Mohawk’s first female student reflects
Roberta Tremain believes the Hamilton Institute of Technology thought she was a Robert when they accepted her in 1958. She’s visiting Mohawk today.
ROBERTA TREMAIN never considered herself a pioneer for women in post-secondary education.
The 77-year-old said it didn’t even cross her mind that the Hamilton Institute of Technology, a predecessor of Mohawk College, might never have admitted a female student before she applied in 1958.
Nor could she have known that a small mistake would lead to her school acceptance.
“I didn’t consider myself to be a trailblazer ... I just wanted to go to school,” the Hespeler, Ont. native said.
After finishing Grade 13 at Cambridge’s Preston High School, Tremain applied to the chemical technology program at the Ryerson Institute of Technology.
Her application was punted to Hamilton because she was outside Ryerson’s catchment area.
Tremain was accepted into the program, but two weeks before the start date, she received a call from the principal, letting her know they would have to renege on their offer.
“I went, well why?” she recalled. “Well, you’re a girl,” Tremain remembered the principal saying. “Well, yeah,” was her response. Tremain figures they read “Roberta” as “Robert” on her application and hadn’t initially turned to the photo inside.
By the time she got the call, she had already paid her tuition and found a room in which to live.
“I’m ready to come,” Tremain, then 17, told him.
The principal told her he’d get back
“I didn’t consider myself to be a trailblazer ... I just wanted to go to school.” ROBERTA TREMAIN
to her. The following week he phoned and said she could come but she would be on probation until Christmas.
Once she arrived, Tremain said she was accepted by the teachers and students. .
She ended up switching over to textile chemistry dyeing and finishing after Christmas because it sounded more interesting. By then, she had forgotten all about her trial period.
“In May I asked, ‘Am I off probation?’ before I left, just to make sure,” Tremain said. “They just laughed and said, ‘Yeah.’”
On Feb. 21, she is heading back to Mohawk to meet with its senior leadership team and talk with a class of chemical engineering students. While in the area for her sister’s 80th birthday, Tremain will also have lunch with college president Ron McKerlie.
After graduating from HIT in 1961, Tremain applied to North Carolina State for textile chemistry where she was transferred in as a senior before completing her master's degree in the same subject.
When she graduated, she had six job offers waiting for her. But there were rejections, too.
“Several of them just said, ‘We need a man for the job.’”
One company even offered her a job in tech service before the recruiter told her they wanted her to work in physical testing instead.
When Tremain inquired why, she was told women weren’t allowed to go on overnight travel.
Tremain ended up taking a job in Pennsylvania — her closest offer to Canada — where she worked as a research chemist until 1972.
At that time, she learned she was being transferred to Charlotte to head up a development group and went in to speak with a director about her future with the company.
“I had sort of a mentor in that group and he said, “Oh, you really caused a stir’,” Tremain said. “I guess (the director) thought I was rather presumptuous asking for a possible promotion.”
Later on, the director ended up leaving and she got the job anyhow, prompting her to move to New England.
After other career moves that sent Tremain to California and back to Charlotte, she retired working for a small textile company just before she turned 60.
When she started in the industry, Tremain said there were very few women, and not every customer was happy dealing with a female.
“They were polite, but you could tell that some of them just weren’t listening to you,” she said in a phone interview from North Carolina. “Some of them would say to the salesperson, ‘I’m not having some female tell me what to do.’”
“Or you’d get, ‘Well isn’t that cute? A little female chemist,’” she added.
On the 50th anniversary of her graduating year, Tremain returned to Mohawk to provide cash and stocks for a $50,000 endowment for admittance scholarships to interest more young women in STEM.
She wanted to pay back given her tuition in the textile chemistry dyeing and finishing program at HIT was paid for by a company.
As chair of a scholarship committee at NC State, Tremain said she saw the impact additional funds can have on a student’s grades.
Since her time at HIT, things have come along way for women in the workplace, Tremain said.
“If it’s something that you want to do and you like, you can do it and not have any problems.”
‘‘ Or you’d get, ‘Well isn’t that cute? A little female chemist. ROBERTA TREMAIN