Oral-History:Maria A. Stuchly
About Maria Stuchly
Maria Anna Stuchly (M'71–SM'76–F'91), a pioneer in bioelectromagnetics, was born in Poland on 8 April 1939 on the eve of World War II. She received the M.Sc. degree from Warsaw Technical University, Warsaw, Poland, in 1962, and the Ph.D. degree from the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland, in 1970, both in electrical engineering. In 1970, given permission to attend a conference at The Hague, she subsequently defected and immigrated to Canada where she held a postdoc at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada. She worked as a research scientist at the Bureau of Radiation and Medical Devices for Health & Welfare Canada, developing protection standards for occupational, medial, and public exposure to radio frequency (RF) and microwave fields. In 1978, she was appointed as an adjunct professor in the Electrical Engineering Department at the University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada. During the 1980s she advised Canadian utility companies and participated in international panels on the biological effects of radiation. In 1992, she joined the University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada, as a Visiting Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and in January 1994, she became a Professor and Industrial Research Chair Holder funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and industry, retiring in 2004. She to Vancouver, BC, Canada, and became an Adjunct Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada. After retiring, she was also made a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation (AP) Society for three years and enjoyed the opportunities afforded for speak with young professionals, share her knowledge and experiences, and travel the globe.
In 1971, Stuchly joined IEEE and after becoming affiliated with Health Canada, she was asked to join COMAR, the IEEE Engineering Medicine & Biology Society (EMBS) Technical Committee on Man and Radiation (COMAR), a group of experts on health and safety issues related to electromagnetic fields, from powerline through microwave frequency ranges. In 1991, Stuchly was elected to Fellow of the IEEE “for contributions to the understanding of interactions of electro- magnetic fields with biological systems, and the development of effective protection standards.” Her research interests included numerical modeling of the interaction of electromagnetic fields with the human body, medical applications, and the design of wireless-communication antennas. She published more than 190 articles and contributed to over 300 papers at scientific conferences. She was active in other professional organizations, serving as president of the Bioelectromagnetics Society, 1986-1987, and vice president of the International Union of Radio Science (URSI) in 1996.
In 2021, historian Allison Marsh, recorded this oral history with IEEE Life Fellow Maria A. Stuchly (8 April 1939 - 15 August 2022) for a project on women in the field of microwave technology and future articles to be published in the new IEEE Journal of Microwaves. The series has included “biographical pieces on women who have made significant and continuous contributions to microwave science, technology, and applications over the course of their careers,” including Stuchly, Rhonda Franklin, and Linda Katehi. See: Marsh, Allison (January 2022), "Women in Microwaves: Maria Rzepecka Stuchly," IEEE Journal of Microwaves, 2 (1), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE): 23–27, doi:10.1109/jmw.2021.3123911
About the Interview
MARIA A. STUCHLY: An Interview Conducted by Allison Marsh, IEEE History Center, 5 March 2021
Interview # 850 for the IEEE History Center, The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.
Copyright Statement
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It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:
Maria A. Stuchly, an oral history conducted in 2021 by Allison Marsh, IEEE History Center, Piscataway, NJ, USA.
Interview
INTERVIEW: Maria A. Stuchly
INTERVIEWER: Allison Marsh
DATE: 5 March 2021
PLACE: virtual
Early life and education
Marsh:
Today is March 5th, 2021. I am Allison Marsh. I am an Associate Professor at the University of South Carolina. I am currently beginning this oral history interview from Casey, South Carolina, where it is about 2:38 p.m. in the afternoon. I’ll hand it over. If you can introduce yourself and say where you are currently located.
Stuchly:
I’m Maria Stuchly and I’m a retired Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. I’ve been retired for a while. I now live in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Marsh:
Wonderful. We are operating or conducting this oral history over Microsoft Teams, and we’re three time zones away from each other. Welcome and thank you very much for your time. We’re going to go through the list of questions provided by the IEEE [History Center], talking about your early life, education, and then your career. If you could please just start by stating your full name, and the date, and place of your birth.
Stuchly:
My full name is Maria Stuchly. I was born in Warsaw, Poland, just a few months before the Second World War on the 8th of April 1939. I am a single child, and of course my early childhood was very much affected by the Second World War. I lost my father. I don’t know my father because he was killed early in the war, and my mother brought me up. My father was highly educated, a lawyer and an economist. My mother didn’t have a university education. She had a high school education. I grew up during the war. I think I was in Warsaw. Of course, I don’t remember anything from that time. The earliest I remember; I was probably five years old when there was the Warsaw uprising and then my mother was in the [Polish] resistance. Then we got relocated somewhere to a camp. Then we got liberated. In the meantime, somehow my mother was somewhere else. I was with people who looked after me and then she found us. Then we lived outside of Warsaw in a suburb, sort of a remote suburb, so she took a train to work. I was looked after by a couple of women and they sort of fed me, but they didn’t really do much for me. They didn’t care much, but that was all right. I found my buddies. I could climb trees. I could play ball. I could steal apples. So, that’s my early childhood.
Marsh:
Excellent. Could you tell me a little bit about your early schooling, what you can remember? Elementary school, anything from favorite or least favorite classes that you may have taken?
Stuchly:
Elementary school was just a blur. We were in the suburbs. Some kids were older. Some kids were younger. I basically tried to fit in. I was sometimes a naughty kid, but I also knew my boundaries. Then I think in grade seven we moved to Warsaw. Then I joined my cousin, and we went to the same school and that was much more structured. Then I went to high school. In high school, it was actually still an all-girls school. So, it had a lot of influence from before the war and it was a funny mix of some of the aristocracy going to the same school and some of us who didn’t have a penny, like my family, because they lost everything during the war. Studies, the classes, were easy for me, practically all subjects. I think some were maybe grade ten. I had this amazing teacher, the only male, who was a physics teacher, and he basically made us derive the equation from him telling us the results of the experiment.
Marsh:
Oh.
Stuchly:
To me this was so exciting and so mind-blowing. He was the guy who had a Ph.D., and he was of course not on good terms with the government because he was this highly educated guy who should have been at the university, but he was at the high school. So, that was fascinating. Then I also loved math, but I also liked literature.
Marsh:
Oh.
Stuchly:
So, at that point, practically when I was selecting what I wanted to do in life, to tell you the truth, the influences were the fact that my mother was a single woman, and she struggled. She was smart. She became later an accountant. She took courses at night. She worked hard, and the one thing that she instilled in me was that I had to be well educated, independent, and of course make money. Where does it all take us? I think I was also very much interested in architecture, in the design, the creativity, but the fact that we didn’t have money prevented me practically from going into architecture because I would have needed drawing lessons. I also realized that that’s a very competitive field, and I wasn’t 100 percent [sure] that I would make it. This is 1956 we are talking about, so it’s like ages ago.
Then there was this new field of electronics, high-tech, the most promising, the newest thing that could happen, and the most competitive because in Poland the exams were very competitive. Fortunately, by the time I was entering, applying to the university, my background counted for less than it had two or three years earlier. Because I was officially intelligentsia, I didn’t get any points for my background, so it was basically the grade point average and then this very competitive exam. I applied to Warsaw Technical University which was a ticket basically to a good profession and I applied to this newest field. Then I set my exam together with some 2000 people or more, and 200 of us got in. So, I was lucky to get in and life was good suddenly because suddenly I had all those buddies, so many friends. Yes, there were relatively few women, probably about 10 percent of the class, but it didn’t matter. The guys were pretty nice and accepting, so I never felt discriminated that way, and I can’t say I studied super hard.
Marsh:
[Laughs]
Stuchly:
I studied, but I also enjoyed life. I enjoyed dance. I enjoyed dancing [and] theater. Then of course, we were a group of people who already looked at how we could escape from this horrid system. How can we be ourselves and not have to watch what we say? So, that was my studies. I graduated in 1962 with a master’s degree because at that time in Poland after four years you selected your specialty, and then get your master’s[degree]. You did a thesis, a fully defended and written thesis, so in the fourth year I actually liked radar.
Marsh:
Okay.
Stuchly:
Radar, microwaves, and radar, I found that fascinating.
Marsh:
How did you get interested in microwaves and radar? Can you remember who introduced you to it?
Stuchly:
I always had an inclination. I’ve never been a kid who wanted to take things apart, put them together.
Marsh:
Oh.
Stuchly:
I didn’t have anybody who would maybe make me interested in that. The idea, the physics, was still something that I enjoyed; microwaves, Maxwell equations, and the rest of it. It’s pretty close to physics, I think.
Marsh:
Right.
Stuchly:
It’s very hard sometimes to tell what influences you. I know I had a broad choice of subjects. The way it happened in Poland was they sort of ranked you from number one to number, by that time, 120 or so because there was quite a lot of people who eventually didn’t make it to the end because of the highly competitive level. So, I could select anything. I don’t know actually how I got interested in microwaves. It was this mathematics, not certain things like power engineering which was also a part because there was nothing else but electrical and computer engineering. It was called electronics, but it really was classical electrical and computer engineering. Power engineering never interested me.
Robotics, remote control, not really. So, somehow microwaves seemed quite interesting. Also, the professor who was teaching later at my master’s level was teaching radars, I mean really radars, including hardware and other things, and whatever they did, was an excellent teacher. Later on, I learned he was not really a good researcher. He only published maybe two or three papers in his life, but he was really engaging and a good teacher. So, that’s how I ended up in microwaves.
Marsh:
You completed your master’s degree--
Stuchly:
In 1962.
Marsh:
Then did you continue to work, or how did you find your way into a Ph.D. program?
Stuchly:
Quite similar to the way even it’s organized in North America, if you are good with your thesis at the master’s level and you publish, usually your supervisor [recommended that you continue]. My radar professor, whom I liked, was my master’s supervisor. He suggested that I should do a Ph.D. in his department with him and as sort of a research assistant. I was teaching students in the lab, I was giving substitute lectures, and I was preparing the labs, so pretty much similar to what a teaching assistant does in North America.
I stayed there for, I believe, at least two years, but since my supervisor was not a good researcher, he really had a hard time suggesting a topic and I wasn’t mature enough. I’m not sure whether I knew English at that time. I think I could read English, but I didn’t read broadly enough. I couldn’t find a subject for my Ph.D. and I really at that point wasn’t determined that I needed a Ph.D. I was paid decently. And then one day one of my other professors, a junior professor who was still working on his Ph.D. because in those days you could be a professor without a Ph.D., also in North America.
Marsh:
Right. Can I just pause and ask the names of these two professors? So, the physics professor who you liked, but was not a good researcher, what was his name?
Stuchly:
The professor? I don’t think that I should be doing that.
Marsh:
That’s fine.
Stuchly:
Probably he’s dead by now.
Marsh:
That is all right.
Stuchly:
It’s just that I don’t feel comfortable doing it. Is that okay?
Marsh:
That is absolutely okay. No, these are your memories, and you’re able to tell me what you want and not what you want.
Stuchly:
Yes. I mean I remember the name, but there’s no point of doing it.
Marsh:
I understand.
Stuchly:
I believe it was 1964. After a couple of years, suddenly an offer came from my research institute. It was a very unusual research institute at that time in Poland, which was developing microwave components, specialized components, and selling them to the West. So, it was research, small scale manufacturing, testing, and then selling. One of the junior professors who knew me, who also talked to me, suggested that why don’t I apply for a job there. I did and then I got the job. We were designing lots of microwave components. Some like something which today is no longer in use because of the network analyzers, but a lot of at that time interesting wave type components which were sold to Western Europe and to the U.S. [They were] small scale for research purposes. And that, for me, was a dream job because I was a good designer even when I was still looking for my Ph.D. I started to publish. Let me see. Anyway, that was a very successful job. But at the same time, all the time, I was dreaming of going to the West because of the culture, because of the freedom. Don’t take me wrong because Poland had amazing theater, amazing symphony, amazing some of the movies, some of the design. Those were really good things that were happening, but there were four of my male colleagues and myself, and we had those dreams. We just tried one way or the other perhaps to get away.
Marsh:
I absolutely understand. Just full disclosure, my family is Polish, and it was my grandmother who is probably a generation ahead of you, who immigrated to the United States.
Stuchly:
Lucky you.
Marsh:
Oh, yes, yes, so very lucky.
Stuchly:
I feel lucky, too. Then while talking, life is complicated. In my dream job in that research institute, my not immediate boss, but boss one level over--and that was a small place--it was someone whom I found very attractive. Fortunately, he found me attractive as well, but at the same time we decided somehow early on, because of my dreams of leaving and as I learned later, he had the same dreams, but that was much later. When our relationship became a little bit closer, we decided that I should move to another research institute. In the meantime, I also met another professor from my Warsaw Technical University who said, “Okay, with what you are doing with your work, if you do additional things, you could make it into a Ph.D. project.” He was not in that field directly, but he was someone who traveled to the West, who knew the literature and the important things. [He knew] the things that you can make a Ph.D., and you can publish it, it’s going to be okay, maybe even published in the Western literature. So that’s what I was doing, working in those two research institutes.
Marsh:
What was the name of the second research institute?
Stuchly:
It was Institute of Physics.
Marsh:
Oh, okay, thank you.
Stuchly:
Institute of Physics.
Marsh:
Okay
Stuchly:
Very sort of like prestigious and good, and I had a very nice boss. I was working on something else, but I had enough time and energy still to work on my Ph.D.
Marsh:
Oh, that’s wonderful.
Stuchly:
Yes. In 1970, I got my Ph.D. I defended it. It’s sort of a lengthy process in Poland because you have the reviewers. You have to give presentations at different institutions, and then it’s a defense open to the public like here. I did all those things. In the meantime, my relationship with my former boss whose name is Stan Stuchly--my name was a very Polish name, and I published under that name for six years in Canada, but that’s all right.
Marsh:
Do you want to give your maiden name?
Emigration to Canada
Stuchly:
Yes, it’s Rzepezka, a difficult name. I finally smartened up and decided, okay, I will change my name. My future husband [Stanislaw Stuchly (died, 2003)] left Poland in 1969, going to the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg and doing his post-doctoral. He got permission to go. He also got an offer, a job offer, from Hewlett Packard.
Marsh:
Oh, wow.
Stuchly:
The part which is - - today. He was a pretty smart guy.
Marsh:
[Laughs]
Stuchly:
So, with all this, since we kept our relationship quiet, then he arranged for some of his buddies an invitation to come to Paris when he was going for a conference in Paris. That didn’t work because I couldn’t get permission to leave. So, to make a long story short, eventually, towards the end of 1970, I was able to leave Poland and go to The Hague for a conference. I presented there.
Marsh:
Ah.
Stuchly:
And meet people. I was planning on returning to Poland because of my mother, I wanted to leave, but I wanted to leave more officially, not just because I went to a conference and never returned. Then when I came to The Hague in the Netherlands there was basically no discussion. Stan’s friends [were] all telling me, “No, no, no. You can’t [go back to Poland]. You should leave now because there is an opportunity.” Then Stan’s boss at the University of Manitoba [who had seen] my CV and saw there was some publications and saw my field of research, said, “Would you like to be my post-doc also.” By that time, my husband or future husband, was already an assistant professor. It was a very hard decision, but I’m so happy I made the decision to stay in The Hague in 1970. By that time, I could speak pretty decent English with a very nice British accent rather than an American. [I had] lots of difficulties with some of the North American expressions, but nevertheless when I went to the Canadian embassy for an interview there was no problem in understanding what my interviewer was saying and no problem for him to understand what I was saying. And lucky enough, at that time, it took about a month for me to get immigration to Canada. So, on a very cold morning or maybe evening in November, and in November on the prairies you have snow and it’s really cold.
Marsh:
Yes, it is.
Stuchly:
That’s where I ended.
Marsh:
So, you never left The Hague? You had gone for the conference, and you never went back to [Poland].
Stuchly:
No, I couldn’t go back to Poland because I wouldn’t have been able to leave, and I knew it. I think I pretty much had a very hard talk with my mother who supported me in my decision. It was very hard for her. She eventually came to Canada, four years later, and it was fine. So, with that, my North American adventure started.
Marsh:
Before you wrap up your European experiences, are there any specific moments in your life up until that point that really stand out as life changing or critical moments? I recognize that deciding to emigrate is a huge change, but are there any smaller things that you can remember? Whether it came from a political sphere or an economic sphere, anything that you just have very strong memories of?
Stuchly:
[I had] a wonderful time in The Hague with some of the professional colleagues who were so welcoming and so patient with me. Actually, yes, there was one event which really, I think stuck in my mind. One of the persons whom we met in The Hague was a very successful industrialist who was living at that time in The Hague. He was married to a Dutch woman exactly my age and he just got married to her. He was considerably older than she was. When we were at the conference, Taylor--I can’t remember his last name, but Taylor invited my boyfriend and me because it was a well-known story of my escape from Poland. He invited me for dinner with his wife Angelica in The Hague. It was a very nice house, in a very posh part of The Hague, on the ocean. After we had this nice dinner and everything was great, he asked my boyfriend whether he could talk to him without the women. Then they came together, and Stan said, “Maria, Taylor just invited you to stay in his house, in their house, while you are waiting for your visa because he travels a lot and Angelica gets lonely even though she had her mother there but if you could keep her company.”
Marsh:
Oh.
Stuchly:
We thought this was the most amazing and generous offer I’ve ever got in my life.
Marsh:
Yes.
Stuchly:
I’m not sure whether it’s political, economic, but that was one of those amazing experiences that I think I appreciated to this day.
Marsh:
What was that month like, while you were waiting for your immigration to be processed?
Stuchly:
Angelica cried a lot, so I had to console her because she felt lonely, and she wasn’t sure. I think Taylor was one of those super charming men. So even though she was newly married, and we are talking at that time I was already thirty years old and so was she. It’s like she had this difficulty. “Okay, I’m thirty. I’m just married.” While I was, “Okay, life is full of opportunities.”
Marsh:
Right, right.
Stuchly:
She was worried. I remember her crying, but I also remember spending the little money I had on going to the museum, trying to see everything, and also spending a week in Paris.
Marsh:
Oh, right.
Stuchly:
Staying in this five-story walk-up place and having like a great time. Because I could remember from my high school where each painting was and, you know, - -. That was amazing. Also, every week I either called or tiptoed to the Canadian embassy to ask how things were going. Then of course I had to have a medical exam and some other sort of things. I wrote letters because at those times you wrote letters, so I wrote letters to my mother, letters to my boyfriend, and that was it.
Marsh:
Right. Did you continue any of your research during this time, or was it just a month of waiting?
Stuchly:
Oh, no. That was the only month because changing jobs I usually also had about a month of vacations since - -. No, I didn’t think what I would do at the University of Manitoba. Basically, I was worrying whether I would still have enough money that my boyfriend left me and when will I get my visa. I think I sort of anticipated that I would get my visa, but it was more a question of when.
Marsh:
Okay. What did you think of Canada and the new adventure that your life was going to take? What did you know about Manitoba before you arrived?
Stuchly:
About Manitoba, probably nothing. About Canada, probably quite a bit.
Marsh:
Okay.
Stuchly:
Yes, and [quite a bit] about the [United] States. Actually, I think had I come earlier we might have ended up in California because my boyfriend went for a visit to Hewlett Packard and he said, “Oh my god, this is so advanced.”
It was a soft landing in Manitoba. Now, professionally was it a good place for me? The answer is no because at that time the dean of engineering didn’t have a Ph.D. The department head didn’t have a Ph.D.
My supervisor, who was originally I think from Lebanon, was educated somewhere in the [United] States. He probably came as a fairly young man to the States, so he had a Ph.D. from a good school. I can’t remember what school it was. He was also very intercranial. He could also write very good English. His writing was excellent, so he actually taught me how to write well in English
Marsh:
Good.
Stuchly:
All the students and post-docs thought he had a big ego, but at that time, he was a good person to be a post-doc with.
Marsh:
Okay.
Stuchly:
I published like crazy with him and probably others in the department. I learned that that was important. I arrived in November. In the summer, I remember I went to a conference in California to present a paper and also drove from Winnipeg to Denver by myself in a big car, first time. We had a small car, but we had to rent a big car because our supervisor who was not a good driver wanted to be taken to California, driven [to California].
Marsh:
Wow. [Laughs]
Stuchly:
What did I work on at that time? Mostly on industrial applications of microwaves to food drying because I got a contract from [the Department] of Agriculture. They employed me as a research associate part time and then I was an adjunct professor at the electrical and computer engineering after two years of post-doc.
Marsh:
Right.
Stuchly:
I stayed another four years of a total of five and a half in Winnipeg. We traveled a lot. After two years, we got married. We didn’t think of buying a house, that was not a priority. The priority was to see the world and all the amazing parks of Canada and the US and being cold because we didn’t have the right equipment.
Marsh:
Oh, nice.
Stuchly:
I think both of us at that time were trying to establish ourselves as microwave engineers in North America which was very exciting. However, we both were growing exceedingly tired of limited opportunities in Winnipeg, at the University of Manitoba, because while we were gaining international recognition through publications, presentations, that was not necessarily reflected in our salaries which was very important, and the recognition within the faculty.
Marsh:
Ah.
Stuchly:
Plus, this was already the 1970s, but Manitoba was a very conservative place in some aspects. So, for the first year and a half when we were living together, I think my colleagues felt sort of sorry for me that I wasn’t married. When we got married [in 1972], they just waited when I was going to have kids.
Marsh:
Right.
Stuchly:
Both of us talked about kids and talked about life because when you are in your early thirties you are not twenty. And you are not - -, so I have to have kids with my husband and that’s the only way we live. Right? Because I think of our experiences growing up and also realizing that having kids requires a lot of work and devotion, we decided no, we won’t have kids. So, for the next three years everybody was looking whether I was going to get pregnant. That was an interesting experience, but that’s not sort of a very professional kind of experience.
Marsh:
I don’t know. I think it’s a question, specifically when talking with women, expectations of whether or not they will have children, when they will have children, how that will affect their careers, is something that is very much part of what is considered part of your profession.
Stuchly:
I think today very much it is. I mean I have friends; I have one very close friend who was my Ph.D., and she wanted to have kids, and she also realized how it would reflect on her career. I would say it’s such a professional choice, personal choice, more personal but also professional. Today I think it’s quite acceptable to do whatever you think is right for you.
Marsh:
I hope so.
Stuchly:
I think the large percentage and I think men are accepted too because particularly engineers--I’m diverging into a different sort of sidetrack.
Marsh:
That is fine.
Stuchly:
After I talk to men, later on in my fifties and so, and when their daughters wanted to go to engineering their whole outlook has changed.
Marsh:
Yes, yes.
Stuchly:
There was this acceptance of very many things which they didn’t accept when they were in their twenties or thirties.
Marsh:
I have seen that as well.
Stuchly:
I think today this is pretty much just fine.
All right, moving forward with my career.
Marsh:
Yes.
Stuchly:
Thirty publications later, under my maiden name, both of us, Stan and I, looked for opportunities. An opportunity came from the University of Laval in Quebec, but that would have meant a whole new language.
Marsh:
Yes.
Canadian government employment
Stuchly:
So, we decided that maybe that wasn’t the greatest idea. Then a job opportunity came from the Canadian government in 1976.
Marsh:
Okay.
Stuchly:
Yes. I actually applied for a job in Winnipeg with the government. I didn’t get it. I was overqualified, but my resume got on file with the Canadian government. When they looked for a specific position, the government, they have a pretty good system that they can pull out the resume. They pulled out my resume. They called me and they asked whether I could fly for an interview, which I did. I interviewed. It’s a panel interview. They asked me a lot of specific questions. Then I was offered the job with a salary, or maybe not. Yes, the negotiations started.
Marsh:
Can I ask, had you become a Canadian citizen at that time?
Stuchly:
Yes. After three years, I was a Canadian citizen.
Marsh:
Okay.
Stuchly:
Yes. I think through this time when you reside in the country after three years you can pass an exam like in the U.S. Like you have the Constitution, we have here the similar. Yes, I was a Canadian. It’s very difficult to have a government job if you are not a citizen.
Marsh:
I just wanted to make sure.
Stuchly:
Yes. I was a Canadian citizen. After they told me that they were interested in hiring me, we started to talk about my salary. At that point, my husband was a tenured professor, so I was like, okay, this is a serious business. I didn’t believe we were really moving, so I sort of pushed my demands to the top of the scale because in the government you know what the scale is. I mentioned that, yes, this is interesting, but my husband is tenured, so we’ll have to have a look at it. Then they said, “Okay, let your husband find a job in Ottawa. We can give him a contract for a year because we really want you.” I came back to Winnipeg with a big grin on my face and not thinking that we are moving anywhere. I explained it to my husband, and being who he was said, “We are moving, and I don’t want to work for the government. There are two universities in Ottawa, the University of Ottawa and the Carleton University, and I’m going to see whether I can find a position at one of them.”
Marsh:
Oh.
Stuchly:
I had to accept my job within a few months while Stan wanted to finish with his students and give the university enough teaching time and so on. So, he could move only about half a year later. In this half a year, he applied to both universities, and got a position with the University of Ottawa, tenure track, but not with tenure.
Marsh:
Oh, yes.
Stuchly:
It’s a new tenure track position and I go to my government job.
Marsh:
Okay.
Stuchly:
Yes.
Marsh:
What were you doing for the government? What was the job?
Stuchly:
For the government, I was looking at the interactions of microwaves which were then very controversial. At that time, it was a lot about microwave oven, radio stations, television stations, and the biological effects on human body.
Marsh:
Yes.
Stuchly:
That was something which I knew quite a lot about and I was always good in measurements. I could actually do the measurements. I could do the evaluation of the exposures. I could evaluate the literature and advise the Canadian government on standards, so that was my job.
Marsh:
Okay.
Stuchly:
As I said, at that time, I would say it was mostly what I would call passive research, reading what has been published and making the best out of it.
Marsh:
Right.
IEEE activities
Stuchly:
Plus, there was an interest at looking at electrical properties of human tissue because that affects the interaction. From the University of Manitoba, I already had the background of measuring the permittivity, the permeability of all those things, so that was a pretty good match. The job was very stratifying. I had a number of bosses. I think also after I was active already, in 1971, I joined IEEE.
Marsh:
Okay.
Stuchly:
Very quickly, I’m not sure it still exists, but there was COMAR, Committee on Men and Radiation, and microwave radiation. [In 2025, COMAR is the IEEE Engineering Medicine & Biology Society (EMBS) Technical Committee on Man and Radiation (COMAR), a group of experts on health and safety issues related to electromagnetic fields, from powerline through microwave frequency ranges.]
Marsh:
Okay.
Stuchly:
Because I was already presenting some papers on microwaves and radiation, and I met people and I looked at interaction of microwaves with food, with measurements in the industry, once I joined Health Canada, I was invited to be a member of that committee.
Marsh:
Okay.
Stuchly:
Later on, I think I even became a chair of that committee. My interactions with the international community, particularly DUS (phonetic) once I joined Canada and even at the University of Manitoba, were very strong. In 1971, I joined IEEE. Then I would have to look at the list at when I did lots of the voluntary work for which I never volunteered. I usually was volunteered or elected.
Marsh:
I know how that works, yes.
Stuchly:
But actually, I find that my interactions, my volunteer work on the committees, were extremely helpful in my professional careers. I think this is something which I would always advocate for women entering the profession. Building the network of acquaintances, some people who are not from your generation, maybe even from different fields is extremely important in your future career.
Marsh:
Did you ever join the Society for Women Engineers (SWE)? Or do anything specifically with your gender? Or was it mostly just IEEE as a professional organization?
Stuchly:
IEEE mostly, and only towards the end of my career, there is Women in Engineering [IEEE Women in Engineering (WIE)]. Of course, I became a part of it.
Marsh:
Right.
Stuchly:
My early role at the conferences, well, I was pretty well established already and knew a lot of people.
Marsh:
Right.
Stuchly:
You know, I was bringing men to the receptions that women were offering. Today, everybody wants to go to those receptions, but at the beginning of Women in Engineering, yes, we had this committee, and I never chaired. I never really did much work but at the conferences, yes, I sort of pulled those things together sometimes.
Marsh:
Nice.
Stuchly:
That was fun but no. I’ve certainly been the fairly old or senior woman in engineering at certain points. Yes, the younger women sort of looked at what I was doing. I remember one of my colleagues at that time, she’s very accomplished now at the University of Utah and she’s high in the administration and a really excellent researcher. I remember Cindy [Furse] told me one day, “Oh, yes. I decided to go to Ph.D. because when you presented things at conferences it seemed like you had fun.”
Marsh:
Oh, right.
Stuchly:
I told her, yes, this is good. Okay. Allison, we should be moving. Where are we?
Marsh:
Yes. Let’s move on. Do you want to talk more about your time with--
Health Canada
Stuchly:
Health Canada?
Marsh:
Yes, with Health Canada.
Stuchly:
Yes. After two years with Health Canada, I was a research scientist. So that’s pretty much what on your national level is like your FDA and National Institute of Standards - - and other places.
Marsh:
Yes.
Stuchly:
I was paid very well. I had to publish and present. Because I had enough time and energy, and my husband was in a very similar field, I also became an Adjunct Professor at the University of Ottawa. I supervised students sometimes with Stan, sometimes by myself. I did my own independent research. That allowed me to maintain diversified publication portfolio. It also allowed me to get grants for my own research. We have like an equivalent of your national NSF [National Science Foundation].
Marsh:
Right.
Stuchly:
We have NSERC [National Sciences Engineering Research Council] where if you are an adjunct professor even you can apply for a grant. You won’t get a lot of money but some money maybe to have some student whom you co-supervise, because if you’re an adjunct professor you can’t supervise solely. You have to co-supervise. So, I sort of worked in those two streams. That really was highly rewarding because in Health Canada I was a little bit of a jack of all trades. I did research. I advised on standards. I drafted standards. I interacted with people, with FDA who were drafting the US standards. I interacted with IEEE which was developing their own standards.
Marsh:
Right.
Stuchly:
And also, in Health Canada eventually there was the end of my stay there. I ended up with this unusual sort of kind of a job that I was the media person.
Marsh:
Oh, okay. That’s unexpected.
Stuchly:
If journalists wanted to interview someone from the department about something very controversial related to microwaves or related to power lines because later power lines and health effects of power lines became a big issue, then my director would send me for the interview because I knew the subject and I just was believable.
Marsh:
Okay.
Stuchly:
Did I like doing it? The answer is no.
Marsh:
Okay.
Stuchly:
Plus, you are very much on the spot and it’s not a nice interview like you are interviewing me. It’s basically at that point a journalist wants to find something wrong with what the government is doing.
Marsh:
Yes. That is not the intention of the oral history interview.
Stuchly:
No, no, and I very much realized that. So, with that comes year 1991.
Marsh:
Okay.
Elevation to IEEE Fellow, University of Victoria
Stuchly:
Probably already in 1990, I become a Fellow of IEEE.
Marsh:
Yes. Mary Ann Hellrigel, who is the Oral Historian for the IEEE History Center, wanted me to ask specifically about how you felt in learning that you were a Fellow of the IEEE.
Stuchly:
I was very happy. I was really happy. I think I was nominated twice, maybe three times. I can’t remember, but when I got it, I was really excited.
Marsh:
Yes.
Stuchly:
That was one of the highlights, I thought, and it was very helpful in my later career. At that time, it wasn’t like my first sitting on a high-level panel or anything like that, but, yes, I was definitely excited and very grateful that I got it and got elected.
Marsh:
Okay.
Stuchly:
In 1991, maybe 1990, I’m getting a little bit like I feel too comfortable in my job. My husband feels that also he achieved everything he wanted at the University of Ottawa. He didn’t want to go the administrative stream there. He was for two years, but that interferes too much with the research. At the same time, he was getting a little bit tired of the snow and was thinking that the western coast of Canada would be a nice place to move to.
Marsh:
Yes.
Stuchly:
But before that one of the very famous cardiac surgeons in Ottawa with whom my husband worked a little bit helping him mostly on the administrative side to get engineering because he was doing artificial heart at that time. The surgeon also met me and learned what I was doing. He decided that it would be a brilliant idea if I could establish a Medical Engineering Institute at the University of Ottawa, so he pulled me as a volunteer with a Professor of Neurology from the Faculty of Medicine. The two of us would start to build teams to do work together, engineers with the physicians, with doctors. That was a very exciting side project. We started. We got some funding. We had presentations, seminars, and it all started rolling, but at the same time my husband was also looking for a job on the west coast.
Marsh:
Oh, yes.
Stuchly:
He applied to UBC [the University of British Columbia] and there was an opening. He applied to the University of Victoria where there was an opening. It’s a small department and it had administrative problems. At that time, my husband was sixty years old, maybe fifty-nine, so he was thinking, okay, now I can suffer five years as an administrator. I know how to do it, and I will still have some research, maybe not at the same level, but the climate looks nice. It’s a new adventure. He interviewed, he got the job, and then we agreed that I would look for a job once he gets a job. I had this brilliant idea that I may work in Vancouver and commute to Victoria for long weekends. That was fine with me, but at that time I was already fairly known in the country and in the community. So, the dean of engineering really wanted to get my husband as the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering because they really had problems. They interviewed a lot of people, and he was the man for the job.
I got a year contract as a visiting professor not on tenure track [and we were told that] “She still has to interview with the faculty. She has to give the presentation.” As you probably know, it’s a fairly stringent process because you have to interview with nearly everybody in the department. Everybody has to see that you merit the employment. But the dean was also very smart because he said he knew that I was collaborating with industry, and he knew that I was recognized by the Canadian industry. So, he said, okay, we have those endowed chairs that are funded by NSERC which is like an equivalent of your NSF.
Marsh:
Yes.
Stuchly:
Which I mean your system works a little bit differently.
Marsh:
Right.
Stuchly:
And the industry, so there is an endowed chair that’s funded part by industry, and part by the Canadian government. He said if Maria can bring the industry money, and if NSERC supports her application, then we would be welcoming the endowed chair at our university.
Marsh:
Oh, yes.
Stuchly:
This meant for two years I was really working hard to put the program together, to put the application together, and to convince the Canadian industry, which were very appreciative of my job when I was in Health Canada, that I would be of value for them doing research.
Marsh:
Right.
Stuchly:
At that time, the safety of cellphones became a big issue. That was one issue. The other issue which was not microwaves but electromagnetics, power lines and health.
Marsh:
Yes.
Stuchly:
Utility companies which interacted with me already in Health Canada, really knew that they needed my expertise, and they may be needed my research skills and my numerical modeling capabilities at the university. This really put this program on solid ground. So, with that I was really working hard for two years because teaching is different from giving presentations. I was an experienced presenter, but I was not an experienced teacher. It took me quite some time to put my courses together and to learn also that not everybody learns the same way. You need different approaches to teach people which is very difficult.
Marsh:
Right.
Stuchly:
Then I started to sort of hustle for my grants. It was also very nice because I got a grant from NIH, from the National Institutes of Health, together with my California colleague. We did very nice interdisciplinary research. He was a biologist, and we put together a very nice project aimed at interactions. There was a concern about cancer, childhood leukemia specifically in this case, and exposure to cellphones.
Marsh:
Right.
Stuchly:
You were probably a kid when those things--
Marsh:
I remember.
Stuchly:
Because you are a historian you probably have read about it.
Marsh:
Well, this was all in the 1990s, right?
Stuchly:
Yes.
Marsh:
I was studying engineering then. I remember actually getting issues of IEEE Spectrum and studies coming out about cellphones. Well, all of the implications of cellphones and do they cause cancer? What happens on the plane? You know, all of those things. Everybody was trying to figure out how cellphones were going to affect everything else.
Stuchly:
That’s actually the field where I worked in different aspects of this. There are some very technical aspects of it and then there are public relations policy aspects. I had this very nice NIH grant and of course we were so thrilled to have it. Then I had some other grants. After two years, the Alberta Utility Company, BC Utility Company, and Ontario, the phone service provider and wireless provider, now Bell Canada, which is like an offshoot of your Bell, they gave me money.
Marsh:
Yes.
Stuchly:
Then the NSERC, the interviews, and it all came together. So, I got endowed chair for five years and then five years later I renewed it. That was sort of my career, the quick [overview].
Marsh:
Yes.
Stuchly:
Publications, a lot of it; more than 190 articles in journals.
Marsh:
That is a lot of writing that you did.
Stuchly:
I liked writing.
Marsh:
Oh.
Stuchly:
Yes. And lots of conference presentations. If you would ask me what I really valued, which job did I like the most, being the boss. Because then you were a boss, but also you work with amazing people, with people who are much smarter than you are, who you can sort of influence, who are challenging, bring new ideas, new approaches, different way of looking at things. What’s so rewarding? You can in a way see them grow.
Marsh:
Right.
Stuchly:
Later on, some of them are my best friends to this day.
Marsh:
Oh, good. Did you supervise students while you were a professor?
Stuchly:
Oh, yes, yes.
Marsh:
Okay.
Stuchly:
A good number of them. Since I only was a professor for twelve years, it’s not a huge list. Certainly, I have somewhere a list of my Ph.Ds. It’s under ten. I also had foreign students and foreign post-docs coming to work with me which brought a very nice balance to my lab. It was also very enjoyable for other students. I had from Belgium, from Finland, from the U.S. Oh, and from Japan which is a big cultural difference. I worked with this young man who was an amazing young man, an entirely North American young man. I’m not sure it’s good, but a North American young man. So, that was exciting. My outstanding student? It’s my one and only Ph.D. female. She’s my professional doctor. She’s a professor now at the University of Alberta. She’s been very successful. She graduated with her master’s in 1997 and a Ph.D. in 2001.
Marsh:
What is her name?
Stuchly:
Elise Fear.
Marsh:
I’m always looking for the next people to interview, so I’ll follow your suggestion.
Stuchly:
Yes. Elise is really one of my very, very best friends.
Marsh:
Oh, good.
Stuchly:
Yes. I had a couple of master’s students, females, but Elise is my very, very special student.
Marsh:
Okay.
Stuchly:
Yes. So that’s the connection to female. I mean I had two Bangladeshi students who were amazingly good. I had Canadian students. I actually didn’t have any U.S. students post, like visiting. I had visiting from Japan, from lots of different places, yes, and from South Africa.
Marsh:
Wonderful. Nice. I mean I always love it when people run a very international lab because I think that experience of the exposure to all of the different countries is just beneficial to everyone.
Stuchly:
I think so. Some of the students, for instance, my Bangladeshi students or Japanese students, for a long time they couldn’t sort of accept that I can be called by the first name. That’s because everybody else calls me and that’s the way it was in my lab because that’s comfortable.
Marsh:
Right.
Stuchly:
Certain things you can do whatever you want but certain things you can’t.
Marsh:
You said that you did not ever face any discrimination because of your gender when you were in Poland. Did you ever find any discrimination against you as a woman engineer while you were in Canada?
Stuchly:
You know, not really.
Marsh:
Okay.
Stuchly:
Sometimes there would be this sort of maybe undercurrent.
Marsh:
Okay.
Stuchly:
Oh, yes, in the department. You know, the department’s a strange place. You have your colleagues with whom you get along really well, and you have some colleagues who really hate your guts. Of course, I had those too, but I’m not so sure it was specifically related to me being a woman. It’s very hard for me to tell. I can tell you a sort of funny story. One year, when I was still in Health Canada, I took a leave of absence for half a year because I wanted my husband at least to have half a year of sabbatical because otherwise he would only go for a couple of months and never went for a nice sabbatical like professors do.
Marsh:
Right.
Consulting
Stuchly:
So, I quit my job. I took a leave of absence and then applied for a consulting job in Australia. He went to Melbourne because we decided, okay, this is the only sabbatical. We should go somewhere exciting.
Marsh:
Yes.
Stuchly:
I applied for a job with the Director of Research, and he gave me this consulting job, but it was also very much a public relations job because they had serious issues with the unions and the standards. Telecom Australia, which hired me, which is now Telstra, had some work to do. The way they operated was not entirely safe, but the unions wanted a little bit too much, so my job was to put their program on solid footing.
The Director of Research knew exactly and there was no problem whatsoever. I got two nice Australians to help me to find my footing. But then came an open meeting with the unions, open to the public. I remember we sat and somebody else was giving presentations. He [the Director of Operations] was basically talking to my husband who came and was very patronizing towards me. He was like, “Yes, I got my bachelor’s in this - -.” It was really like you could feel it, that he thought, “Oh, no, she’s just a companion to her betrothed husband, and we hired her, but what can we expect.” Then came my presentation and then came the questions from the union guys, from the public. Because I knew the subject, I could answer all those questions and tell exactly what things were right, what things needed to be done, and what was wrong. This guy, after that presentation, told the other people, “Okay, whatever Maria wants, you guys have to make sure she gets it. Do anything you can to let her do her job.” So, that was like really wow. I mean, I was already self-confident at that time.
Marsh:
Right.
Stuchly:
So, I think I’ve been lucky. I’ve been lucky because of my early experience as a student. I’ve been lucky to be married to a very good man, who unfortunately died prematurely, but that’s life.
Marsh:
Yes. Yes, I’m sorry though.
Stuchly:
Yes. So, mentoring, I love to have my students. I love to have my visitors to the lab. I also really enjoyed all the meetings, all the European meetings, all the Australian meetings, all the U.S., [and] many of those Canadian, of course.
Career advice, reflections, closing remarks
Marsh:
Right. What advice would you give to young women entering the field now?
Stuchly:
Be open-minded. Don’t limit yourself to a very narrow path. Look for opportunities. Learn all the time new things. Do things which are fun and also have life. Don’t depend on your profession to give you satisfaction in life. This is an eighty-year-old speaking.
Marsh:
No, I think this is all very, very good advice. And to compliment that sort of question, how do you define success in life in general? So, not necessarily professional, but like if you’re thinking about a full life how do you define success?
Stuchly:
I think it’s very individual how you define success because it depends how you look at life. If you’re someone who really comes from a large happy family, you would want to have a large, happy family. If you are someone who likes adventure and achievement, then those things are very meaningful. I think to feel successful, you really have to work on achieving a balance in your life. How do you achieve that balance? We hadn’t talked about one big part of my life which is physical fitness and that helped me through the hardest times in my life.
Marsh:
Okay. Let’s talk about that.
Stuchly:
Not when I was in Poland because until I was in my mid-thirties I never thought about fitness. I never thought I had to do anything. But around thirty-three or so, I started running and I liked it.
Marsh:
Okay.
Stuchly:
To me taking this break around lunch or whenever I could go for a run or go to the gym and be active on vacations. To me that’s an extremely important balance to my life. That’s also balance which allowed me at a certain point to say, “All right. You were a reasonably successful professional, but that was life then, and now it’s life now.” So, have other interests. In the profession today, I would say if you are an electrical engineer, if you are microwaves or any other electrical field or electrical engineering, look also at other disciplines that you could collaborate with that can bring maybe something new and some different approaches. Talk to other people in other professions [because] that sometimes brings interesting ideas.
Marsh:
What was your favorite collaboration that you worked on over your career?
Stuchly:
Oh, I think the one with my colleague who is a biologist, a pharmacologist from the University of California doing this animal research project where I did all the modeling of the fields in a mouse. [I did] like the segmentation, the image processing during the finite difference time domain modeling, while he did the exposure. I also designed the systems, the control systems, exposure systems, but my colleague did all the animal work, and all the staff. That was very exciting work. The preliminary results looked exciting that we got in effect. The bottom line, there was no effect. So, the standard was negative, but the collaboration was extremely enjoyable.
Marsh:
Good, good.
Stuchly:
The other thing from which, for instance, I learned a lot was I was on your National Academy of Sciences evaluation panel. I’m trying to see exactly when it was. I marked it, but it’s a long list on the CV. I should have done excerpts of that.
Marsh:
Well, I was actually going to ask, would it be possible, would you feel comfortable sending me a copy of your CV, so that I can have specific dates and titles to look at?
Stuchly:
Sure.
Marsh:
Okay.
Stuchly:
Yes.
Marsh:
Thank you so much.
Stuchly:
Yes. It was 1997, a Committee on the Possible Effects of Electromagnetic Fields on Biological Systems. The committee was chaired by a very famous guy by the name of Dr. Charles F. Stevens. I think he wasn’t in the field, but I learned so much [about] how to balance the opposing views and how to get to consensus. It was an amazing experience. Yes, I will send you some of those. It’s not super formatted or anything, but yes. I have to cut out some of the stuff because you are not interested in courses I taught, or review committees for my colleagues, [or] supervisory committees. I will sort of put it together and by Monday you will have it.
Marsh:
Thank you so much. That is wonderful. That would be very, very helpful just to make sure that we get dates and titles correct.
Stuchly:
Yes, because I mean I’m rambling, right?
Marsh:
We need to make sure we get them all together. I know that you are retired now. Can you just talk a little bit about your life in retirement. How do you spend your time? How do you enjoy your life?
Stuchly:
Now?
Marsh:
You can talk about before the pandemic and now.
Stuchly:
Before the pandemic. Now I hate it, to be honest. Doesn’t everybody else?
Marsh:
Yes.
Stuchly:
Because I don’t have to wear a mask. I have to wear a mask, but everything else. This is probably not in my CV, but the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society in which I was most active towards the end of my career was very nice to me as my retirement was approaching. I said no, no, no to lots of things that I was invited to do because I couldn’t. I was just too busy, and my personal life was too busy. But after I lost my husband, I was close to retirement or maybe retired, they asked me to be a Distinguished Lecturer for three years. That was a big honor for me and a very, very enjoyable experience because I spent, I think, a week in Australia, traveling to six different places, giving lectures.
I went to Europe, to different places. I went, of course, to the U.S. and Canada, to different places. I had two topics on which I lectured and that was an amazing experience. It also came at the time when I was winding down my research because we had compulsory time at that time. They would have wanted me still to teach and be paid for it, but that wasn’t in the cards for me. I still had contracts, and I still had three students at that point, so I still worked without being paid which was fine because I still was doing consulting. I worked probably two or three years, but also those three years I was traveling around the world, wherever I got invited. I didn’t get an honorarium, but someone else paid my travel. I could also add a few days and go sightseeing or do whatever I wanted to do, so that was I think a great reward for me.
Marsh:
Right.
Stuchly:
Then for another few years after I retired, I also was MC’ing the meetings, giving awards, so that was a fun job. You do a little bit of work on the computer for a certain period of time and otherwise you just MC a meeting. That lasted I think until 2008, and maybe in 2009 I was still doing something a little bit professionally. Also, I always loved to travel. So, having enough money, having enough experience about how to travel because I always traveled, I decided that, okay, I can go hiking with a group and chase behind much younger people and keep up with them. [I can] go kayaking and I took a course, go snorkeling, and maybe improve my skiing a bit. Those were the things that have always kept me busy. Organizing travel takes time, if you do everything on [the] computer yourself. While having money to be able to do it, but not having an infinite amount of money, [means] doing it in a reasonable way. So, that’s what I’ve been doing after I retired.
Marsh:
That’s lovely. That sounds like--
Stuchly:
And, seeing friends and meeting with friends and doing what we all do and like to do.
Marsh:
Yes, yes. I sort of have two follow-up questions. One, what is your opinion on compulsory retirement in the university system?
Stuchly:
It changed I think a year or two after I retired.
Marsh:
Right.
Stuchly:
My view is I’m someone who doesn’t believe in tenure in the sciences and engineering. I’m someone who believes in tenure, maybe in political science, in some of those faculties which are where your views come into the picture. In science and engineering, your productivity whether it’s [publications] or another assessment tool, it has to be balanced because not everybody has to publish the same number of papers but there are balances. Some people are better teachers. Some are better researchers. Compulsory retirement, I don’t think it’s the right thing, but I also think there has to be a way for the universities to let the younger people grow and free the positions for younger people and not to keep people, who were brilliant when they were in their late sixties, at the age of eighty or seventy, even seventy-five. Some are even no good at fifty-five.
Marsh:
Right.
Stuchly:
That’s a different story.
Marsh:
Yes. I think I share most of your same views on that. My other question was, did you ever go back to Poland?
Stuchly:
I went in 2002. I was invited to come to the conference and to give a presentation. It was an interesting experience. I no longer felt a part of the country. I don’t have an accent in Polish, but my expressions somehow people could tell I was different.
Marsh:
Right.
Stuchly:
It was very nice to meet a few of my friends and to see that they’ve done well because I was very worried that I had had this very privileged life in North America, and they still lived in the system. So, overall, it was an interesting experience [and a] pleasant experience. Not having a family, I never felt really motivated to go back again.
Marsh:
I mean that all makes sense. So, are there any things that I neglected to ask you, that you would like to add to this interview?
Stuchly:
No. I’m not sure. No, I don’t think so. I think you can probably, once you see my CV, pull out some of the professional stuff. But also, my CV is not complete because in 2003 I was like tah-dah.
Marsh:
I think that’s fine. Don’t worry about that.
Stuchly:
Yes, because listen, I realize that as much as I would like it to be about me, at this point in my life, it’s more important whether this is useful to what Peter [Siegel] wants in getting women into microwaves and into engineering. And not only getting them into it but keeping them happy in it.
Marsh:
I think that last point is important because I did work in technical consulting for several years, and at some point, I made the decision that I was going in a different career path. I always tell people sort of about the value--I mean this is just my opinion, but the value of an engineering education. Even though I’m not a practicing engineer, it doesn’t mean that I have forgotten how to approach problem solving. I definitely think, in many ways, I approached life based on some of the training I had, so it’s not like I leave it behind, but I’m also not working in the profession. I think keeping women in the profession, well, keeping anyone in the profession, is an interesting challenge.
Stuchly:
It is, but I think you retained from engineering an analytical approach and being super organized.
Marsh:
Yes. So, yes, I mean engineering, the different fields of engineering, have had different levels of women participation in it. And a lot of the biomedical have significantly more parity among the genders. Electrical engineering is pretty much sort of in the bottom from all the major sort of five big engineering fields. But within electrical, I was actually quite shocked at Peter [Siegel]’s figures that within microwave, it’s only at about 6 to 7 percent women.
Stuchly:
Yes.
Marsh:
I mean, I think electrical overall is about 12 percent, and then microwave is half of that.
Stuchly:
But there is one very important point. Where my education was in electrical and computer engineering all the way through, my work probably definitely from 1976 was biomedical engineering.
Marsh:
Yes.
Stuchly:
I was a member of [the] IEEE Biomedical Engineering Society. I was active there and that twist was there from the beginning. I had to learn a hell of a lot of biology and physiology on my own.
Marsh:
Yes, yes.
Stuchly:
That combination, and the biomedical twist, yes, that definitely makes it, I think, more appealing. There’s a number of women who actually were drawn to microwaves and did research in biomedical fields, so yes.
Marsh:
Do you have any other women that you would recommend that I contact to conduct oral histories?
Stuchly:
Zoya Popovic from the University of Colorado.
Marsh:
She’s on my list. In fact, she has agreed to be interviewed, but we have not set a date, so.
Stuchly:
Okay. You will find Zoya very interesting, yes.
Marsh:
Great.
Stuchly:
And the younger generation, Susan Hagness from the University of Victoria. No, not Victoria; but Wisconsin, Madison [University of Wisconsin, Madison]
Marsh:
Hagness? Okay.
Stuchly:
Yes. If Susan talks, yes, she’s good. She’s biomedical. She has the same sort of microwaves background. She’s biomedical.
Marsh:
Okay, wonderful.
Stuchly:
She has also a kid, so it’s different.
Marsh:
Okay.
Stuchly:
Of course, you’re free to interview Elise Fear at the University of Calgary.
Marsh:
I will. She’s at Calgary? Is that what you said?
Stuchly:
University of Calgary.
Marsh:
Okay.
Stuchly:
I’m just trying to think. I was thinking about women, microwave, Cindy Furse, and she’s at the University of Utah.
Marsh:
Okay.
Stuchly:
Yes. If Cindy will talk freely to you, they’re all younger women than I am and still employed. Yes, because of her background and her sort of personal life, it’s interesting. Cindy is the one who said, “Oh, yes, I saw you having so much fun when I was a student. I wanted to have so much fun too.” And she’s getting fun, I think.
Marsh:
Oh, good. I hope she’s having fun. I do think we should all have fun in our lives and our careers.
Stuchly:
I think she does, but in the professional life I’m sure she does.
Marsh:
Good, good, good, good. So, is there anything that you would like to add before I officially close?
Stuchly:
I think, Allison, listen, if it’s not clear on the tape don’t hesitate, e-mail me, call me, that’s fine.
Marsh:
Wonderful. Thank you so much. You have been a joy.
Stuchly:
Pleasure meeting you.
Marsh:
It was a pleasure meeting you. I’m sorry that we had all of the technical difficulties at the beginning, but it was all good.
Stuchly:
What technical difficulties?
Marsh:
Oh, just with the release form from the IEEE History Center.
Stuchly:
Oh, you could see I can be pretty upset.
Marsh:
No, it’s what we need. It’s exactly what we need. Also, I do think it’s all leftover from when these were done in person, and you would just sign a piece of paper.
Stuchly:
Yes, yes, yes. Okay.
Marsh:
Okay. Well, thank you so much. This has been a pleasure just learning more about your life. And, as I said, I will send the recording to the IEEE History Center. They’re going to send it out to be transcribed. They will send that to you, and you can make corrections.
Stuchly:
Yes. Because it also could be not very clear sometimes what I said. And once I sort of feel like, oh, I’m talking to a friend, I tend to mumble also. I’m aware of that.
Marsh:
Oh, I have a tendency to talk over people which is a terrible habit when I’m interviewing, but I’m sure they will all work it out. It will be good. Well, thank you so much. I’m going to hit end on the recording right now.
Stuchly:
Thank you, bye.
Marsh:
Enjoy the rest of your day.
Stuchly:
You, too.
