Oral history interview with Marda Higdon Jones

Jones, Marda Higdon
2016-01-06
Thumbnail Image

View/Download File

oh494mhj.pdf (605.57 KB)

Persistent link to this item

http://hdl.handle.net/11299/188475
Statistics
View Statistics

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Title

Oral history interview with Marda Higdon Jones

Authors

Published Date

2016-01-06

Publisher

Charles Babbage Institute

Type

Oral History

Abstract

Marda Higdon Jones went to high school in Iowa City and attended Iowa State University, graduating in 1972 with a major in mathematics and minor in computer science, and accepting a job with Bell Labs in Naperville, IL. In 1976, after being promoted to MTS, she completed a master’s degree at Northwestern University (and, later, an executive MBA from Columbia University). She discuses the influence on her and her colleagues of the 1970s women’s movement and affirmative action programs at AT&T, including the Men and Women in the Work Environment and Urban Minorities workshops. In the 1970s she worked in software development, then after a one-year rotational assignment in New Jersey, she returned to Naperville in a managerial position and then moved to Holmdel, NJ, as department head in systems engineering then division manager for network architecture. In 1988 she was promoted to director at Bell Labs, and the interview relates several instances of managerial and personnel challenges. She joined Lucent Technologies, the Bell Labs spin-off, in 1996 and retired in 2000. She reflects on 1970s-era gendered images of ‘electrical engineer’ and ‘computer scientist’. This material is based on work funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation award B2014-07 “Tripling Women’s Participation in Computing (1965-1985).”

Keywords

Description

Transcript, 50 pp.

Related to

Replaces

License

Collections

Oral history interviews

Series/Report Number

Funding information

Alfred P. Sloan Foundation award B2014-07 “Tripling Women’s Participation in Computing (1965-1985).”

Isbn identifier

Doi identifier

Previously Published Citation

Marda Higdon Jones, OH 494. Oral history interview by Thomas J. Misa, 6 January 2016. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

Suggested citation

Jones, Marda Higdon. (2016). Oral history interview with Marda Higdon Jones. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/188475.

Content distributed via the University Digital Conservancy may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor. By using these files, users agree to the Terms of Use. Materials in the UDC may contain content that is disturbing and/or harmful. For more information, please see our statement on harmful content in digital repositories.