UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Interview #794
COPPERSMITH, SUSAN

COPPERSMITH, Susan (1957- )
Professor of Physics
At UW: 2001-

Interviewed: 	2006	
Interviewer: 	Sandy Pfahler
Length: 	1 hour, 36 minutes

Childhood and family life; The environment for women scientists at MIT in the 1970s; The role played by Bell Labs in fostering the development of groups under-represented in science; The difficult environment for women scientists at Cornell in the late 70s/early 80s; Research in condensed matter; Marriage and child-rearing as a women scientist; employment at the University of Chicago; Personal/professional life tradeoffs; Faculty appointment at UW-Madison; The Sterling Hall Bombing and its effects in the physics department; Experiences as chair of the physics department;  Faculty hiring and recruitment; Working with graduate students; The environment for women at UW-Madison; Women In Science & Engineering Leadership Institute; UW-Madison’s Spousal Hire Program; The role of honors in one’s academic career; non-academic activities.

First Interview Session (August 3, 2006): Digital File

Time	Keywords
00:00:00	Start of Interview/Interviewer’s Introduction

00:00:28	[Begin Tape 1/Side 1] SC born and raised in Johnstown, Pennsylvania “which is famous for floods and not much else”. SC discusses character of childhood and family life, relations among siblings, and parental dynamics.

00:02:58	She attended college at MIT in 1974.  Her decision to attend the university was motivated by an interest in science and a desire to find a compatible social milieu. She also discusses her teachers in high school and her high school social life.

00:04:29	Topic of reflection returns to MIT, where she “fit in a lot better” than she did in high school.  SC had a positive experience there both academically and socially. SC went to Westmont Hilltop Highschool in Jonestown and graduated in a class of ~200.  She discusses how her highschool experience differed from the experiences of her classmates at MIT.  Her limited exposure to the sciences in highschool made classes, such as freshman physics at MIT, difficult.  She felt “under-prepared.” 

00:08:28	SC describes a particular homework physics problem that made physics come together for her.  After completing this problem, physics was “absolutely no problem.”  She discusses how this problem, and her struggles with it, pushed her to pursue physics.

00:10:21	SC discusses Don Coppersmith, a former MIT student (also) from a small town in Pennsylvania who won the Putnam Prize in mathematics four times in a row. They are unrelated. She also discusses classroom dynamics at MIT.  She describes an incident where a teacher would react unfavorably to “stupid questions,” and another student in the class would speak up to say they had the same question.

00:13:12	MIT provided a “completely anonymous” experience for students.  There were no seating charts for students, professors often did not know who students were, SC simply signed her initials on exams, thus preventing a gender bias in grading.  She felt that her academic performance was “judged on a fair basis.” SC’s experience in graduate school was quite different from her undergraduate experience, because graduate school was certainly not anonymous.

00:15:19	SC discusses how she got into physics in the early 70s, when there were no jobs in physics.  Originally she had planned on pursuing chemistry because of the many jobs available in that field.  She discusses, though, the beauty of simplicity in physics that she did not find in chemistry. She stayed in physics. She also discusses summer jobs that steered her towards an interest in condensed matter.

00:20:25	SC discusses a Bell Labs program which provided jobs for under-represented groups in science.  She discusses Bell Labs’ research program for women; she also discusses the Labs’ CRFP (Cooperative Research Fellowship Program) program which supported, at one point, approximately half of all black science Ph.D. students in the country.  She mentions that she would have never earned a Ph.D. had it not been for Bell Labs. SC explains that her gravitation towards theory can be explained by her feeling uncomfortable in laboratory environments.

00:24:46	She delineates her path towards graduate school.

00:28:35	SC describes difficulties in graduate school at Cornell University.  Many of these difficulties, she feels, stemmed from her status as a woman.  She reflects that “they just didn’t like female students” and that “it was an atmosphere of hate.”  This was in the late 70s/early 80s, and it was the first year when they had a handful women students. There were no women on faculty.

00:30:35	 She describes how her dissertation at Bell Labs developed and transpired. [End side 1; begin side 2] SC continues discussion of her dissertation work at Bell Labs.

00:31:58 	She discusses environmental differences between Bell Labs and Cornell University. SC describes how difficulties at Cornell and with her family made the process of obtaining her post-doc a challenging process.  Cornell attributed her difficulties to “emotional problems,” claiming that her problems were entirely her fault.

00:33:01	She discusses her marriage and where she met her husband. 

00:33:23	She discusses how she got to the University of Chicago.  First, she pursued a post-doc at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island and completed a visiting post-doc at Princeton and a post-doc at Bell Labs. Then she gained a staff position at Bell Laboratories, where she stayed for eight years; but by the early 90s – in the aftermath of deregulation – it was clear that Bell Labs would not remain a stable employer. So in 1993, SC decided that she will begin pursuing another job and obtained a tenured job as a full professor at the University of Chicago and stays at Chicago for 6 years.

00:36:02	She discusses how she got to UW. After becoming pregnant, she struggled raising a child while her husband was gone half of the time (he was unable to get a job in Chicago). So while University of Chicago was her dream job, her personal life suffered. When her husband obtained a Med School job at UW-Madison in 2001, she was hired in the dept of physics. She explores personal/professional life tradeoffs, recalling the people she knew from UW-Madison before being hired.

00:38:55	She experienced initial difficulties with her new job at UW-Madison; she describes these difficulties.

00:41:46	SC discusses the effects of the Sterling Hall Bombing on the physics department.  She explores the psychological impact of the bombing on the department and efforts to rebuild in its aftermath.  She gives her thoughts on departmental politics and inner-workings.

00:47:17	She talks about how she became chairperson of the physics department, her motivation for accepting the position, and the challenges associated with the position.  SC also discusses the need for change in the physics department.

00:50:41	She discusses the physics department’s recruiting efforts in 2005.  At one point in 2005 the physics department lacked eight faculty members.  One of her huge efforts, as the departmental chair, was hiring six new faculty members.  SC discusses the hiring processes and the intricacies of her recruiting efforts.  She also speculates on how the new hires may change the dynamics of the department. She believes that her main accomplishment as departmental chair lies in the area of recruiting.

00:55:12	She talks about the processes of obtaining a stepper [a device used to manufacture integrated circuits] for the physics department.  The stepper was obtained as part of a recruiting effort to hire a faculty member whose research requires the device.  Intel donated the stepper and claimed a $1.2 million tax writeoff.

01:01:19	SC reflects on teaching and her experience with teaching.

01:02:52	She talks about working with graduate students.

01:03:47	[End tape 1; begin tape 2] SC talks more about the “people part” of her present position as departmental chair.  She especially enjoyed the negotiations that surrounded obtaining the stepper for the physics department.

01:06:00	She returns to a detailed discussion of her research in condensed matter, complex systems, and systems that are not in thermal equilibrium.

01:07:41	SC talks about a current research project being conducted in collaboration with a student working under the guidance of SC as well as another physics professor.  The research is on how nacre shells grow.

01:12:39	SC discusses a project on which she is working as an outgrowing of her involvement with the Quantum Computing Group.  She describes her project and discusses quantum computing.

01:15:47	SC explores the writing, publishing, and speaking aspects of her job.  She also discusses the process of teaching academic writing in her field.

01:16:46	SC discusses the culture for women on the UW-Madison campus.  She talks about ways to meet other women in the sciences.  She mentions that childcare coordination is one way by which gets “plugged in” socially.

01:18:17	She reflects on the efficacy of the Women In Science & Engineering Leadership Institute (WISELI), an organization that she considers to be useless and where a lot of lip service is given.

01:21:57	SC talks about the merits of the spousal hire program, through which she was hired and without which she would not be at UW-Madison.

01:22:54	Discussion returns to SC’s reflections on her work as departmental chair.  She talks about the desire to create community, setting realistic goals, and what she hopes people will remember about her chairmanship.

01:24:10	She reflects on her involvement with professional organizations/activities and how her personality interacts with the nature of these organizations.  It should be noted that SC was on the board of trustees of the Gordon Research Conferences, although she does not spend much time discussing her experiences and obligations in this role.

01:27:38	SC talks about her efforts coordinating governmental lobbying efforts for science and the associated challenges.

01:30:40	SC reflects on some of her honors and awards.  She briefly talks about the leverage that honors give you when participating in departmental and academic politics.

01:32:20	She discusses her non-work life, her opinion of the city of Madison, what she does for fun, and how she balances her personal life with professional obligations.

01:36:02	End of First Interview Session.

End of Interview #794