A Woman for All Seasons by Constance Poten "Suspense and excitment fill the room when she begins to speak," observed Regents Professor Albert Borgmann when he nominated Maxine Van de Wetering for The University of Montana's 1987 Distinguished Teacher Award. Noting that she put together five impressive new courses in four years, he added, "Maxine is able to draw on an astounding variety and depth of scholarship....It may sound extravagant, but some students first find their identity and self-confidence as intellectual persons through the teaching and example of Maxine." "Maxine is able to draw on an astounding variety and depth of scholarship...Some students first find their identity and self-confidence as intellectual persons through the teaching and example of Maxine." Anyone who took her classes or had the great fortune to have her as a mentor knows why. Van de Wetering's ferociously inquisitive approach to learning crashes boundaries; she gleans information from the whole span of disciplines, studying the details with a jewel cutter's precision, never losing sight of the essential quest for meaning. With degrees in physics and history and a doctorate in the history and philosophy of science, she started out teaching in UM's geology department and went on to develop teaching lines in history, philosophy and humanities. Named one of the top ten university teachers in Montana in 1977, she delivered regular guest lectures in the departments of zoology, botany and mathematics. She also co-founded and was first director of UM's Women's Studies Program. Speaking on the phone from her present home in Chevy Chase, Maryland, Van de Wetering dismissed the fact that she has held the most appointments in the most departments of any UM professor. They were, she said, simply necessary moves to avoid working in the same department as her husband, former history Professor John Van de Wetering. But when she retired in 1994 after twenty-seven years of teaching, it took three professors-in history, philosophy and liberal studies-to replace her. Forging A New Perspective Including that which has been traditionally ignored is central to the spirit of Van de Wetering's inquiry, thereby forging a new perspective. Within deceptively narrow topics, she reveals momentous changes in human history, tracing the intellectual evolution of America in particular. For instance, in her essay, "The Inoculation Controversy," written for the New England Quarterly in 1985, Van de Wetering shows the reader how an event, the Boston smallpox epidemic of 1721-22, signaled a radical change in American morality. The epidemic, she writes, not only triggered a battle between ministers (pro-inoculation) and doctors (anti-inoculation), but it signaled the end of the Puritanical era in America. In 1702 Cotton Mather stated that sin caused illness: "The Pale, the Swollen, the Wasted, and perhaps the Spotted Faces of the Sick in the Family, are such as our Heavenly Father has been spitting upon." Ten years later Mather led the cause for inoculation and proclaimed that sin had nothing to do with illness. Van de Wetering sees this as a turning point in American history. The epidemic, she writes, "signal[ed] a de-emphasis on death-oriented Calvinistic orthodoxy in favor of a new beneficence and life-oriented compassion typical of the coming Enlightenment." In Van de Wetering's quest for the whole story, she looks under the given historic landscape, moving rocks, finding communities hidden from canon. Thus, for Van de Wetering it was a logical progression to move from history, science and philosophy to pioneer a curriculum of women's studies: Any field of study is obviously skewed and incomplete, she said, when the contributions of half the population over all time have been ignored. She credited Missoula activitist Judy Smith and former legislator Diane Sands, then faculty affiliates, for initiating the effort for a women's studies program. Her own interest, she said, came from new developments in social history. "So much important information had been treated on a tangent," Van de Wetering said. "The new social history was focusing on the man in the street-away from the traditional fountainheads. Urban, labor and women's history were on the rise. I felt women's studies was worthy of a field of its own simply because of new information and approaches." Van de Wetering made an appeal to the Faculty Senate in the early 1970s. How did she convince the University to agree to such a then-radical new program? "I don't remember precisely," she said. "But it was a compelling speech. I worked on it for a long time." "Maxine was an ardent advocate for women's studies," says G.G. Weix, professor of anthropology and current director of the Women's Studies Program. "She envisioned the curriculum and the program." (See related story on page 16). Van de Wetering's vision was first to offer one core class, Philosophical Perspectives on Women in Western Culture, which she developed. "It is an unusual course," Weix said. "This is not a typical approach. It confronts the dilemma of knowledge and truth," she says, referring to the misrepresentation of facts inherent in ignoring women's work in fields ranging from political science to physics. Then Van de Wetering made women's studies all-inclusive by locating it across the disciplines, inviting professors from all departments to participate by cross-listing their courses. To qualify, courses must cover gender issues facing men and women or have 20 percent of the content focus on women. "We always invite faculty to consider women's studies as they innovate their own syllabus of courses," Weix says. "That is why it is so successful. It connects well to all other fields. "It is no accident that many recent Rhodes Scholars were active in the Women's Studies Program," Weix notes. UM ranks fourth among the nation's public universities in producing Rhodes Scholars, thanks largely to Van de Wetering, who helped seven students become Rhodes Scholars in the thirteen years she coordinated UM's program. Philosophy Professor Tom Huff attributes Van de Wetering's success to her ability to attract the best students to her classes and spend time with them. "She helps them clarify their moral positions-particularly the connection between their academic work and their moral and political responsibilities," he wrote in 1992. "Her students learn to think for themselves. She inspires their best." In her speech for UM's Charter Day in 1992, Van de Wetering defined the obligation of the University to the community, a central theme of her own career. By providing a liberal education, she said, the University "frees the self from self-centeredness. It opens the self with vigorous, ardent pursuit of other voices to guarantee a presence for these voices. [A student learns] to hear these voices with interest and curiosity and then invariably to feel gratitude toward the institution and the community that provided the way to free one from self-interest. When we succeed, the University has given back to the community a serving citizen-its best gift." The value of serving the community over serving one's own ambitions, a rare ethic these days, was taught to Van de Wetering from birth. Her parents were immigrants, and she grew up thinking America was named Golden America. She recalls her mother saying, "You must stay in school until you have a voice, and something to say with that voice. Because that is how much I owe Golden America. I am giving my children voices." Van de Wetering broadened that axiom. Her own public service includes working on the bargaining team for the University Teachers' Union, delivering numerous public lectures and addresses in Montana, Wyoming and New York, and serving on nineteen committees ranging from the UM Discrimination Grievance Committee to the Montana Committee for the Humanities. As she stated in the Charter Day speech, "A liberal education is necessary and never extravagant for the continuance of the Republic. To be educated is to need to be heard." Our nation must hear many voices, she continued, "[to] recognize the significance of knowledge as a precursor to wise and noble action."   Constance Poten, who has published in National Geographic, Islands and the Montanan, sells tomato chips at Missoula's Farmers' Market.