Description
- Abstract:
- In part 1 of her interview, Lucile Wawzonek Thompson discusses changing attitudes towards formal gender divisions on campus during the Pembroke/Brown merger. She begins by reflecting on the regulations at Brown in the late 1960s, including the male caller system and curfews. She speaks on the housing lottery and the advent of coed dorms, which she feels led to a looser social structure, especially in terms of dating. Also in part 1, Lucile considers the academic challenges at Brown, political awareness and the atmosphere of activism on campus, and planning a professional career as a woman. In part 2, Lucile discusses balancing higher education, a professional career, and motherhood, also reflecting on gender discrimination in the workplace and academia. With her husband Steve Thompson '73, Lucile expands on the experience of living in Brown's first coed dorm and experimentation with the boundaries of formal gender divisions and regulations. She also speaks on obtaining contraception on campus and the anachronism of some Pembroke traditions in the early 70s.
- Notes:
- Class year: 1972
- Biographical note: Lucile Wawzonek Thompson grew up in Iowa, in a family who placed a high value and emphasis on education. Her father, who graduated from Brown in 1935, was a chemistry professor at the University of Iowa, and her mother also had a college degree. At Brown, Lucile pursued a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology. Shortly after her graduation from Brown, Lucile married Steve Thompson ‘73, whom she had met living in Diman House when it became coed in 1970. Lucile worked at a pharmaceutical company after graduating, which paid for her tuition to receive a master’s in microbiology in 1977. Lucile received a doctorate degree in 1981, defending her dissertation 6 weeks after her first child was born. She then taught at Allentown College, opting not to teach during her pregnancy with her second child, and had returned to teach a physiology course at Pennsylvania State University at the time of the interview.
Citation
"Lucile Kay Wawzonek, class of 1972"
(1988).
Pembroke Center Oral History Collection.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:705191/
Relations
Has Parts:
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Lucile Kay Wawzonek, class of 1972 Part 1
- Type: Audio
- Order: 1
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Lucile Kay Wawzonek, class of 1972 Part 1
- Type: Stream
- Order: 1
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Lucile Kay Wawzonek, class of 1972 Part 2
- Type: Audio
- Order: 2
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Lucile Kay Wawzonek, class of 1972 Part 2
- Type: Stream
- Order: 2
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Lucile Kay Wawzonek, class of 1972
- Type: Pdf
- Order: 3
Collection:
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Pembroke Center Oral History Collection
This collection contains oral history interviews with alumnae of Brown University, which admitted its first women students in 1891. The Women's College at Brown was renamed Pembroke College in 1928, and in 1971, Pembroke College merged with the Men's College …...