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Breaking
Down Barriers: A Woman of Many Firsts
By Dorothy Wright
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Priscilla
Perkins Grew ’62
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Priscilla Perkins Grew ’62
never set out to break down barriers to women
in the geosciences, yet that is what one is likely
to infer from her career. A professor of geosciences
at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, Grew
was the first woman ever to head the California
Department of Conservation, to chair the California
Mining and Geology Board, to direct the Minnesota
Geological Survey, and to serve as Vice Chancellor
of Research at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
In October 2000, Grew became the first woman to
receive the Ian Campbell Medal, the highest honor
of the American Geological Institute.
It was not feminist ambition
that drove Grew. "I never had a five-year
plan setting out the steps to become the first
woman this, that or the other," she says.
"I didn’t have that orientation."
Indeed, at Bryn Mawr, it never
occurred to Grew that she had chosen an unusual
career for a woman. "I didn’t realize
there was anything particularly special about
being a woman in geology," she says. "There
were a woman geology professor and women graduate
students in the department, and undergrads were
encouraged to major."
After she arrived at Berkeley
on a National Science Foundation graduate fellowship,
she suddenly realized women geologists
were few and far between. "There were about
80 graduate students and only four were women
— three from Bryn Mawr!" she says, "and
zero women geology professors. That’s where
I began to realize this was unusual."
Government
Service
In the late ’70s, then-Governor
of California Jerry Brown appointed her chair
of the state’s Mining and Geology Board and
director of the California Department of Conservation.
"For Governor Brown, I was a very high-risk
appointment," she says. "I had no experience
in state government administration."
A few years later Grew served
as a commissioner of the California Public Utilities
Commission. "I was the first person with
a Ph.D. in geology, as far as I know, to be a
Public Utilities Commissioner in California,"
she says. "A lot of people questioned the
appointment. They were skeptical because I had
a geological instead of a financial or regulatory
background."
Grew believes two key factors
led to these and other firsts. "Being a woman
was definitely a factor in my appointments to
these positions," she acknowledges. "I
recognize that I owe a great deal to affirmative
action. Although affirmative action is under a
lot of political fire, I strongly support it and
I know it opened many doors for me."
She also believes her wide
range of interests has played an important part
in her appointments. "I think my greatest
asset is being able to work with people from widely
different disciplines," she says.
Multidisciplinary
Perspective
Grew says she first broke
out of a narrow academic specialty in the early
’70s, when she worked at UCLA on the administration
of the Lake Powell Research Project, a study of
the impacts of coal and water development on the
Colorado River Basin. "It was half natural
sciences and half social sciences," she explains.
"It gave me an ability to work with people
of different disciplines. It really changed my
career."
For a while, Grew says, large
multidisciplinary research projects were out of
fashion. Now she believes the scientific community
is coming full circle. "There is a realization
that you can’t divide analysis into little
disciplinary boxes and be successful, whether
it is global change research or regional environmental
research," she says. "You need to integrate
the human dimension with the natural science dimension.
Now I think there is a lot more appreciation that
certain problems, for example, require anthropologists
and geologists to work together."
Grew says that is why the
Campbell Medal means so much to her. "The
Campbell Medal wasn’t for research performance
in a specific specialty, but for broad service
to the profession — geology and public policy,"
she says. "That medal is very important to
me because it is a recognition of exactly the
kind of career that I’ve worked so hard on."
Now, Grew is teaching introductory
geology to a class of 170 non-majors at the University
of Nebraska. "It’s the first time I’ve
taught Geology 101 since 1969," she says.
"I feel like Rip Van Winkle: I wake up and
there are all these resources on the Internet,
multi-media classrooms, marvelous new textbooks
in full color! So many new things have been discovered
about the Earth in the last 30 years that in 1969
I would have told my students were impossible.
Now I am ‘learning along’ with my students,
doing all new lectures and computerized presentations,
and I have put my course on an interactive Web
site. Plus I hope to share with my students my
career experience in geology and public policy
— out in the political world, the state government
world, the world of applications of geology."
About the Author
Dorothy Wright contributes
news and feature articles on science, technology,
engineering and general interest topics to a variety
of publications, including Civil Engineering,
Engineering News Record and Bryn Mawr
Now.
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