The Role of Women at ECN
Several women have worked as part of the Engineering Computer Network over the years, and many of them have contributed to the team in a number of valuable ways. This list is not exhaustive, and additions will be made as more information becomes available. To the best of our knowledge all the women who have worked for ECN are Karen Thomas, Mary Burwell, Jill Hallenbeck, Bobbi Mooney, Cathy Kozlowski, Stacey Clark, Sally Goldberg, Marian Delp, Maryjane Scharenberg, Beth Halsema, Cathy Curry, Rene Ketterer, Pamela Hiner, Smita Carneiro, and most recently Megan Boing and Megan Greene. All of these women have contributed to the development of ECN over the years.
Bobbi Mooney
Bobbi Mooney was instrumental in setting the cultural pace for ECN. She was the first female systems administrator, and she worked as a site specialist for the school of Mechanical Engineering. She was not readily accepted by all of the men in the group; however, she quickly gained their respect as an administrator, and she did it with style and grace. She elevated the group to a higher, more professional level with the way she presented and handled herself in the group, and she is remembered equally for her technical and social contributions. She paved the way for several women who followed.
Bobbi is especially appreciated in the school of Mechanical Engineering for her efforts in training the clerical staff in using software. They became very proficient and liked Bobbi for all of the attention and care she gave them. She also worked closely with the faculty to determine their needs in addition to all of her other duties. In an attempt to make thesis writing easier, Bobbi created templates and samples for people to follow (thesis writing had to conform to typewriter standards and had to be in the right format, even when measured with a ruler).
Bobbi Mooney was the site specialist for ME for six years before she left in May of 1988 for a position with Shell Oil, where she set up a UNIX work-station computing support division. Before she left, she published a "good-bye" message in the ECN Newsletter:
"At the end of May I will be leaving Purdue, so I'd like to take this opportunity to say good bye to you. My family and I are moving to Houston, where I have accepted a position with Shell Oil. Over the past six years as the ME/ECN site specialist, I have enjoyed the chance to work with many fine people in Mechanical Engineering, as well as the other Engineering Schools. I especially acknowledge the professional experience that I have gained from working with the outstanding staff of the ECN. I take with me a lot of good memories of my Purdue years."While she worked at Purdue, Bobbi completed a masters degree in Computer Science.
Beth Halsema
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Since she joined the ECN team, Marian helped members of the ECN team remember to treat users (and other team members) as people, not machines. In addition to her assigned duties, she went above and beyond to increase social interaction between ECN employees, including annual Christmas parties, birthday celebrations, and office decorations. Because of her attention to the individual people who make up the team, ECN is a more pleasant place to work. She also worked as a mediator for the team, assisting in several small ways that no one else had been able to. |
For several years, Marian was the head editor of the ECN No Name Newsletter, a hardcopy (and later Internet) newsletter that kept people around the university up to date with what was going on at ECN and elsewhere in computer technological development. Marian was also in charge of the ECN library , a collection of reference materials available to ECN staff and others in Engineering. ECN's student employees answered to Marian, and she played a critical role in training and growing the student staff. Marian helped create the first ever complete Purdue course listing as well as the first complete campus wide faculty listing; she believed it is important to have online resources available to students so that they can access the information they need from one convenient place. Marian Delp retired in January of 2008.
B. Catherine Kozlowski
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Cathy K. was the site specialist for Potter from 1983-1985. During that time,she felt that Purdue was a very good place for women to work in the field of computer science. As computer programming was a fairly new field, Cathy felt that it was an open, non-discriminatory field, and working at a university level appealed to her because of the opportunities for self-motivation. |
When Cathy first started in 1983, she had a Masters in Computer Science from Purdue. She and the other specialists hired that year took part in an experimental C language training class. In those days, the Potter site specialist job included a fair amount of busy work (such as fixing paper jams), a good amount of working with people and teaching technologies, and at Potter these duties were difficult, as Potter's labs were small and spread around.
When Cathy rejoined the ECN staff in 1995, she found that the staff had grown to include several more staff members and site specialists. She also saw that microgroups had been formed to make the network run more efficiently. Another major difference was the workstations. When she left in 1985, the university was talking a lot about getting workstations, but in 1995, they were the norm and the job had changed dramatically because of them.
Stacey Clark
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Stacey graduated from Purdue with a degree in Chemical Engineering in the late 1970's. Right after graduation, she began working for the schools of engineering, where she had contact with ECN employees and technologies. In the early 1980's, Stacey began working for ECN as a site specialist for Civil Engineering, Chemical Engineering, and Materials Engineering. At the time, this site specialist position had a very high turnover rate, due to the struggles of keeping up with the needs of three schools. |
When Stacey first started working for ECN, several people were all trying to use one VAX, sharing resources, and the VAX would crash at least once a day (for example, if too many people tried to use VI at the same time, the VAX would crash). Back in those days, there was a lot of standing in line and waiting to use equipment, and part of her job as site specialist was to try to make sure the resources were shared, in an attempt to prevent crashes.
Stacey worked as a site specialist for several years before she became the Operations Specialist for ECN.
Cathy Curry
| Cathy joined ECN in July of 1994 as a Desktop Computer Support Specialist,
which meant she worked on all sorts of different projects, all of them
having something to do with helping faculty, staff, and students use their
terminals and workstations. Before joining Purdue, Cathy was a UNIX systems
administrator for SRI International in Menlo Park, CA.
Cathy spent a lot of her time working on the first generation of ECN's internal web site, particularly writing FAQs, now called the Knowledge Base. She also handled many of the software-related "trouble" reports filed by users, either by directly solving the problem herself or by routing it to the appropriate member of the software staff. She also wrote tutorials and conducted workshops on various topics of the day such as how to perform a complex task or use a software package. Finally, she filled in for site specialists when they were on vacation or otherwise out of the office for an extended period of time. Cathy felt that ECN was a great place to work and learn, but decided to leave ECN in November 1995 to move to New York with her husband and two boys. She now has a total of 4 children, the eldest 21, and the youngest, 3. Although the computer field was interesting, she has been interested in the culinary field and will be pursuing this field for her future endeavors. |
Pamela Hiner
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Pam Hiner holds a unique position as ECN's Administrative Assistant, a title she has held since 1994. Pam's official duties include everything from handling the budget to dealing with staff issues. Pam handles software license renewals, helps resolve items in the price queue, provides purchasing assistance for Engineering faculty and staff, and much, much more. Because Pam has knowledge of such diverse aspects of ECN, she is often the first person users contact for help. |
Pam has been with Purdue for over thirty-two years, even longer than she has been with ECN. While working at Purdue, she also attended classes, acquiring her Associate Degree in Organizational Leadership and Supervision. Pam previously worked in the business service area for fourteen years, Pam finds her job much more interesting because of the variety of tasks she performs on a daily basis. One minute she will be handling a human resources issue and the next she is researching vendors to the find the best available pricing for a piece of equipment. The knowledge she gained from working in the Business Services area has proven to be a great resource in her present position, as she is the main liaison between ECN staff and the Business Office Staff.
Smita Carneiro
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Smita was born and raised in India, where she attended a College of Engineering and received a degree in Electronics and Telecommunications. The software engineer has been with Purdue since 2000. Her first position at Purdue was as a Systems Management Software Administrator for Information Technology at Purdue (ITaP). Smita was largely involved in helping to implement systems management software at ITaP. Then in October of 2004, Smita made the move to ECN. She is now a Software Engineer/Analyst, which requires her to re-package applications to push out across the network. |
Megan Green
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Megan Greene came to Purdue University from Missouri through the encouragement of her loved ones. Among her many responsibilities for the Engineering Computer Network are the deployment of Windows, the development of software tools, and to be as helpful as she can in facilitating software problem solutions. |
Megan Boing
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Megan Boing joined ECN in fall of 2007 and works as a systems engineer. |