field, they can make suggestions and give information about the various providers. From my work in the Child Care Committee, it is clear that the university is seeking to make available to the Washington University community appropriate quality on-site child care as soon as possible. Since we are on the early stages of what looks like a long-term project that will serve the community well, it is too early to know how the costs are going to be figured out. In the meantime, the referral services have been contracted in order to offer an immediate response to the child/elder care needs of faculty and staff. This information will be made available to newly hired faculty and staff in various ways. I would like to stress once again the importance of answering the survey if you are polled, because at the moment, with the information Human Resources has available, it is almost impossible to know what the actual needs are.”
News of Members
Susan Appleton (Law) was installed as the first Lemma Barkeloo and Phoebe Couzins Professor of Law in the Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom on Friday, April 21st.
The distinction of Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Artes et des Lettres has been conferred on Elyane Dezon-Jones (Romance Languages) by the French ministry of culture. The award recognizes her for having distinguished herself “in the realm of literature” and for having contributed “to the diffusion of French culture throughout the world.”
Mary Ann Dzuback (Education) served as chair and/or principal critic on three sessions at the American Educational Research Association annual meeting in New Orleans in April — two of which presented new work on the history of women in higher education and professions in the 20th century. In addition, she was elected vice president of the History of Education Society, an international organization of historians of education, to begin in the fall of 2000 and to move into the presidency in the fall of 2001.
For the 12th National Symposium on Doctoral Research in Social Work, Tonya Edmond and Diane Elze (Social Work) were among only ten social workers nation-wide invited to present their doctoral research.
Marilyn Friedman gave a talk entitled “Citizenship and the Legal Response to Battered Women” at a session of the Radical Philosophy Association, meeting in conjunction with the Central Division American Philosophical Association in Chicago in April.
Program Committee co-chair for the 13th Annual Conference on Computational learning Theory, Sally Goldman (Computer Sciences) is also program committee member for the 32nd annual Symposium on the Theory of Computing. The Emerson Electric Company has named her an outstanding teacher this year.
In March, Naseem Hines (Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures) presented a paper entitled “Nationalist Aims, Secular Claims and Religious Strategies” at the 2000 AAS Annual Meeting. She received a research fellowship from the American Institute for Indian Studies to go to India and Europe to collect copies of manuscripts during the summer and has been invited to give a paper at the Eighth Conference on Early Literature in New Indo-Aryan Languages in Leuven in August. This conference is held every third year. Finally, her teaching expertise enables the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures to offer Hindi Language instruction for the first time at Washington University.
Pauline Kleingeld (Philosophy) received a grant from the Howard Foundation to work on her book on 18th-century German cosmopolitanism. The grant will support her leave during the 2000-2001 academic year.
Eloísa Palafox (Romance Languages) was promoted to associate professor with tenure this spring.
Akiko Tsuchiya (Romance Languages & Literatures) has published “Family Plots and Romances: Discourses of Desire in Adelaida Garcia Morales’s Narrative Fiction” in Bulletin of Hispanic Studies (1999); and “Discourses on Gender and the Question of ‘Woman’s’ Identity in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Spain” in Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies (2000). She gave an invited lecture at Northwestern University, entitled “Taming the Deviant Body: Representations of the Prostitute in 19th-Century Spain.” In addition, she presented the following papers: “Peripheral Subjects: Policing Deviance and Disorder in Nazarin and Halma” at the Modern Language Association Convention in December 1999; and “The New Female Subject and the Commodification of Gender in the Works of Lucia Etxebarria” at the University of New Mexico in February 2000.
Susan Appleton Installed in the Lemma Barkeloo and Phoebe Couzins Chair of Law
Karen Tokarz
Lemma Barkeloo (1840-1870) and Phoebe Couzins (1840-1913) were the first women to enroll in the two-year-old St. Louis Law School (as the Washington University School of Law was then known) in 1869. The school was one of the first in the country to admit women. Barkeloo would soon become Missouri’s first woman lawyer and the country’s second woman trial lawyer and the first woman to try a case in federal court. Couzins would be Missouri’s first woman law graduate and the third in the United States and also the country’s first woman U.S. marshal. Professor Appleton has been a member of the law faculty since 1975, regularly teaching Family Law, a seminar in Reproductive Rights, Conflicts of Laws, and Criminal Law. She is the co-author (with D. Kelly Weisberg) of a casebook for family law, Modern Family Law: Cases and Materials. Her current work in progress explores the social and legal impact of the development of assisted reproductive technologies on adoption. Her recent articles have examined the effects of welfare reform on reproductive rights: “When Welfare Reforms Promote Abortion: Personal Responsibility, Family Values and the Right to Choose,” Georgetown Law Journal 155 (1996), and “Standards for Constitutional Review of Privacy-Invading Welfare Reforms: Distinguishing the Abortion-Funding Cases and Redeeming the Undue-Burden Test,” Vanderbilt Law Review 1 (1996). Her other publications include analyses of “surrogate-mother” arrangements, physician-assisted suicide, the physician’s role in abortion law and abortion funding. Appleton serves on the American Law Institute’s Council and has also been a board member of the St. Louis Breast Cancer Coalition, Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region, Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School and the Washington University Chapter of the American Association of University Professors. In 1998-99, she was president of Washington University’s Association of Women Faculty.
Lemma Barkeloo, Phoebe Cousins and the Washington University School of Law
Karen Tokarz
When Lemma Barkeloo and Phoebe Couzins started law school at Washington University in October 1869, neither had ever known another woman law student or lawyer. It would be 50 years before women received the right to vote. Yet, each dreamed of attaining a legal education and entering the legal profession. Lacking women role models or mentors, they were driven by an internal sense of entitlement and equality.
The School of Law had been inaugurated just two years earlier, in the fall of 1867, in a large hall of the old Polytechnic Institute, at the southwest corner of 7th and Chestnut, where now sits Kiener Plaza. Law school was only two years long — junior and senior years — leading to a bachelor of law degree. A student could petition to take the bar exam without finishing school.
The first Washington University Law School class, that entered in fall of 1867, consisted of eight men. The dean and only full-time faculty member was Henry Hitchcock, whose memory the School of Law celebrated just a month ago with Ron Levin’s installation as the first Henry Hitchcock Chaired Professor. In 1869, two years after the school opened its doors, the class that entered had twenty-one students and remarkably two were women: Lemma Barkeloo and Phoebe Couzins.
Lemma Barkeloo was from Brooklyn, N.Y. She was an honors graduate of Moravia College in Bethlehem, Penn., a former women’s seminary and a serious student of music. For eight years following her graduation from college, Lemma lived with her parents in Brooklyn and pursued her private music studies in traditional ladylike fashion. In 1868, however, Lemma became financially independent, thanks to a bequest from the estate of a grandparent, and she elected to pursue her long-held ambition to enter the male-dominated legal profession. At this time, St. Louis was on the edge of the West. And, the western pioneering spirit may be what encouraged Lemma to apply to law school in St. Louis, after her rejections from Harvard and Columbia. Few of the elite institutions in the East agreed with Matthew Vassar, the founder of Susan Appleton’s undergraduate alma mater, that women were the intellectual equals of men and therefore entitled to equal opportunities in education.
Barkeloo wrote to Dean Henry Hitchcock to inquire whether a woman would be accepted to the new St. Louis Law School. When Hitchcock responded in the affirmative, Barkeloo, at age twenty-nine, set off alone by train to St. Louis to begin her legal studies. She arrived in St. Louis on October 1, 1869. Although we have no photos, she was described as a large, heavily-built, cheerful looking woman. Barkeloo quickly developed a reputation in law school as a “hard student,” an accolade at that time for students who conscientiously applied themselves to their studies. As one of her teachers noted, Lemma “was always to be found in her seat at the lecture hour, ever ready and willing to undertake what might seem insurmountable objects, but with a lofty purpose and a fixed determination.” What impressed Barkeloo’s professors and the St. Louis legal community, even more than her diligence as a student, was her determination not merely to study law, but to practice it. Before the completion of her first year, she enrolled in senior-level courses, and in the spring petitioned to take the Missouri bar without her degree.
Barkeloo took and passed the rigorous, day-long oral bar exam on March 25, 1870, receiving the highest marks of a group of five applicants, among whom was an experienced lawyer who had practiced in Wisconsin for 15 years. The following morning, Phoebe Couzins accompanied Lemma to the clerk’s office to see her classmate take the oath as Missouri’s first, and the country’s second, licensed woman attorney. The St. Louis Tribune carried a front page story that morning, entitled “A Female Attorney Passes Creditable Examination and Is Licensed to Practice.” With perhaps unintended accuracy, the tribune Barkeloo began her law practice in the offices of St. Louis attorney Lucien Eaton. In her first few months of practice, Barkeloo became the first woman lawyer in the United States to try a case in court. Tragically, soon thereafter, Barkeloo fell ill with typhoid fever. Her mother came by train to care for her, but on September 11, 1870, less than six months after reaching her goal of becoming a lawyer, Barkeloo died. Although most of the press was favorable, one account asserted that Barkeloo had died of “over-mental exertion.” Barkeloo was buried in Greenwood Cemetery in her hometown of Brooklyn on September 15, 1870, almost one year to the day of leaving it in search of her dream.
In 1870, there was no Bar Association of St. Louis, but a few days after Barkeloo’s death, the St. Louis legal community met in the Probate Courtroom of the Old Court House, on Broadway in tribute to her memory. Lucien Eaton, in whose office Lemma had studied and practiced, gave initial remarks: “Lemma was earnest and hopeful, studious and painstaking … gifted with a fine intellect and good judgement with promise of great attainments…. She was an agreeable and amiable friend…. Her death is a calamity, not to her friends alone, but to all who are making an effort for enlargement of the woman’s sphere.” Judge Wilson Primm also praised Barkeloo: “In the very opening and bloom of life, Miss Barkeloo … in a strange land, entered upon a profession for which very few are qualified morally and intellectually…. She has left an example which others of her sex may deem worthy of imitation; an example of self-reliance, of intellectual labor and courage. It must have been a brave soul that could … face the prejudices of society … to enter into an arena in which men, oft times rude and ungallant, are the gladiators.”
With her premature death, Lemma left the task of advancing equality for women in the legal profession and in the law to her colleague in the 1869 entering class at Washington University Law School: Phoebe Wilson Couzins.
Phoebe Couzins’ father, John E. D. Couzins, was an architect and builder, a union major during the Civil War, chief of police in St. Louis, and later U.S. Marshal for the Eastern District of Missouri. Phoebe’s mother, Adaline Weston Couzins, was a nurse during the Civil War. She was a pacifist, who tended soldiers on the battlefield at Wilson Creek, Shiloh and Vicksburg and was wounded at Vicksburg. During the Civil War, Phoebe and her mother were among those who helped organize the Western Sanitary Commission, which operated under military orders, to care for thousands of wounded, both in St. Louis and elsewhere where there were no hospitals. Women worked in commission hospitals, making bandages, gathering clothing and food and serving as nurses — although unmarried women such as Phoebe were not allowed to nurse male soldiers. In addition to soldiers, homeless, penniless and sick civilian refugees, both white and black, fled their homes in southern and western Missouri and came to St. Louis for treatment.
Growing up with a father who held responsible civic positions and a courageous mother who faced the dangers of battle to nurse soldiers during the Civil War helped Phoebe to develop confidence in her intellect and a zest for service in the public arena. While serving with the Western Sanitary Commission during the War, Phoebe was converted to the causes of pacifism and women’s rights. With the encouragement of Professor John Krum, Phoebe Couzins submitted an application to Dean Henry Hitchcock in December 1868 to attend the new St. Louis Law School at Washington University. Hitchcock and the faculty were in agreement and openly declared their views in the following, momentous message that they forwarded to the University Board of Directors, who would rule on the application: “If the question were left to [us] to decide, [we the faculty] see no reason why any young woman who in respect to character and acquirements fulfilled the conditions applicable to male students and who chose to attend the law lectures in good faith for the purpose of becoming acquainted with the laws of her country should be denied that privilege.”
The sixteen-member board unanimously agreed, paving the way for the admission of women to Washington University School of Law. In early 1869, the spring before Phoebe Couzins started law school, she served as a delegate to the American Equal Rights Association Convention in N.Y., at which Elizabeth Cady Stanton made the keynote address, advocating women’s right to vote. Later that spring, Phoebe spoke to a joint meeting of the Missouri State General Assembly on behalf of woman suffrage, advocating passage of state legislation granting women the right to vote. Although the proposal was rejected by a vote of 89 to 5, it launched Couzins’ career as a public advocate, which she continued during and after law school.
Both Couzins and Barkeloo were reportedly well received by most of their classmates in the fall of 1869 and also welcomed by the professors to their classes at the law school. Unlike Barkeloo, Couzins completed the two-year law school program. She graduated in May 1871, one of only nine members of her original class. She was the law school’s and the university’s first woman graduate. Professor Samuel Reber, in family law, spoke at the graduation exercises in support of Phoebe and the advancement of women in the legal profession.
To mark the historic occasion of her graduation, a magnificent banquet was held in her honor. Many of Missouri’s most distinguished citizens, judges and politicians attended, including Chancellor William Greenleaf Eliot. Phoebe presented an eloquent address in which she thanked her classmates and professors, especially Judge Krum and Judge Reber, and praised the university’s openness and enlightenment. She said: “Two years ago I entered upon the study of law with many forebodings, toned with many conflicts and doubts … [compelled] solely by a desire to open new paths for women [sic], enlarge her usefulness, widen her responsibilities and to plead her cause in a struggle which I believed was surely coming…. I trust the day is not far distant when men and women shall be recognized as equal administrators of that great bulwark of civilization, law.”
Phoebe took and passed the Missouri Bar, making her Missouri’s second and the nation’s third or fourth licensed woman attorney. She later became the first woman admitted to the bar in Arkansas and Utah and was also admitted to the bar in Kansas and the Dakota Territory. Although she set up practice in downtown St. Louis, Couzins handled few cases. Women’s suffrage and women’s rights were her true passions. She believed that if women were given the right to vote, there would be no more wars.
Phoebe traveled throughout the country speaking in support of suffrage and equality. She was an early member of the Woman Suffrage Association of Missouri and a founder of the National Woman Suffrage Association, where she worked with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. She became renowned as an eloquent lecturer and a stirring orator who spoke before audiences, which sometimes numbered in the thousands. As the years passed, Couzins’ influence expanded to the national level. She spoke on the platform at the Democratic National Convention in 1876, advocating women’s rights. Although the St. Louis Spectator ridiculed the idea of women in government, she was considered for a position on the Utah Territory Commission in 1882 by President Chester Arthur. Upon her father’s death in 1887, President Grover Cleveland appointed Phoebe to succeed her father as the first woman U.S. Marshal in the country. She died in 1913 and was buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery with her U.S. Marshal star pinned to her chest.
Lemma Barkeloo, a native New Yorker, and Phoebe Wilson Couzins, a native St. Louisan, were born within a year or so of each other. Barkeloo, from a distinguished, wealthy, Dutch, Eastern family; Couzins, from a prominent, political, French family of the West. Barkeloo versed in music and fine arts; Couzins committed to public affairs. They shared courage and conviction and a desire to do justice. The struggles that they and the other women of their era fought — to gain admission to law school and to join the legal profession — were part of a broader battle for equal opportunities and rights for women. Their spirit survives in the lives of all the women law students and lawyers in the past 130 years, who have followed in their footsteps. Their spirit survives, most particular, in Susan Appleton, who in her life and in her work as teacher, colleague, scholar, mentor of students and advocate for women, carries their spirit and now their names, as an inspiration for all of us and those to come after us.
Gender Pay Equity Report Released
The final report of the Gender Pay Equity Committee for Arts & Sciences and all other schools except the School of Medicine was released on April 13, 2000. Briefly, the report concludes that there exists “no statistically significant evidence of gender bias in the setting of salaries.” A full report on the nearly three-year study by the committee can be found on the university’s website. The committee included AWF members Susan Appleton, Nancy Berg, Jean Ensminger (chair) and Lee Epstein, as well as Martin Israel, Linda Pike of AWN, Brian Suarez, Joseph O’Sullivan and Edward Spitznagel.
News of Interest to Women Faculty
The most recent issue of Academe, the bulletin of the AAUP, publishes the association’s “Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, 1999-2000.” For those of you who are interested in salary issues, please turn to the pages 23, 30 and 37-92 to see how Washington University and your level of compensation look in relation to other institutions. Recent issues of The Chronicle of Higher Education have carried stories about the struggles of dual-career academic couples to find positions in the same city (or region) and some institutions’ efforts to assist them (April 21, 2000) and about the “uneven” progress of women’s sports (April 7, 2000).
Note from the Editor
This is my last issue of the newsletter. Angela Miller (almiller@artsci.wustl.edu) and Fatemeh Keshavarz (fatemeh@artsci.wustl.edu) will be responsible for AWF News as of volume 6, no. 1, in the Fall of 2000.
I thank Nancy Berg, who rigorously proofread each issue (any remaining typos and other mistakes are my own); John Pingree and Debroah Starr, secretaries in the Eductation Department, who kept the address list and labels up to date; and all of the work study students in the department who helped with mailings. It has been a pleasure working with them and with the membership of AWF on the AWF news for the past years.