Wanda
Dann
Ithacan College
June 26, 2005
Interviewed by Nell Dale
Recorder in Lisbon, Portugal
Segment length 6 minutes, 5.9 mb
File name: Dann26June05NDsnip.mp3
N: Today is June the 26th, 2005,
Wanda,
why don’t we start by your telling a little bit about your early
childhood and
your family?
W: I grew up in the suburbs of
{part
omitted}
N: Did you start out majoring in science and
mathematics?
W: Yes, I began as what was called a medical
technology major and I had a scholarship and I worked in the hospital
three
days one week and four days the next week and took a full time load. And that helped pay my tuition.
Whatever I earned at the hospital was matched
by the college. So the good thing about
that was that I was able to go to college because my parents couldn’t
afford to
pay for it. The bad part about that was
that, in working in the hospital, I realized that being a medical
technology
major was not what I wanted to do. Perhaps that was a good thing, on
reflection. I changed to a chemistry
major and took a position as a TA in the lab and then realized with the
TA
position that I very much enjoyed the teaching side and so changed my
major to
secondary education with a dual teaching emphasis -- chemistry and
mathematics.
N: At what point did you decide to go on to
graduate school?
W: Well, I got a teaching certificate. We moved
to
N: Were you doing it in chemistry?
W: I was doing it in chemistry.
And so I went to Colgate. Of course
then I had two children. And so over
several years’ time, I had two children, I taught high school
chemistry, I
became science department chair. I
gradually managed to get my degree in chemistry, and a master’s degree
in
teaching.
N: What then led you into computing?
W: In the process of doing my master’s degree at
Colgate I needed to analyze data that I was collecting for my master’s
thesis and
my advisor sent me to the computer lab to work with a statistic package
on a
VAX. So that was my introduction to
computing. I essentially took my data
and learned how to use data entry methods to enter my data. [I] discovered that the program was not
working the way it should work and in terms of some discussions with
the people
who were the programmers and the managers of the IT system there
(although it
wasn’t called IT then) discovered that I had insights as to how the
program
should be written that they didn’t know and they suggested that I might
be
interested in taking a couple of courses in computing.
So after I finished my master’s degree (I
waited a couple of years until my family situation had stabilized and
my children
were in school), I took a few extra hours now and then and went to take
computing
courses. My first course was in BASIC.
N: And you became hooked on it?
10:33
W: I did. I enjoyed it so much.
It was obviously my thing. I felt
the connection to the technology, the
problem solving that was there. I
thought perhaps I could write programs that would be used for helping
me to
teach high school students and I did it.
I also talked the administration at the high school into getting
Apple
IIc’s. As I recall, they were the first computers that we purchased for
the
school, the high school. And then I
began taking additional courses. One of the courses I took very quickly
was in
FORTRAN and then I took Pascal and that opened a whole world for me and
the
school that I went to gave me an opportunity to just build on the
degrees I
already had to get a master’s degree in computer science. A couple of
years
into working on a master’s degree in computer science, a nearby college
called
me and asked me if I would be willing to come to their campus for an
interview.
They hired me to teach at their college and do curriculum development
for a new
computing curriculum.
N: So you made the transition from high school
to college because someone came to you not ...?
W: Yes.