tinued. Stout, now part of the University of Wisconsin System, awards
degrees in both industrial education and industrial technology through its
School of Industry and Technology. From 1970 to 1976, nine women have
graduated - four in education and five in technology. Those in technology
were able to select from majors that included building construction,
electronics, plant engineering, technical sales and service, packaging, product
development, and manufacturing engineering. Stout continues to offer the
various concentrations and levels within the field of industrial education.
Of the five who have graduated since 1970 in industrial technology, three
women chose packaging as their major. As packaging specialists who have de-
veloped solid skills in product development, design, and testing, they now
function at the middle management level in industry. Technical preparation
at
Stout included work in related areas of plastics, fluid power, electricity,
draft-
ing and graphics as well as the packaging concentration core courses.
Two industrial technology graduates were trained in product de-
velopment. Kristine Sundling, class of 1976, chose product development be-
cause she liked calculus and physics. Her course work at Stout was intense
and innovative; the program graduated only eight people in her class. When
she began to look for a job, at two interviews she was told straightforwardly
that she would not be hired because the company did not believe a woman
would be capable of handling the job. Sundling is presently employed as a
nuclear steam supply systems engineer and works on the mechanical design
of
the internal components of nuclear power plants. She writes:
I find my work very interesting and I don't believe that I could be happier
about my
job. Working is much better than I expected it to be.
I work with five men most of the time. I have no assigned area as of yet,
so I help these
five others on their specific areas. I do calculations on weights, natural
frequencies,
stresses, etc. I review other people's calculations, and I write reports.
1()
Her future plans include a Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering.
Four women have earned industrial education degrees since 1970. One of
these alumnae, Nancy Mayo taught electronics for a year.1' When she mar-
ried, she left teaching and now works as a commercial driving instructor.
Mayo
recalled that at Stout she worked especially hard in her electronics courses,
feeling that in order to prove herself it was necessary to do better than
her
classmates. One reason Nancy left teaching was because she felt that she
was
too young at twenty-three to be teaching high school boys. Mayo may return
to industrial education after she raises a family.
Another graduate, Kathy Sheetz, also had a short-lived teaching career.'2
She was a part-time high school drafting instructor for one year. Budget
cuts
ended her employment, and Sheetz is now developing her own business as a
free-lance graphic artist. Recalling her courses at Stout, Sheetz also expected
herself to have better than average technical competency in the classroom.
Looking back over Stout's long but sporadic history of women in in-
dustrial education and industrial technology programs, it can be seen that
while some things have changed over the years, others have not. The confu-
sion which occurred at Theodora Coffin's graduation in 1909 still exists
for
women choosing technology-related careers in the seventies. Just as Senator
Stout wondered if perhaps she had mistakenly arrived on the right stage with
the wrong peers, so do fellow classmates today often question women who


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