Oral history interview with Edith Vortrefflich Sloan, 1990 [text/print transcript]

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UNCG CENTENNIAL ORAL HISTORY PROJECT COLLECTION
INTERIVEWEE: Edith Vortrefflich Sloan
INTERVIEWER: Linda Danford
DATE: December 3, 1990
LD: Mrs. Sloan, can you tell me when you first came to UNCG [The University of North Carolina at Greensboro]?
ES: When my children were in high school, and I was also teaching as a substitute teacher in high school, I wanted—I was interested to get an A certificate for teaching, and so I started—visited UNCG to find out how many credits I would need in order to get either a bachelor's degree or a certificate. And as I found out later on after I started that I needed quite a bit. I needed forty-two credit hours. But originally, I am from Vienna, Austria. I attended the University of Vienna from 1934 to almost '38. So it wasn't that far away from a doctor's degree in Austria, but in 1938, [Adolph] Hitler [chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945 and dictator of Nazi Germany from 1934 to 1945] came and the Jewish students were not allowed to continue their education at the university. Also I left Austria in 1939, and when I came to this country, of course, I was not able to study; I had to make a living. And so it happened only twenty-five years later. No, no, not that long— twenty years later—eighteen or twenty that I decided to go back to school. And I enjoyed it very much. I came to the math department. Dr. [Anne] Lewis was the—she later was Mrs. Anderson, Dr. Anderson. She was the head of the department. And she said, "Oh, go ahead and take this and that, and we'll look at your credits later on." [laughs] But it took quite a while [unclear] collecting all the data and so on. But Dr. Lewis turned out to be a real friend because after I had concluded my studies in 1963, she said, "Now what you should do is get your master’s degree at Wake Forest [University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina]." And she said "We have a new highway," because it was new at the time, "and it's really no problem to drive over there for classes." And I did, and I enjoyed it very much. I just took—I didn't take a full schedule. I just took two courses at a time, and while I was doing that I was still teaching privately and keeping myself busy.
LD: And your children were still in school?
ES: My children were in college.
LD: They were in college.
ES: And so I studied in Wake Forest because in Greensboro you couldn't study for a master's degree in math.
LD: The math department had no graduate program? 2
ES: No graduate program. And then in—let's see, I took it easy in 1966. I got my master's degree and did no work. [laughs]
LD: That's not so bad. Three years. I've seen people take longer than that.
ES: I had other obligations—after all, I was not a full-time student. But I enjoyed that very, very much, and I never regretted it. It was just so interesting, and Wake Forest was a good plan and just starting out, and we had very few students. In the one class we had three students, and the two were very bright, the two others. [laughs]
LD: Very modest.
ES: Then even before I graduated, that spring I started to look for a job, and I thought I'd try UNCG. Dr. [Eldon] Posey was head at that time, and I applied there, and I was surprised that he was interested. I thought that maybe because of my age at that time that he couldn't understand why it took it me so long to get a degree. But he looked for students who had recently done something; if you have a degree of twenty years old, it doesn't count much.
LD: So it didn't matter how old you were. It was just how old your degree was.
ES: I wasn’t that old; I was still at the age where you could work, you know. Not at retirement age, but sometimes people look for the youngsters; but there are not too many who had a master's degree at the time in mathematics. Except for a few. And so he was interested in having a professor from [University of North Carolina at] Chapel Hill. I mean, he came from Chapel Hill, but was retired and taught at Wake Forest. His name was Alfred Brauer.
LD: Brauer?
ES: Brauer. He was a Kenan Professor at Chapel Hill. But he had retired, and he wanted to teach some, and he taught at Wake Forest. And I was his first master's degree candidate. So he taught me a lot because he was really a great mathematician.
LD: Did you have to do a thesis for the master's?
ES: Yes.
LD: What kind of thesis do mathematicians do? I've always wondered that.
ES: I can show it to you, but it's the Theorem of Chebychev.
LD: The theorem of?
ES: Chebychev.
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LD: Chebychev.
ES: He was a Russian mathematician, and he dealt with to prove that a real number, any number and twice that number, there must be a prime number. And you cannot prove it because numbers are endless, and you cannot just show it, exhibit it, you cannot. But you have to prove it in general. Because there is always a number—you know, prove it for one million and one million one, one million two, and there is one between, a number at which it doubles.
LD: Doubles it.
ES: So whatever number is higher, you might take it and show it. It wouldn't do because there are others that are higher. So it's very fascinating. My specialization became number theory, you know, in mathematics. And that was my thing, so I gave some talks at the Academy and thought it was—there were some good things to that. I went to the Academy of North Carolina in Wilmington and in Winston-Salem all the time [unclear].
LD: So Dr. Brauer recommended you.
ES: Yes. He helped me out. I mean, he could tell if it was worthwhile or something. It was lots of fun, and I enjoyed my teaching at UNCG so much, and I was really very reluctant to give it up.
LD: In 1983 you retired.
ES: Yes.
LD: So you started teaching in the fall of 1966?
ES: Yes.
LD: And what courses did you teach?
ES: I taught mostly, more or less, freshman courses. And—but also such courses, advanced courses that had in it some special parts of mathematical student exposed to statistics and a little number theory and a little—[pause] various. Graph theory was one. Various parts of mathematics, various fields of mathematics, and I usually taught such a course because it exposed the student to what mathematics is all about. This was not just taking a high school algebra course or anything like that. Even algebra, if you teach that in college, it has another philosophical side too.
LD: When you started teaching, UNCG was just about to go coed, is that right?
ES: Yes.
LD: And were your students all girls when you started? 4
ES: No, no.
LD: You had a lot of men from the beginning?
ES: Yes. Yes. At the time, even some older students came. That was new, you know, that older students came back and got teacher’s certificates or they hadn't finished their college degree. Mathematics was usually their sore spot, so they had left that off.
LD: Were there other women in the department?
ES: Dr. Lewis, and at the time there was only us.
LD: So it was you and Dr. Lewis.
ES: No. No. Dr. Lewis actually wasn't then in the academic—taught. But even when I was a graduate, when I was a student, there was a very good teacher, Mr. [Joseph] Jones. And Mrs. [Ruby Bass] Smith [Class of 1935, master of education 1959]. There were so many—I had quite a few students, male students.
LD: Male students?
ES: Yes.
LD: How large was the department, the faculty, when you came to the department in '66? Do you remember?
ES: I don’t know; I think maybe ten or twelve.
LD: Ten or twelve?
ES: Yes.
LD: Did it get much larger before you retired?
ES: It got larger. Then they got several PhDs.
LD: Oh, you mean on the faculty more PhDs were hired?
ES: Yes.
LD: What about a graduate program? Did they have a graduate program?
ES: Yes. They had a graduate program.
LD: When was that started?
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ES: I don't know exactly when it was started, really. I would say something like '78 or '80.
LD: Seventy-eight or '80 approximately. Did they start the PhD immediately or did they start with—?
ES: PhD they don't have.
LD: No. They have a master's.
ES: Yes. A master's. Not that I know of now. I don't think I've ever heard of that. But they have now computer science combined—they didn't have that at the time. Later on they had a few computer courses. They just started to develop them. You couldn't major in computer science. Now you can.
LD: Did you work with computers before you retired?
ES: A little bit. Just a little bit. It was not my strength, unfortunately, I should have—
LD: If you had started earlier I'm sure—. Tell me about when you were back in Austria when you were at the university. Was it common for women to go into math or were you unusual?
ES: Very uncommon.
LD: Very uncommon.
ES: Yes.
LD: I would imagine so.
ES: I studied [unclear], I was interested in mathematics and also physics. I studied physics also. But in order to get a job, you know, it was hard in Austria. There was a lot of unemployment. People talked to me and advised me to take actuarial science as part of my mathematical curriculum. And I finished that; I have a degree in actuarial science.
LD: Insurance. Trying to figure out when people will die. [recording error] So it was actuarial science that brought you to Greensboro, you were just telling me.
ES: That's right.
LD: And you came here and who did you work for here when you first came to Greensboro?
ES: Gate City Life Insurance Company, which turned into Pilot Life Insurance.
LD: Pilot Life. So, and then you, when you got here, you met your husband and started your family. 6
ES: I had children and had to quit my job. I mean, my husband made me—my children made me quit my job. [laughing]
LD: But you went back.
ES: Yes, later.
LD: What were your students like? What was the quality of your students when you first started?
ES: Actually, I liked my students very much. Some of them were very sincere, but their background wasn't too good.
LD: You think their high school background was very weak?
ES: I don't think it was any weaker than it is now.
LD: Really?
ES: I don't think the high school background—the schools—are any better now than they were.
LD: Are they any worse?
ES: Actually, I know from my own children who went to school here, and they went to normal colleges. One went to Oberlin [College, Oberlin, Ohio] and one went to Rochester University [Rochester, New York], so you could have any kind of background, I think, [unclear] for all kinds of people.
LD: Did they have difficulty because of their high school background? No? They did all right?
ES: No. No. They did all right.
LD: They did all right. Good. That's reassuring because I have children in the local schools. Tell me something about the university and how it changed from the period that you were there. What changes did you see? I know there were changes in size, for instance. The university grew.
ES: Yes, always new buildings.
LD: A lot of building.
ES: A lot of building activity. And I was moved from one place to another. At first, we didn't have offices. We had offices in old buildings across Spring Garden [Street]. In the old buildings over there, where Graham Building is now.
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LD: So you started out in a building that was where?
ES: I started out in McIver Building.
LD: Oh, in McIver.
ES: I had no office. I had to use the lounge. [laughs] And then, after a year or two, they got some offices in the old building across the street from McIver Building. And it was not too good.
LD: And then where did you move after that?
ES: Then we moved—after that we moved into the Graham Building. And that was very nice because we had offices there. And then we moved on the other side; the mathematics department is now there in the [Bryan] Business and Economics Building.
LD: So before you retired, you moved into that new building?
ES: Yes. Yes.
LD: Did you like the new building?
ES: Oh, sure. There was a shortage of space to carry everything with you.
LD: When I try to find offices in that building, I get extremely lost. I think the corridors upstairs where the teachers' offices are very—
ES: In the Business and Economics [unclear] mathematics they had offices right on the same floor, but upstairs there was so much glass and that was nice. The space where we had sometimes parties, Christmas parties.
LD: Was the math department very friendly?
ES: I didn't know any other department very well, so I don't know how to compare it. Maybe a little dry. [laughs]
LD: A little dry. Well, at least you had Christmas parties. A lot of the departments don't have Christmas parties.
ES: They still invite me every year.
LD: That’s nice. So you don't feel—you didn't have a lot of contact with other faculty members on campus?
ES: No, that was not my—the faculty was nice. But I'm not such an outgoing person, so I kept more to myself. [laughs] They were nice. I think it would be an honor—at parties they 8
would have, I mean at school parties. I felt I was a little older. I was the oldest in the department, so I didn't want to impose myself on them.
LD: Well, I'm sure that that would not have been their position. Tell me something about the leadership of the university. Who was the chancellor when you came?
ES: Singletary.
LD: Otis Singletary?
ES: Yes. [James] Ferguson was most of the time.
LD: Most of the time.
ES: And then—
LD: [William] Moran?
ES: Moran.
LD: How did you like Ferguson?
ES: I liked him.
LD: Your husband was saying that you got to know him.
ES: Yes. He was a very friendly, outgoing person.
LD: Did you feel that he had a kind of a vision for the college?
ES: I don't know if he had whatever you may consider a vision for buildings and big enterprise, maybe not. He was more of a kind person, moral, highly moral leadership. I don't think he had the idea to maybe—what makes a university great is not only the buildings. I mean, they are necessary. He came from Mississippi, and he had—you could hardly think that a person from Mississippi could be such a—you expect them more to be—[laughs]
LD: No, go ahead. You're looking for a nicer word, but say whatever it is you're thinking.
ES: I am thinking that he was just—the racism of the region—
LD: Open-minded?
ES: Yes, yes. Open-minded. So he could have a friend who was black and he wouldn't have minded it. On the other hand, he felt the same about race as religion. [unclear] This was very important at the time because this was 60s, and he played a big role and made a big 9
difference. I think you have to take it—consider the time that a person—the 60s were very troublesome.
LD: Was Greensboro very—was there a lot of turmoil in Greensboro in the 60s?
ES: No. Not that we noticed, but we heard about it. Not as much as on the other campuses, some other campuses.
LD: As for instance, Chapel Hill?
ES: Well, Kent [State] University [Kent, Ohio, where on May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard shot and killed unarmed students, some of whom were protesting the United States invasion of Cambodia].
LD: Oh, you mean other campuses in the country, not just North Carolina. Were there any crises on campus while Ferguson was the chancellor that you can remember?
ES: That's it. I didn't have any. In this recent article in the Bulletin. Perhaps you saw it?
LD: No, I didn't.
ES: Yes. It said they had problems in the cafeteria, some cafeteria workers, but I didn't notice any of this.
LD: That was not something that was very obvious on campus?
ES: No.
LD: I had heard about that, though, before. I believe there was a strike of cafeteria workers. But I have heard him described as being a very diplomatic, gentlemanly human being. And I think that's interesting. I'd never heard it suggested, but perhaps it had something to do with his being hired that he was open-minded and liberal.
ES: Yes. Yes. I think that was his contribution. It was very, very good at the time. But Mr. Moran is very—also a fine example for the students, I think. I don't know what goes on behind—with the Alumni Association and all those things.
LD: Yes, there's something going on there too, but it's—
ES: I don't know. I don't take sides and don’t know too much about it, but really, the campus has grown. It has grown very rapidly.
LD: Did that affect the math department? Was there more demand for math courses as the Business School—?
ES: No. No, they had their own—I think—No, they don't have their own math courses. But 10
maybe with the computer courses and so on. I don't know about the—
LD: The business, per se, but the computer, the growth of the computer department has made the department grow.
ES: Actually, in the department we have now, they have more people majoring in computer science than in mathematics. It's more interesting.
LD: What kinds of jobs did math majors typically graduate and get? Or did they go to graduate school? What did math majors do?
ES: Yes. Mostly teaching.
LD: Mostly went into teaching?
ES: Yes. The ones that didn't go further than the high school level. And then the ones who got a master's degree, they wanted teaching jobs at the university.
LD: Is it necessary now to have a PhD to teach at the university, or are they still hiring master's degrees? Do you know?
ES: I think they're still hiring master's degrees.
LD: Master's degrees? Is it less common to have a PhD in math than in some other—?
ES: It's pretty hard, I mean, it's certainly hard in other things, too, but it is hard in math.
LD: Because of the nature of the independent research?
ES: Yes. Yes.
LD: I would imagine that would be the case. I'm taking college algebra right now.
ES: You are?
LD: Yes, because I didn't have any undergraduate math.
ES: Yes. See, these kind of students I had. Wonderful students, but they didn't have the math.
LD: But, you know, the requirement for teaching does not require you to have a specific math course or any particular level. Just any math course.
ES: Yes. Any math course.
LD: So I tried to get the one that was the most, the hardest I could—
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ES: Who's teaching that?
LD: A graduate student. She was a high school teacher, and she's gone back to get her master's. So I think that she's in the process of getting her master's, and she's teaching this class. Her name is [Walker] Weigel. Weigel. She's very good. She's very thorough. She gives us too many tests though.
ES: Why do you take it, you say?
LD: Because to be, to get an A certification, which you were talking about before, you have to— it doesn't matter what you teach, Latin, whatever, you have to have one math course. And when I was in college in the late—early 70s, late 60s, there were no—the requirements were all dropped. You know, lots of colleges dropped their requirements, so I avoided math.
ES: You didn't have to have math?
LD: No.
ES: Now they have to have math.
LD: Well, it changed back again.
ES: Yes. I mean, even [unclear] certificates.
LD: Well, at UNCG when you came, was there a math requirement, do you remember, in 1966? There must have been. Did they drop it then, or did they always have it?
ES: They always had it. That's why I had the job. [chuckles]
LD: Do you remember—?
ES: I think it's good. I think that underneath everything, there are very intelligent people. I mean, when it comes to math, I've forgotten it all, but, of course, my sister was an excellent student, but she has forgotten all her math.
LD: Well, it was an embarrassment to me all my life and an embarrassment to my husband, as well. At least I think maybe I can stay ahead of my children.
ES: How old are they?
LD: Eleven, eight and five.
ES: Eleven, eight and five. Wonderful: three children.
LD: They haven't had any algebra yet, but the oldest one is creeping up on it. He's in the sixth 12
grade. So I think now maybe I can help him a little bit. I think actually—I'm enjoying it. It's a lot of fun. It's nice to have the answers in the back of the book to be able to—
ES: Oh, they put them up?
LD: I mean, you know, there are a lot of things you can take where, you know, there is no right answer. So this has a nice, concrete—
ES: Yes. Well, great. I'm glad that they're asking for—
LD: They are. But I wish that they would—I think that they should specify that it has to be above a certain level because I think it's just—
ES: Well, college algebra is not that easy. And they call it college algebra because it's not what they teach in high school.
LD: Well, this is not duplicating what I took in high school. This is—whatever would have been the next course, this is it. Because I didn't want to take something that was just—I thought it would come back to me. And it has. It took, you know, it took a little while, but I, there are things that I, you know, that I did remember. We did the first month. I remembered—
ES: So you are taking courses?
LD: Well, actually, that's not a good idea. Next semester I'm going to try not to do that many things because it can get too confusing.
ES: When you have all this to learn for your teaching and all this to prepare, and—
LD: I have to remember not to speak so much on the tape about myself because we're interviewing you, but it's easy when you get into a conversation to forget the tape recorder is on, which is a good thing. So there has always been a math requirement, as far as you know?
ES: As far as I know, yes.
LD: What about—?
ES: You could take [unclear] college algebra, and the foundations of math [unclear] little things, like I said, statistics and algebra or number theory or something little—
LD: What are—you said that you enjoyed your years at UNCG? What are some of the things that you found rewarding?
ES: I personally enjoyed because, for myself, I could do what I wanted to do. And I enjoyed teaching, and my students appreciated me [unclear] [laughs] 13
LD: That's good enough. Did the curriculum change while you were at UNCG? Do you remember any discussions that—?
ES: The one thing that the head of the math department always did—she gave me eight o'clock [am] classes just [unclear] and we always used different textbooks. It was never stale. I never could teach the same thing year after year.
LD: Did they change the textbooks purposely or just to experiment with different—?
ES: Yes, probably both, but it was to keep the teachers—
LD: On their toes?
ES: Yes. Probably. But it was—I enjoyed it very much teaching and being able to do it gave me a feeling of satisfaction. And, you know, after I had gotten to school that I could do it.
LD: Is there anything else you'd like to add to the record? Are there any people that you remember especially, besides Dr. Anderson, you were talking about?
ES: Yes, well, Dr. Posey. He was a very fine—is the record machine on?
LD: Yes. It's going. Yes.
ES: He was very nice, but he was sort of strict, and he had his moods.
LD: How long was he chairman of the department?
ES: The whole time while I was there, and I was there even after he—maybe the last three years, there was another one. But he was for a long time.
LD: Ten or twelve years?
ES: Eighteen or nineteen.
LD: Strict in what way?
ES: Whenever you wanted to complain about something, like you don't like the early class, or could I—I had three different preparations. He got very, "It's all I can do. I can't do any better." [unclear] So, you know, he couldn't do much, but as it turned out, he was a nice man. When I retired, he said at the retirement party that was one of the best things that he did was to hire me. Wasn't that sweet?
LD: That was very nice. What kind of load—how many courses did you teach routinely, per semester?
ES: I usually taught three. It was three-quarters; it was three preparations. I bet I could have 14
taught a fourth one, be full time, but they wanted to save—but they realized I was married and had a husband the next morning—. So they used me a little bit.
LD: So you were exploited a little bit.
ES: I didn't have to do it, after all. It was my choice. [unclear]
LD: I'm half time, so I know what you mean.
ES: Yes. I was more than half.
LD: Although I don't have to do—my husband envies me. I don't do committee meetings. I don't—
ES: Yes, that helps. I don't know so much about the inner workings because I didn't do that—committee meetings.
LD: There's something to be said for that. I haven't talked to a faculty member yet who really enjoys all those committee meetings, and they seem to have multiplied. Did you know Mereb Mossman [sociology and anthropology faculty, dean of instruction, dean of the College, dean of faculty, and vice chancellor for academic affairs] at all? Did you have any contact with her?
ES: Yes.
LD: What kind of person was she? Well, let me ask you what kind of administrator she was.
ES: There were a lot of—in the beginning before it became coeducational, there were a lot of very nice educated women—I mean, kind women, and one was Miss Mossman. I didn't have so much contact with her, but she was highly educated.
LD: But she took the university into the coeducational period and beyond. She continued to be the dean—
ES: Yes, but I mean, at the time, there were, before it was coeducational, there were a lot of— there were some women who had much more influence than later on, with chancellors or other men.
LD: Who else besides Mereb Mossman do you think was very influential?
ES: Yes, I was thinking. [unclear] Eloise Lewis [dean of the School of Nursing] was another one. But actually, many of these women were not—as time went by, I guess there was more required of the heads of the departments because in the department, when I first came, they didn't have—it was first of all undergraduates. They didn't have certain courses. And later on they had much tougher courses—you know, graduate courses. And I guess Dr. Lewis—I think she knew her 15
calculus inside out. That's about the toughest course they taught at the time, and that's really a beginners' course, now.
LD: So you think the women were—
ES: Maybe not that—well, not because they were women, but they were educated. I thought at the time that they were educated, but now I think the heads of the department or the professors, the professors have more knowledge. It has become—also, it's a graduate school.
LD: More advanced degrees.
ES: More advanced.
LD: Because I have the impression that women—there were more women in the departments, let's say, before the mid-sixties, and then they began to be replaced by men. So you think—
ES: Yes. And at the same time they began graduate schools in some departments, and I must say I was surprised when I went to Wake Forest that they had a graduate program. They had entirely different courses that I'd never heard of in Greensboro, but then later on they got the same courses. It's certainly improved, definitely. Because they had a masters' degree, they had to improve. But I know Greensboro College [Greensboro, North Carolina], the head of the department there, all they taught was calculus.
LD: So your tenure at UNCG was a happy one?
ES: Yes.
LD: Do you want a minute to think if there's anything else you want to add?
ES: No, probably after you have left I will think of something.
LD: Yes, I know, that always happens. Well, I want to thank you for the interview. It's been a pleasure talking to you. Thank you.
[End of Interview]