Bryn Mawr College's Digital Competencies Program helps students build the digital skills and critical perspectives on technology needed for success in the digital age.
We're delighted to present this interview with Bryn Mawr College alum Marion Naar '63. She was one of the earliest Bryn Mawr College students to have experience in digital technology, and has used digital skills throughout her career through to the present. Her interview touches on real-world applications of digital competencies such as data management, critical data visualization, algorithmic thinking/coding, and more.
Enjoy!
Please introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your time at Bryn Mawr and your career path.
I was born and grew up in the NYC suburbs. High school academic offerings profited from the launch of Sputnik. AT BMC the 1960s were a transition from a traditional classical education to more emphasis on recent events and contemporary issues... Campus life was somewhat restricted. We had maids and porters and ate at long dining tables with white tablecloths. We had, however, the wonderful opportunity to work closely with professors and build friendships with them that lasted for years afterward.
As a math major, one of about five, I spent the first years after college teaching math in a variety of places and got an MA. Following along on a BMC summer experience with the IBM 1620 computer, I also took a couple of computer science classes. Now married and with two small children, teaching did not offer a good career path, but luckily, thanks to my BMC roommate, I was hired at Sarah Lawrence College as the coordinator of a Women's Studies class. No digital technology there, but I had to deal with schedules and personalities – the latter an element of every job.
My big opportunity came when SLC decided the time had come to digitize and organize student and alumni records, and automate the unique but cumbersome class registration process, and hired me to do it, with the help of some mentors with business, though not technical, experience. When the processes were working and my children were older, I went on to full time work at Pitney Bowes starting as a systems analyst in the Data Processing department designing a new sales commission system (never finished by me but picked up by others later), then moving to various departments – always hands on or management of data – sales, marketing, order processing, engineering, whatever.
So my career was basically implementing and managing IT systems.
In retirement I have been involved with a local museum, set up databases in Filemaker to handle our collections and memberships, and use Quickbooks for the treasury stuff.
What sorts of technology have you used throughout your career?
Mechanical calculators at a summer job, punch cards at BMC, IBM mainframes at Univ of Wisconsin; a PDP8 using BASIC from Digital Equipment with my math teaching at SUNY (it used paper tapes which I stored in fishing tackle boxes); IBM System 32 using RPG at Sarah Lawrence; and at Pitney Bowes, Univac and IBM mainframes, early Apple and IBM personal computers with word processing, VisiCalc, and VisiFile transitioning to Lotus, Excel, SQL, Filemaker, WORD etc. Then in 'retirement' on to Quickbooks and Google Drive... I never got to C, C++ or Java (though I managed engineers who programed with them and which my son works with)... Probably never took a class in any of the technologies listed above.
What experiences in digital technology did you have as a student at Bryn Mawr?
What advice do you have for current students on which digital competencies are the most crucial today?
There is hardly a profession or job today where digital skills are not required – and also the necessity of keeping up with changes and advances. At the same time there are popular areas where one can rely on the expertise of others – setting up web sites for example – unless you enjoy doing them...
I find two critical areas, not really 'digital skills' and not new. Firstly, the presentation of information, logically structured tables and visual graphics, conveying information in direct ways beyond sets of numbers or words. This is a special and actually old skill which does not come naturally to many people. There are several excellent books on the subject by Edward Tufte: The Visual Display of Quantitative Information and Envisioning Information, and two more new ones.
Business processing systems have improved work for many people - recording, retrieving, and viewing information, saving time and tedium. Medical systems have a way to go... My daughter is a primary care doctor at Mt. Sinai in NYC, and the information systems she has to use for medical records are still cumbersome, with the multiple changing password requirements and the extra stuff she has to enter... Sounds like the designers have not taken the time to sit with the doctors who will be using them. I believe some progress is being made, but medicine is a tough field to help – unlike my registration system for Sarah Lawrence or basic web site design. A student having gone through your program who becomes a doctor would be an ideal reformer!
The other critical area is the practice of writing concise clear English, which is actually a related organizational skill. It can only be learned by having one's writing samples critically edited over and over by a competent person. If you can't successfully explain what you are doing to a person outside your skill set, your project will not be 'bought' and will die.
I don't think the word 'digital' in its literal meaning quite captures all that the BMC digital competencies program is providing – but I can't suggest a better adjective.
Any additional career advice for undergraduates?
Find careers that you really enjoy and where you can always learn, and be open to changing them. Having children, if you choose to, is a huge complication... I was lucky to have flexible and part time hours during my time at SLC, enabling me to juggle work, child care and other areas of my life. Most now are not so fortunate. Affordable quality day care and part time work are worth fighting for, wherever you end up.