This month, I attended a memorial service for my friend and colleague, Wangarĩ wa Nyatetũ-Waigwa. She was a brilliant mind and a beautifully giving soul. The thoughtful reflections shared by her son, spouse, friends and former students deepened my understanding of her humble yet weighty impact. The fact that people on four continents were livestreaming the service demonstrated the ripple effect of this strong, unassuming 5-foot-tall woman of faith with a million-dollar smile and a gift for singing and languages (she was fluent in English, French, Kikuyu and Swahili).

For me, personally, Wangarĩ helped me transition to Weber State University. I was 27 years old when I first arrived, fresh out of graduate school and 2,000 miles from the place I called home. This gentle Kenyan woman with a contagious laugh made me feel welcomed in a town that felt a bit like a foreign land, even though it was located in the country I grew up in. She showed me how to live in Utah by inviting me to participate in the things she enjoyed: book groups, performances, hiking and canoeing on the Colorado River.

Women’s History Month is for celebrating “herstories” of remarkable women like Wangarĩ. It creates space to truly see and honor the women surrounding us every day.

My mentor and department chair, for example, Rosemary Conover, took me under her wing. At the time, I didn’t fully understand or appreciate that Rosemary was a pioneer. In the fall of 1970, she was the first Weber State woman among faculty, administrators and staff allowed to wear “slacks” (aka pants) to work. As her story goes, she “promised to wear only high-quality outfits, not Levis or cutoffs.” This may seem trivial by today’s standards, but I assure you it is not. When I interviewed at WSU in 1994, I wore pants without question or comment, unlike at another university in the Midwest where I was asked numerous times to go back to my hotel and put on a skirt before meeting with the dean of the college.

Rosemary broke leadership barriers in higher education, serving as the first woman to chair a faculty senate at any of the institutions of higher education in Utah, public or private. And she achieved the rank of full professor at a time when fewer than 10% of full professors in Utah and fewer than 12% of full professors in the United States were women. Although Rosemary is retired now, she still counsels me as I continue to navigate a career that would have looked dramatically different had it not been for her pioneering accomplishments and her unwavering guidance and support.

While Rosemary was just getting established as a young college professor in the 1970s, Miss Fisher, my fourth grade teacher, was going out of her way to teach me how to read. All my teachers that came before Miss Fisher tried to convince the special education teachers that I belonged in their classes. Not Miss Fisher. She figured out I loved anything that had to do with nature, convinced my parents to buy me a subscription to Ranger Rick magazine, and had me read Aesop’s Fables out loud into a tape recorder every night. As I transitioned to fifth grade, so did Miss Fisher. She was assigned to teach the advanced fifth graders and made sure I had a spot in her class. Even though I was a new reader, Miss Fisher told me I was smart and explained that reading comprehension was more important than reading fast, the same message I gleaned from Aesop: slow and steady wins the race. That’s something Miss Fisher reminded me of at each of my graduation celebrations thereafter, all of which she attended.

The beauty of herstories is they don’t really end, even with the passing of their authors. Wangarĩ bequeathed her mortal remains to the University of Utah body donor program for medical training and research. She is still teaching and selflessly impacting the lives of future medical doctors like my daughter, Michaela, a medical student at the University of Utah. We learned last Friday that Michaela matched with a residency program in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, and will be moving later this spring.

This transition is made easier knowing her story is strengthened by the intersecting herstories of the incredible women I mentioned and countless others my word limit doesn’t accommodate, not the least of whom is my mom. More on her story in a future piece.

Brenda Marsteller Kowalewski is a sociologist and vice provost for High Impact Educational Experiences, Faculty Excellence, International and Graduate Programs at Weber State University.

Newsletter