Marin Women's Hall of Fame

            Jean Bee Chan remembers her early years in the village near her birthplace of Toyshan with a mixture of sadness and fondness.

            "It was during the war," she recalls, "my father had gone north; my mother, my little brother, and I moved back to the family village. Because my mother was often away, selling her jewelry and other possessions during those hard times, I was sometimes alone with other relatives. I became lonely."

            She gives herself a moment to reflect on her isolation during that time; then Jean comes to life with a warm recollection from those years during the war in China.

            "It was nice to be in the village with my aunts, grandmothers, and cousins. It was both a sad and a happy time." For Jean, childhood memories of village life in southeastern China near the South China Sea are infused with a sense of balance and harmony.

            Jean Bee Chan is a small woman with delicate features and eyes filled with strength and determination. As she reflects on her journey from a Chinese village in war-time to a full professorship in an American university, it is evident that Jean Bee Chan is a capable problem-solver when it comes to life's most serious challenges. She recognizes, perhaps more keenly than many, that a variety of experiences, both good and bad, make a wise person, make an individual capable of meeting life's obstacles and opportunities with the necessary persistence and confidence. 

            After the war, Jean’s father reunited with his family in Nanking. The family later relocated to Hong Kong, where Jean began to train as a first grade music teacher. In 1955, when she was eighteen years old, Jean’s parents decided to emigrate to Chicago where her maternal grandfather was in business.

            "I was devastated," Jean says, "when we arrived in Chicago, I knew very little English and spent most of my time scheming about how to get back to China."  In school she confronted many areas of study and excelled in her college work at the University of Chicago.

            "Mathematics was easy--it's a universal language really; all that's needed is a, b, c, and x, y, and z."  Even as a mathematics major, Jean had her challenges.  Recalling the required reading of original works in English, such as John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost and Homer's Illiad in undergraduate literature classes, Jean smiles.  Determined to achieve some understanding of those texts, she’d had to look up nearly every word in a Chinese-English dictionary.

            "When I recall those experiences," she says, "I realize that it is no surprise I planned to return to China as soon as I was through with my studies."  Then, romance intervened. On September 3, 1960, Jean married her college best friend, Peter Stanek, a talented young mathematician.  As a young wife, Jean returned to the University of Chicago to earn her master’s degree in mathematics while Peter finished his Ph.D. in Group Theory.           "I wasn't taking my studies too seriously," she says, "I soon had a young son to care for and identified myself as a homemaker."

            Yet, for some reason, life wasn't wholly satisfying for Jean.

            "No matter what I was doing, it felt as though I was doing the wrong thing," she says.  At school, classmates told Jean that her job was to devote herself to her husband's career and to rearing her family.  At home, Jean often felt restless and intellectually unchallenged.

            “I was used to an intellectually stimulating environment,” she says, “and though devoted to my son, he was a baby and couldn’t talk with me!”  Jean’s smile, a mixture of warm reminiscence and sad recollection, returns.  She remembers trying to explain her predicament to her husband.  “He has always been totally supportive; Peter has infinite faith in me.”  Although sympathetic with Jean, her husband simply could not understand what she was going through.

            “I really had no one to talk with about my problem,” says Jean, “my sisters are much younger than I; they were too young to understand this conflict I experienced at the time.”

            Still, largely because of her husband’s support and encouragement, Jean enrolled in the Ph.D. program at UCLA after relocating the family to California.            "I was pretty casual about my studies," she says, "and still feeling out of place at home and in the classroom."  Then Jean read Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique.

            "That book changed my thinking," she says, "Friedan was talking about me!"

            Friedan's book, first published in 1963, was instrumental in launching the second wave of the American women's movement.  The book grew out of Friedan's own struggles when, after graduating from Smith College in 1942, she took up the life of a middle-class, suburban homemaker.  Like Jean Bee Chan, Betty Friedan was perplexed by the lack of personal satisfaction she found in staying home.  She surveyed her former classmates at Smith, discovering that many shared her feelings.  As she began to research the phenomenon, Friedan made some startling discoveries.

            The post-war years in America saw the average marriage age of American women drop to twenty.  The proportion of college-enrolled women, compared with men, dropped from forty-seven percent  in 1920 to thirty-five percent in 1958.

            "A century earlier," Friedan observed in the first chapter of her pivotal text, "women had fought for higher education; now girls went to college to get a husband."  Friedan went on to note that by the end of the fifties, the birthrate in the U.S. was overtaking India's.

            As fewer women entered professional ranks, they were being told to focus on husband, children, and home; specifically, they were advised to take up the roles of life-partner, nurturer, and consumer.  But, for talented, educated young women, the role of full-time homemaker and mother was often less than completely satisfying.  Like Jean, Friedan's former classmates and interviewees tried to discuss "this mysterious lack of fulfillment" with husbands, who were largely sympathetic listeners unable to understand their wives' predicament.

            After reading Friedan's book, Jean began to take her graduate studies in mathematics more seriously.  Her parents, both teachers, had instilled the desire to achieve her own measure of personal and professional success and her husband was most encouraging and freely shared the homemaking tasks.

            "My husband, as new faculty at the University of Southern California, was given an evening teaching schedule, allowing me to take classes in the daytime while he looked after our son."  Jean was often the only woman in her mathematics classes and recalls that although no one stopped her from taking classes, none of her teachers, all of them male, encouraged her.  "I was a very good student, so I was allowed to stay," she says, adding with a warm, full smile, "and as the only woman in class, I did receive my share of attention."

            Jean graduated with a doctorate in mathematics in a year when new college faculty positions were few.  Meanwhile, she became a mother for the second time.  Now the family included an infant girl.

            "Then we moved to Marin County," says Jean, "and Lucas Valley became my new village."  Jean's children began attending the local public schools as well as a Chinese school while Jean and her husband became active in Chinese civic organizations.  Jean became a professor of mathematics at Sonoma State University, where she continues to teach and inspire students of all backgrounds.

            Her responsibilities include volunteer work at the Marin Education Fund, the organization that administers grants and scholarships received from the Marin Community Foundation.   While the existing foundation was providing more than three-quarters of a million dollars for undergraduate scholarships serving as many as 550 students, there were numerous deserving applicants left without the funds needed to attend college.  Alarmed by the number of Asian immigrants left unserved by the organization, Jean came to their aid.

"There simply wasn't enough money to go around," says Jean, "so I brought leaders from all the Asian communities together.  I contacted Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and American groups and asked for representatives to begin the Asian Scholarship Fund."

            Jean and her colleagues wrote a mission statement for the fledgling organization: to encourage qualified Asian American students to seek education at four-year colleges.  The funds were to be awarded on the basis of community service, need, and scholastic accomplishment.  The fundraising began with a silent auction and raffle held at an annual celebration of the Marin Chinese Cultural Group; the effort continued with a benefit dinner and dance.  By 1999, Jean's group had raised over $250,000 in endowment.  Because the money raised is invested to yield interest for dispersal, the endowment will continue to provide scholarships to students of Asian descent from Marin and Sonoma Counties in perpetuity.

            "It was unusual for the various Asian groups to join together for a common cause," Jean says, "I believe this has helped to change the landscape of the Asian American population in Marin."

            Jean has long been active in the Asian American Alliance of Marin (AAAM), an organization she co-founded with other Marin Asian Americans in the 1980’s.  AAAM is a network of Asian Pacific organizations and individuals.  Its mission is to promote justice, equality, tolerance, and understanding in our communities.  Many Asian Pacific Americans and peoples from different cultures are now good friends, and have learned a new appreciation of the many cultures that make up Marin County and, indeed, all of California.

            At the same time she was lending a hand to the Asian American community, Jean reached out to help another group of deserving students: middle-school girls at risk because of their discouragement from taking advanced mathematics and science courses.

            Studies have shown that although middle-school girls take more science and mathematic courses than boys, and are generally more successful in these courses, they largely attribute their success to luck rather than ability.  The girls also seem to experience more performance anxiety in these classes.  By high school, they begin taking only the mathematics and science classes needed for graduation.

            "When girls pass up the opportunity to take advanced mathematics and science coursework," says Jean, "they are giving up the chance to consider many careers.  They are drastically limiting their professional options."

            Many studies confirm that significant differences in academic achievement among boys and girls begin to appear in seventh grade.  Although the differences may be decreasingly in mathematics--a decrease due, in large part, to successful efforts such as Jean's--the differences may actually be increasing in other areas.

            In seeking more explanations for the disparity in attitudes among girls and boys with regard to upper level mathematics and science coursework, researchers have discounted genetic factors.  There is, in fact, no so-called mathematics gene.  Instead, relevant factors are found in education, psychology, and environment. 

            In education, researchers cite teaching strategies, teacher behavior, access to materials, role models, and information about careers in science as areas of influence affecting differences in achievement and participation of boys and girls.

            Psychological factors result from the differences in social roles assigned to boys and girls.  For example, because there is a higher expectation that girls should be quiet in class, boys are often more likely to speak up during a discussion and teachers are more willing to accept this kind of behavior.  If a girl speaks up, she's likely to be discouraged from doing so and corrected.

            Environmental factors include the small number of women visible in the professional ranks of mathematics and science.  "This is where programs such as Expanding Your Horizons become so important," says Jean, "my colleagues and I at Sonoma State do what we can to be visible to young women, to encourage them to continue their studies, and to advise them about career opportunities in mathematics and science."

            Expanding Your Horizons in Science and Mathematics is a national organization created as an intervention strategy to nurture girls' interest in mathematics and science courses with the goal of helping them expand their vision to include consideration of science and mathematics-based careers.

            The first EYH Conference took place at Oakland's Mills College in 1976; since then, nearly one-half million girls in sixth through twelfth grades and approximately fifty thousand parents and educators have attended similar conferences in thirty-two states.

            At EYH conferences, women professionals lead students in hands-on workshops, introducing topics as varied as tooth analysis, mortuary science, and cellular biology.  The conferences are organized by local volunteers who find a conference site, recruit local professional women to present workshops, raise funds from local sources, and generate publicity for the EYH program.

Jean is active in the local EYH organization, which has been holding conferences alternately at Sonoma State and Santa Rosa Junior College since 1993.  "Sometimes I present a workshop introducing principles of geometry through Chinese characters, which are very geometric," she says, smiling, "it's fun and rewarding at that same time."  Then, more seriously, Jean adds, "If these young women stay in mathematics, many more career paths are open to them--not just in the field of mathematics, but in so many areas, such as chemistry and medicine."

            Jean recognizes that culturally-derived attitudes with regard to education, and to mathematics education in particular, have held back many American students, girls and boys alike.  "First, there are the differences of expectations and attitudes among parents," she observes.  "My parents always emphasized education and respect for teachers.  I was expected to study hard and excel in school.  But there is more to it than that.  National leaders don't encourage the study of mathematics; in fact, more often than not, you hear them speak jokingly about their terrible performance in mathematics classes," she adds, "whereas, in China, I never heard about mathematics anxiety.  If you are not doing well in mathematics, you go to a tutor until you can do mathematics.”          

            How does she combat the anxieties of students struggling with mathematics?  "I talk privately with them," Jean says, "and, usually, I find that somehow they got the message they couldn't do mathematics.  Then, I try to find out where their background is lacking and direct them to get help, either with tutoring or additional coursework."

            Jean has continuously worked with underprivileged and at-risk young people, including volunteering at Marin City's Manzanita Child Development Center.  She has mentored and tutored children throughout Marin and Sonoma Counties.  Recent studies show that efforts like Jean's to intervene on behalf of school-aged girls in particular yield impressive results.  According to a recent study conducted by the American Association of University Women, approximately forty-three percent of American female high school graduates  were enrolled in rigorous college preparatory classes in 1994.

            Asked what advice she would offer young women thinking about taking advanced mathematics and science courses, Jean Bee Chan speaks without hesitation. "Be stubborn. Be persistent," she announces firmly. "If I could do it, so can you."       

            Persistence has paid off for this accomplished professional who has done so much for so many while continuing to make important self-discoveries.  "I recently gave a block party at my home in Lucas Valley because I realized that there were many neighbors I didn't know.  If I were in China, I would know everyone in my village.  I realized that all of my efforts have centered on bringing people together, on fostering a sense of inclusion that grows out of the isolation I sometimes felt during the war in China while my parents were away, and during my first few years in the U.S. as a young girl in a foreign culture."

            Jean first felt loneliness at seven with the death of her younger brother in China.  She felt it when she was without her parents during the war.  She felt it as a young immigrant with limited knowledge of English, and again as one of few female students in the mathematics programs at the University of Chicago and at UCLA.  She felt it as a young mother emotionally different from her adolescent sisters.  Through her own persistence and hard work, Jean has overcome her sense of loneliness to become a fulfilled and devoted member of her community who values friendship and demonstrates a strong commitment to those in need.

            At a time in life when many would be content to look back and take pride in past accomplishments, Jean is on the brink of yet another community-building mission.  "I took my family to Beijing for Christmas and was alarmed by the amount of pollution there," she says, "I don't think China is taking care of its environment.  The desire to return, to help China, is becoming stronger in me."

            This lively and thoughtful woman, both serious and playful, shy and engaging, who has achieved an extraordinary degree of success and has given  so much to the community that has so largely shaped her life, says "we may look very different, but people basically want the same things: happiness, exciting experiences, good families.  Here, in the U.S., especially in Marin County, we have so much--too much, really. It's important to give back to our community.”