Mary Hall Reno, Physicist & Professor at the University of Iowa
"It seems to be that what's good for women is good for all." - Mary Hall Reno
Mary Hall Reno--or Hallsie, as she’s known by colleagues and friends--does not wear a white lab coat with a pocket protector. She’s not a shut-in; she’s not without friends and certainly not without personality.
The image that most people conjure up when they think of a physicist is a nerdy, socially inept scientist, Reno jokes.
Oh yes, and male. She couldn't defy the stereotype more.
But Reno’s status as a female physicist is rare indeed. Out of 30 members of UI’s physics and astronomy department, there are only four women. A graduate of Reed College and Stanford University, Reno has what she calls a “satisfying” career as a particle physics professor at The University of Iowa, where she has taught since 1990. Her Belgian husband, Yannick Meurice, also a particle physics professor, has an office right next door in Van Allen Hall.
The pattern is similar elsewhere. Nationally, only 30 percent of science faculty is female--a rise of only 5 percent since 1978. And only 10 percent of physics faculty are women. Internationally, fewer than 25 percent of earned physics degrees belong to women, according to a 2005 study by the American Institute of Physics.
A.N. Nall, author of a study about women scientists in academia, believes at this slow increase, gender ratios in science faculty will not be in balance until 2109. In the Big Ten, gender ratios are still slim--on average, some four to six women among 40 or 50 on each faculty.
Science starter Reno’s roots begin in Baltimore, Md., where she was born and raised by a lawyer father and stay-at-home mother. She has three siblings--two brothers and one sister--all with advanced degrees in political science, theology and social work, respectively.
She describes herself as an eager learner and “always interested in science,” although she admits now she wasn’t sure if that was the direction she would follow. She enjoyed the equations and numbers in chemistry throughout high school, and found that the equations in physics--as she describes them, “start with a little and move forward”--interested her most.
After high school, Reno decided to change direction and headed west to Reed College in Portland, Ore., a small school with a strong foundation in the sciences while maintaining a relaxed, avant garde reputation. She began majoring in physics but after two years was restless and unsure of her path. She moved to Haverford College in Haverford, Pa., and took classes in other subjects including astronomy and history. She quickly realized that yes, she wanted to be a physics major and yes, she needed to be at Reed. She transferred back.
She was only one of two females in the lab, she said, and at the time it seemed “normal” but not necessarily easy.
“I was still having trouble seeing myself as a physics major, and I think that was partly because of no female role models, and because I had this misconception of what physicists were like that I didn’t, and certainly didn’t, meet,” she said. “I was also realizing a lot of my physics major friends weren’t meeting that either. So I went away and came back with a fresh look and went, ‘Oh! I like these people!’”
Reno calls her career a very “linear track.” After graduation from Reed in 1980, she moved on to Stanford University where she finished her doctorate in 1985. Her dissertation, “Constraints on Left-Right Symmetric and 0(18) Unified Theory,” was a project analyzing various calculations for experiments based on models of how particles interact. She spent that following summer in the French Alps at a physics summer seminar where she met her husband. They married one year later.
By then she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Chicago. She went on to be a visiting professor position with the Centro de Investigacion y Estudios Avanzados del Instituto Politecnico National in Mexico City in 1988, before joining The University of Iowa as an assistant professor in 1990--all with her husband at her side.
“If you want to be a professor, you have to go on a straight line,” she said. “In some fields you can go away and come back, but in science there’s a pretty linear progression.”
Thriving in physics Reno ultimately came to see that her successes and progression in physics have been hinging on her gender.
The percentage of women holding bachelor’s degrees in physics was on a steady rise since 1977, and peaked at 23 percent in 2001, according to the American Institute of Physics. Women with bachelor degrees in other sciences, like biology and medicine, have peaked at over 50 percent. The outlook for master’s and doctoral degrees in physics is even bleaker.
To address the gender imbalance in physics, Reno and colleagues on the AIP Committee on the Status of Women in Physics meet twice a year to discuss how to make university departments and programs more “women-friendly.” Currently chair of the committee, Reno keeps pushing for progress for women, starting with her beginning physics classes.
“It seems to be that what’s good for women is good for all,” she said, referring to studies conducted of physics departments across the country.
In an editorial for the fall 2008 newsletter for the Council, Reno writes that after graduation in 1980, she expected she would see an increase, “a wave,” of women in the sciences. “Here we are in 2008,” she wrote, “and I see a ripple, not a wave.”
Another AIP study shows only a slight increase of women in the physics industry from 4 percent to 14 percent in a 30-year span. “This increase is not good enough,” Reno wrote. “These are still often only a handful of women in any physics event or meeting.”
She is eager to point out how medicine has seen nothing but growth for both genders since the 1960s. Law schools, too. So what is keeping women away from the sciences?
“If this were an easy problem, this would already be solved,” Reno said. “I don’t think you’re told you’re not supposed to be smart, but there’s some little thing that’s pushing that idea.”
During her time in Mexico City as a visiting professor alongside her husband, Reno said she often felt excluded from conversation or discussion because of her gender and felt more of a “wife than a professor.”
And then the end of her contract came. Without warning. She had just given birth to her second child.
“I had made plans based on the assumption that I would be working the regular time. I would’ve changed my plans if they would’ve told me,” she said, her voice clearly holding hard feelings even 20 years later. “I was so hurt, because these are people with whom I had been working. I was so insulted; really, that they wouldn’t even tell me that I wouldn’t have a new contract.”
Fortunately, she has not felt any discrimination at The University of Iowa, she said.
The “too square” stigma plays a part, too, she added, and perhaps some students just don’t know what physicists do. The work can vary by industry.
From plasma physics for plasma processing to the “whole electronics industry,” to nanotechnology and medicine, physics has a wide range of function. Reno said, “It all serves a purpose to help society,”
As incoming chair of the department, she hopes to see more high school students attracted to the UI’s physics program. Staff members have made an effort to visit high schools and provide tours or scholarship opportunities to demonstrate how helpful and interesting physics can be as an academic and professional career.
UI Department of Physics and Astronomy resource specialist Dale Stille conducts 50 to 60 experiments a year in K-12 schools with a program called “Hawk-eye on Science.” Shille shows experiments using magnets, balloons and ping-pong balls, along with various other materials, to demonstrate exactly what physics is all about.
“We want to let kids know that physics is an interesting thing to do,” Reno said. “It’s not just a service to the state but a service to the profession.”
Hallsie leads the class Reno is not into drama or too much excitement. But she’s clearly devoted to the world of physics.
“I really enjoy trying to, sort of, bring people into physics,” Reno said. “I also get to instill in them some study habits and ways of approaching science.”
Her pace changed in the spring 2009 semester. Usually a teacher to 30 or 40 eager freshmen physics majors, Reno took on a 300-person lecture for Physics 1, filled with mostly freshmen and sophomores from all backgrounds, many engineering and chemistry.
In a deep lecture room where teal-colored padded seats stretch up an incline, her gentle, clear and confident voice echoes off the cement-walled room. Students sit, squirm and whisper as she teaches them the laws of springs and reviews the past day’s equations.
Their attention--or lack of attention in some cases--does not seem to bother her. She continues to direct the class to watch her triangles, formulas and illustrations on the green blackboard. Whispering students are quickly hushed and embarrassed when she asks, “Do you know the answer to this equation, or do you have something to say?”
To break up the sessions and gossip, Reno is trying a new learning approach: a series of remote controls, bought by the students at the beginning of semester, which control answers to various displayed computer questions on a big screen. In a “voting” format, the students can converse and answer questions.
Afterward, Reno discusses the answers and why they are or are not correct. Aside from in-class demonstrations and interactive questions, she assigns online homework for equation problem solving, calling writing of equations like “an English paper, it has to make sense.”
“I think it’s challenging to make, for instance, this engineering class interesting and exciting,” she said. “It took me a while to realize that actually there’s a little performance aspect. My students right now may not say that I realize that, but I do realize that, even if I’m not so dynamic up there. So I guess that’s one challenge is to get hepped up enough for the entertainment.”
When she’s not in front of a classroom and a sea of fresh faces, she is in her office assisting graduate students with their research, many working on theories for publication in academic journals.
“You like to see people be successful at what they want to do. It’s a subject that I love, so it’s nice to see people that come in with a passion for it succeed and move on,” Reno said. “I’ve enjoyed supervising graduate students and seeing people be successful.”
Balancing act But the challenge still lies ahead in equaling, or at least raising, the female ratio of genders in physics. According to her research, nearly half of all high school physics classes are made of women. Perhaps, Reno said, it is the double-edged sword of a working woman with a family, something that she said isn’t encouraged in society or media.
“At some point I just decided I have to stop reading popular media related to women working because the message was that unless I had to work for financial reasons, that I was a bad mother,” she said. “I think there’s still a lot of that out there.”
Reno is a mother, and a proud one. She and her husband have three daughters--Marielle, 19; Nova, 10 and Naomi, 8. Emma, born in 1987, died in a car accident only a short time after Reno and her husband took sabbatical in 1997. “It was supposed to be an happy, exciting time,” Reno said wearily. “But that time is difficult to think about now.”
Marielle attends Northwestern University and the younger daughters are active in sports and other elementary school events. When they’re sick from school, they often stay in their mom’s office keeping busy with crayons, coloring books and toys. As a family they enjoy hiking and camping.
Reno’s challenges are about to multiply; she’s not sure she’s ready but said she will do it no matter what. In August 2009, she will be the first female chair of The University of Iowa physics department. In her work for the Committee on the Status of Women in Physics, she will make visits to other campuses to evaluate the status of women in physics programs.
She’s also teaching a one-credit mathematics, science and computing class in a UI dorm next fall, along with setting up plans between the physics and engineering colleges and the College of Education to create a straight-forward track for students to receive a teaching certificate after graduation, allowing for more job opportunities in physics education.
Despite the various roles she plays and the upcoming responsibilities that weigh on her shoulders, Reno refuses to believe her life is not one of possibilities.
“There’s all this media ‘You can’t have it all,’ and I feel like I’ve got it all,” she said. “It’s a tricky balance but I’ve got a rewarding career, I’m moving along.”