Emily Tobey wears many hats. She became the Nelle C. Johnston Chair in Communication Disorders in Children in 1995.
Today, she still holds this position in addition to being vice provost and vice president of diversity and community engagement at UTD.
Tobey works in speech pathology, a field that is overwhelmingly female. According to a 2012 study done by the American Speech-Language Hearing Association, 95 percent of speech language pathologists are female. Yet, only about one out of every four provosts are female, according to a survey conducted by North Dakota State University.
Rather than being met with resistance from the boys’ club of university administration, Tobey said she feels as though the biggest gender-related challenge she faces as provost has to do with communication strategies.
“Men and women tend to communicate in different ways and that sometimes can be a challenge,” Tobey said. “I don’t mean that in any derogatory sense at all: it’s just reality.”
Being a woman who works in both a STEM field and an administrative field is good because she can make a difference in how the world is viewed, she said.
“I like doing work in the provost office and working in the office of diversity because it allows (me) to find new avenues that make it easier for women to succeed and to find new opportunities that (women) can take advantage of,” she said.
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