A POSITIVE SPIN

I expected to go to veterinary school but decided early that Aphysics was a more comfortable home for me than biology. I've heard a lot about how awful it was for women at Dartmouth, but I had a very positive experience. In the physics department I didn't feel like I was treated poorly; if anything I was treated particularly well. Maybe because I was in the sciences I was judged by what I could do rather than by my gender. In something like physics, if you turn : in your homework and get 90 percent of it right, there's not much anybody can say; there is no subjective judgment. In that sense, I think I might have had an easier route than some others.

A group of us physics majors became quite close. I didn't feel that my friendships were at all strained by the fact that I was a woman, even though the place wasn't well populated with women then. Three of us wo men and I took a grueling course my junior year. We did our homework and a big group project together, staying up all hours of the night. We even had some friendly interactions with the campus police as a result. That course was one of those bonding experiences under fire.

I developed a good friendship with one of the professors, fessors, too: Bruce Pipes. He taught the second term of introductory physics. I worked in the lab under his guidance. I never felt like I was "the student" down here and he was "the professor "up there. I've kept in touch with him ever since.

Dartmouth's first alumna on the faculty, Ursula Gibison is an associate professorof engineering at the Thayer School.