Browsing by Author "Chessler, Fran"

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    Oral history interview with Fran Chessler
    (Charles Babbage Institute, 2016-01-14) Chessler, Fran
    Fran Chessler attended the University of Michigan as a General Motors Scholar, majoring in mathematics and psychology and graduating in 1970. She went to work at Bell Labs Naperville, working on assembly-language programming to collect call data for 1ESS. She discusses the gender biases in the STA and MTS hiring grades. Promoted to MTS she did a master’s at Northwestern University. She discusses affirmative action and the distinct culture of Bell Labs Indian Hill/Naperville. In part owing to connections from the Men and Women in the Work Environment workshops, she moved to the computer center department doing systems programming on IBM computers. She describes an effective management style by her supervisor, Dana Dunn. She moved into a department chief position at Western Electric’s network system division, and compares affirmative action there to Bell Labs. In the mid-1980s she experienced unsettled times in AT&T computer systems, then returned to Bell Labs (all in Chicago) as a supervisor. In moving to the business side as senior product manager, she completed an executive MBA at Northwestern University; and retired from AT&T in 2001. This material is based on work funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation award B2014-07 “Tripling Women’s Participation in Computing (1965-1985).”
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    Oral history interview with Helen Ann Bauer, Fran Chessler, Mary R. Feay, Mary Holt, Joyce Malleck, and Anita B. Marsh
    (Charles Babbage Institute, 2016-11-18) Bauer, Helen Ann; Chessler, Fran; Feay, Mary R.; Holt, Mary; Malleck, Joyce; Marsh, Anita B.
    This interview — with Helen Bauer, Fran Chessler, Mary Feay, Mary Holt, Joyce Malleck, and Anita Marsh — took place during a two-hour luncheon. The interview does not have a biographical or career narrative, and is only loosely chronological. The interviewer posed periodic questions but the interview is mostly the stories, anecdotes, and observations of these six women. The topics include dress codes and AT&T corporate culture; early job experiences and attraction to programming and computing; women in leadership positions at Bell Labs; affirmative action committees and workshops; interactions with the wider 1970s women’s movement; personal experiences with child care; the impact of the Urban Minorities Workshop; observations about the levels of women in computing today; reflections on the transformation of the women’s movement, and responses to the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president (ten days prior to this interview); comparisons of computing with other professions; and general observations about recent modes of computing including mobile computing and social media. This material is based on work funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation award B2014-07 “Tripling Women’s Participation in Computing (1965-1985).”