Dossier f10 - Bryce, Beatrice, nee Menzies

File consists of a recording of Beatrice Bryce. Topics of the conversation include Increase in female student population at Queen's. Achievements as Dean of Women: changes in childishly restrictive, complicated residence regulations; advocacy of student representation on Ban Righ Board. Strength of Queen's Women's Residences Council, Queen's Alumnae; Alumnae interest in Ban Righ. Residence life as it supports and protects academic excellence. Demands made on subject's 24-hour availability for student consultation. Subject as 'a very maternal dean'; women's growing self-reliance, necessitating change in role. Subject as founder, Canadian Association of Women Deans and Advisors. Expansion of residences, crowding difficulties: packing in students 14 to a room at beginning of term. Attitude to women's lib movement; concern for female students under heavy sexual pressure in freshman year; birth control, abortion, pregnancy in residence, putting out children for adoption. Lack of student rebellion at Queen's (1960s) as result of good student-faculty communication. Housing issue. Sense of enjoyment and power working with men. Dean of Women as a non­ academic position. Equal opportunity for women in graduate studies as an accomplished fact; female representation in student government, Alma Mater Society. Early career, enjoyment of teaching; enforced retirement upon marriage, 1936; career resumption after death of husband, invitation to teach at Queen's. Early decision to teach, parents' encouragement to attend university. Major contribution of women's sorority to student life at U. of T., continuing influence on subject's work habits. Changes in women's prospects, expectations; career-marriage combinations; unusual contact as U. of T. student with pregnant professor. Marital feelings about dependency on husband. Improving effect of marriage on teaching: learning to think of student above all, not of self. Daughter, granddaughter. Subject as Chairman, Kingston Board of Education. Husband's work with Alcan, leading to happy residence in Kingston. Saner relations between male and female residences as result of WRC work, co-educational living in general; former 'panty­ raids'. Single sex residences at Queen's, natural evolvement of co-educational dining. Continued contact with former students. European travel. Art appreciation, gallery tours. Post-retirement work: Board of Trustees, McArthur Advisory Board. Queen's Faculty of Education, present plight of teaching graduates. Inevitability of university career-orientation. Old hiring prejudice in favour of male teachers; market tightness caused by shortage of schools. Difficulty of Noranda mines issue (reinvestment in Chile) for Queen's students, Board of Trustees.