We are doing it! (Page 5 of 1)

In fact, Hotz says the changes were evident when she returned to the classroom some years ago seeking her Master of Business Administration degree. “Probably in my class, we had about 40 percent of our members were women. Health care professionals like myself,” she recollects.

Though Levey notes the significance of all six women charging the initiatives, she’d rather each of the women be admired for their accomplishments as professionals rather than their promotions as women.

“I think it’s an interesting phenomenon that all of us are women,” says Levey, “but I think all six are well-qualified by our credentials and training and experience, and I don’t think gender was a consideration for any of us in our selections.”

Caula Beyl,
first female dean of UT’s AgCollege

UT’s College of Agricultural Studies and Natural Resources is a century old, but up until 2007, men had always led it.

That changed when Caula Beyl was selected a dean one year ago.

“Women today are entering agricultural fields in numbers equivalent and sometimes exceeding that of their male counterparts,” says Beyl. “It’s, therefore, a natural progression to see more and more women assuming leadership roles in agricultural and natural resources disciplines … I would like to think that I obtained [deanship] based upon qualifications and vision, rather than the fact that I am a woman.”

Beyl says she was raised an “army brat,” spending much of her adolescence in an international school while her father was stationed in Japan.

Her mother had also been in the military until she married and started her family, but she cites her mother’s constant encouragement she could be anything she wanted that led her to have a “more global image.”

“In Japan, my mother was the envy of all the other children since she had a sense of adventure and took us everywhere that she could reach by train,” recalls Beyl. “We even climbed Mt. Fuji!”

And as her military family uprooted several times during her childhood, her parents’ efforts to plant roots, in more ways than one, sparked her interest in horticulture.

She remembers fondly her mother’s methodical ritual of remaking the curtains and painting the walls her favorite shade of green and her father’s planting of flowerbeds around the house to make it their own.

Her father also played a prominent role in her professional drive and ambition, she says.

“Since I was his first-born child, I think he had a tendency to treat me as if I were capable of anything,” she says. “He also had high standards of academic performance that he applied to all of us, including himself.”

The journey wasn’t always easy, however, and sexism reared its ugly head in one of her doctoral classes at Purdue University. It was the end of the semester in a course in which she was the only female of 19 students, and she had received her graded final exam.

On her test, the letter “A” was written, scratched out, and then replaced with a letter “F”. Beyl recalls when she confronted her professor about why he had given her the highest grade in the class, only then to have it withdrawn and swapped for a failing grade, he asserted she must have cheated.

“I told him not only had I not cheated, I had sat by myself in the class and studied very hard,” says Beyl. “His response was to tell me that if that was the case, I would not mind taking an oral exam right there on the spot.”

He proceeded to ask her questions for about an hour, finally concluding that she had earned her A and was free to leave his office.
“That proved to me that there is no short cut for success,” she says, “and that you must be ready to prove yourself at any time.”

Beyl believes though strides have been made to increase female leadership roles in education careers, room for improvement lingers.

“There’s an increasing awareness of the scarcity of women in leadership roles in academia,” she says, “and many institutions are putting into place programs that recognize potential leaders and provide development opportunities for them.”