60 Seconds With…

Barbara Anderson is Carnegie Mellon’s Bessie Anathan Professor of Drama and associate dean of the College of Fine Arts. She and her husband, Cletus Anderson, a recently retired Carnegie Mellon design professor, co-authored “Costume Design,” a definitive text covering both concept and craft.
Catherine Anderson (CFA’89) produces and directs film and television projects. Most recently, she has worked at Boston’s WGBH-TV on two major children’s television series, “Zoom” and “Peep and the Big Wide World.” She is the daughter of Barbara and Cletus.

Barbara, how is the campus environment for women different since you began teaching here in 1968?

When I started here, the university lost some good women faculty because they felt disenfranchised. That feeling hasn’t disappeared, but it’s better. Today women take part in governance and leadership more than we used to. We speak up, and we’re listened to.

Should the university be doing even better?

Barbara: Probably. The number of women students across campus is rising, and that will help; so often you hear “We’d hire a woman if we could find one.” I think the pool of women available for leadership positions in fields like science and engineering is expanding.

Catherine: Absolutely. It’s a pipeline issue; one of the projects I’m involved with encourages young girls toward careers in science and engineering. That kind of initiative will help grow the numbers of women studying and then working in those fields.

Barbara: I think the university has a responsibility to lead in these areas, and I think it tries.

The Drama School is different from the rest of the university...

Barbara: In acting and musical theater, acceptances are gender-balanced because you need that for casting. But there are more women in directing than there used to be, and we now have a stage management program that’s strong with women. Our women and men graduates succeed in equal measure, I think. Look at costume design—Ann Roth has done more than 100 films and probably as many Broadway shows, and Daniel Orlandi is doing films like “Cinderella Man” and “DaVinci Code.”

Both of you have dealt with the issue of returning to work after having children—but your choices have been very different.

Barbara: I took one week off after each of my kids was born. There was no maternity leave in those days, no plan if you wanted to have a baby and not work for a while. So I felt that getting back quickly was what I needed to do; I didn’t see another option. I just felt lucky that, when it was necessary, I was able to bring an infant to work; the costume shop was, and is, a family-friendly place.

Catherine: I took maternity leave after each of my kids—three months for one, four for the other. I think it’s great that today there’s that option.

Your choices as young mothers have also been different.

Barbara: True—I’ve worked full-time straight through. That seemed to work well for all of us.

Catherine: Yes, but that’s not right for me. I’m about to leave TV to spend more time with the kids, and to work half-time with Matt [O’Connell, Catherine’s architect husband]. He’s extremely busy and could use some support on the coordination and interior design side; that’s something we’ve always done together informally, and now we’ll make it official. In one way, it’s different from the work I’ve done before—but in another way it’s similar: it’s all about tackling a project or a problem, applying discipline and creativity, dealing with the variables, and making an impact. I have to say I learned much of that at Carnegie Mellon. So I’m excited. And I’m getting great support from Matt and my parents—even though at some level my mother thinks I’m a little nuts, right?

Barbara (laughing): Well, maybe a little...