Happy 80th, Judith Love Cohen! ("You Can Be a Woman Engineer," 1991)

[leno...@yahoo.com]

She lives in Marina del Rey, California.

http://viterbi.usc.edu/news/profiles/judith-love-cohen-bsee-57-msee-62.htm
(bio and photo)

First half:

In junior high school, when Judith Love Cohen showed up for the first day of her intermediate algebra class, she looked around the room and made a quick discovery: she was the only girl. This didn’t daunt her — after all, in fifth grade, kids had already started to pay her to do their math homework.
In high school, her guidance counselor recommended she find “a nice finishing school” and encouraged her to “learn to be a lady.” But growing up in Brooklyn in the 1940s, Cohen had different plans: she would trek to California to earn her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering at USC, seduced in part by the sunny Rose Bowl images she had long seen on television.

At USC, Cohen found her calling almost by accident.“My boyfriend was studying engineering and I was studying math,” she recalls. “We used to do each other’s homework since I liked the applications of math and he liked the abstractions. I was solving real problems while he was dealing with letters and dots.When he decided to change his major, I was devastated. So he suggested I change my major.”

Cohen went on to spend a solid 30 years working for aerospace companies on a number of high-profile NASA projects, including the Hubble Space Telescope, for which she was a system engineer for the Science Operations Ground System, and the Lunar Excursion Module, for which she was a sub-project manager on the Abort Guidance System.

But becoming a woman engineer in the 1950s was no easy task. As an undergraduate, Cohen recalls hearing criticism from fellow students, barbs from those who believed she should pursue a husband more ardently than a degree. These memories surely stuck with her.

But things brightened in graduate school. “My experience there was wonderful because the faculty was heavy with professionals who worked in industry and provided real world perspectives on such things as guidance system design and electronics.”..........

(snip)

http://articles.latimes.com/1999/sep/06/news/cl-7284
(two-page 1999 article on Cohen)

http://ccdl.libraries.claremont.edu/cdm/ref/collection/cmt/id/1296
(14-minute video interview)

Description: "Judith Love Cohen discusses her book, 'You Can Be a Woman Engineer.' She begins by explaining that this is part of a series of books she has written, designed to teach young women to broaden their career paths. She describes her own career as an aeronautical engineer, and that she has worked on the Hubble telescope and the Apollo spacecrafts. She discusses important characteristics an engineer should have such as: a love for math, precision and attention to detail, and the ability to visualize a finalized project. She ends the interview by mentioning other careers she writes about in this series, such as: cardiology, filmmaking, biology, and paleontology."

http://www.youtube.com/results?q=%22judith+love%22+cohen&bav=on.2,or.r_qf.&bvm=bv.50768961,d.aWc,pv.xjs.s.en_US.77Xy4hViwko.O&biw=1258&bih=880&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=w1
(more videos)

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1258&bih=880&q=%22judith+love%22+cohen&oq=%22judith+love%22+cohen&gs_l=img.3..0.998.998.0.1361.1.1.0.0.0.0.62.62.1.1.0....0...1ac.1.25.img..0.1.62.r4qdadn8e_w
(book covers)

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2091941/
(brief filmography)


WRITINGS BY THE AUTHOR:

A Passover to Remember (play), first produced at Act One Stage, Los Angeles, CA, 1985.

You Can Be a Woman Engineer, Cascade Pass, 1991.
(With Margot Siegel) You Can Be a Woman Architect, Cascade Pass, 1992.
(With Flo McAlary) You Can Be a Woman Marine Biologist, illustrated by David A. Katz, Cascade Pass, 1992.
(With Betsy Bryan) You Can Be a Woman Egyptologist, illustrated by Katz, Cascade Pass, 1993.
(With Diane Gabriel) You Can Be a Woman Paleontologist, illustrated by Katz, Cascade Pass, 1993.
(With Valerie Thompson) You Can Be a Woman Zoologist, illustrated by Katz, Cascade Pass, 1993.
(With Sharon Franks)You Can Be A Woman Oceanographer, illustrated by Katz, Cascade Pass, 1994.
(With Andrea Ghez)You Can Be A Woman Astronomer, illustrated by Katz, Cascade Pass, 1995.
(With Rita Redberg)You Can Be A Woman Cardiologist illustrated by Katz, Cascade Pass, 1996.
You Can Be...Science Career Activities, Cascade Pass, 1998.
(With Kristen Bozak)You Can Be A Woman Botanist, Illustrated by Katz, Cascade Pass, 1999.
(With Tamecka Dixon)You Can Be A Woman Basketball Player,, Cascade Pass, 1999.

(Co-author with Tisha Lea Venturini) You Can Be a Woman Soccer Player, Cascade Press, 2000.
(Co-author with Sheila Cornell Douty) You Can Be a Woman Softball Player, Cascade Press, 2000.
(Co-author with David A. Katz) Lessons in Love: A Guide to Making your Loving Relationship Last for a Lifetime, Cascade Press, 2001.
(with K. Perez) You Can Be a Woman Meteorologist, 2002;
(with D.L.A. Underwood) You Can Be a Woman Entomologist, 2002;
(co-author) You Can Be a Woman Movie Maker, 2003;
You Can be A Woman Animator, 2004;
You Can be a Woman Video Game Producer, 2005;
(with R.C. Friend) You Can be a Woman Makeup Artist or Costume Designer, 2005;
(with P. Moore) You Can be a Woman Chemist, 2005;
The Women of Apollo: The Stories of Judith Cohen, Ann Dickson, Ann Maybury and Bobbie Johnson, Four Remarkable Women Who Helped Put the First Man on the Moon, 2006;
(with R.C. Friend) A Clean Sky: The Global Warming Story, 2007;
(with R.C. Friend) Clean City: The Green Construction Story, 2008;
(with R.C. Friend) Clean Planet: The Solar Energy Story, 2009;

(with R.C. Friend) A Clean Earth: The Geothermal Story, 2010;
A Cleaner Port, A Brighter Future: The Greening of the Port of Los Angeles, 2011.


Lenona.