[ominous music] - [Jo Ann] We could see these big pieces of the sun blow off and we thought, "Well, what happens if one of those hits the Earth?"

- [Bill] We have created a vulnerability like no other, because we have developed a dependence on technology for everything we do.

- [Howard] Jo Ann was really instrumental on understanding solar impacts on the geomagnetic field of Earth.

- [Bill] When we hit the switch, the lights come on.

We pick up our phone, it works, and GPS is on there.

What if it's not?

[inspirational music] - [Reynelda] As strong and enduring as the Rocky Mountains, they stood beside.

As visionary as the views of the Grand Plains, they looked across.

The women inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame are trailblazers, whose work has improved and enriched our lives.

They are teachers, scientists, ranchers, leaders in business, education, religion and the arts.

Women who have been recognized for their many contributions to our state, our country, and the world.

I'm Reynelda Muse, and these are the stories of "Great Colorado Women."

[gentle music] - [Jeri] Jo Ann was always interested in exploration of space.

She loved rockets.

She loved science.

[thrilling music] - Jo Ann is a brilliant scientist.

- But I also knew that if I wanted to learn about rockets, so I need to be an engineer.

[upbeat music] - When I was in school, there were very few women in physics.

[energetic rock music] - It was definitely a male-dominated world we were living in back in the 60s and 70s, and we saw that when we look at the old Apollo era images, and along came some of these pioneer women and she was one of them.

- Jo Ann had to outperform the men to get recognized.

- [Howard] Jo Ann became the first woman who was the secretary general of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics.

- Here was when there was, like, this was not a possibility and she did it.

- That just demonstrated that all those things any guy could do, she could do, and she did it.

[audience applauding] [gentle music] - [Jo Ann] I grew up in St. Francis, Kansas, a little town just east of Colorado, about 20 miles over the border.

- [Bob] So much family was there.

Essentially everybody in town was related someway - [Jo Ann] I mean with all the families there, my cousins, both sets of grandparents.

It's a wonderful place to grow up with lots of kids and somewhere along the line my dad gave me a telescope.

- And of course the night skies are very dark out in the rural countryside, and she was inspired looking in that telescope.

- [Jo Ann] Looking up and seeing that big bright moon and my imagination just lit up thinking about space and science, and I knew all the names of the rockets and the rocket scientists.

So I've always been a space groupie, I guess you'd say.

- [Jon] Sputnik was a major thing to Jo Ann, I know.

I remember listening to the Sputnik beep beep beeps on shortwave radio when we were kids.

- [Jo Ann] I was just thrilled at the thought of having that satellite going overhead.

It was really a very important part of my growing up.

- [Jeri] Jo Ann was given an IQ test when she was in kindergarten, and it was kind of off the charts and it kinda scared our mom and dad.

And one of the reasons that they moved to Denver was to make sure that she had a good education.

- I wanted a better education.

I knew that that small school and Sargent wasn't going to be able to teach me the things I needed to know.

- She had a wonderful high school math teacher, Mrs. Price, who inspired her to pursue her math degree.

- [Jo Ann] Mrs. Price was I think very influential.

Seeing her do the mathematics made me realize that girls can do math.

Then of course my dad being an engineer, I think that influenced me also to go into engineering.

That set me up.

I was able to do well in high school and then get a scholarship to the University of Colorado.

- [Jeri] She got a full scholarship to Boulder, room and board included.

- I certainly remember when Jo Ann moved to Boulder to go to school and we helped move her into Sewall Hall, and that certainly we were all very proud of her for being in engineering.

And there weren't many women in engineering at that time, because I think there were barriers there that we just didn't recognize.

- One professor at CU didn't wanna waste his time on helping her because she was a woman.

She just said, "Okay," and moved on to somebody else who would help her.

- [Jo Ann] At CU, there are a number of honorary societies.

Tau Beta Pi was the one that's considered the Phi Beta Kappa of Engineering.

For that time, they did not allow women.

There was simply not in the charter that women could belong to Tau Beta Pi.

They gave me a certificate that said, gosh, we're sorry.

Except for the shape of your skin, you could have been in Tau Beta Pi.

But then later in 1970, they changed the rules and decided to allow women in.

So they sent me my official badge which I'm actually wearing.

I wear it a lot, and it signifies a great step forward, I think, in the progress of women in science and engineering.

At the engineering school, of course there were very few women, but there was a chapter of the Society of Women Engineers and I was able to go to an International Women in Science and Engineering Conference in New York City.

At the conference, I discovered that there were other women who were successful in their fields and were doing well, and they really encouraged me to continue with my studies and to not be discouraged.

So I came back from that determined to be a successful scientist.

- It was the catapult into her career.

- Junior year was the first year we were allowed to take an elective.

I saw a class called Astrogeophysics 101.

I thought, I'll bet that'll be an easy class.

[laughs] So I did very well in astrogeophysics.

Did well in my studies except probably my senior year, because I got married the day after graduation and I think my last semester of my senior year was not [laughs] particularly successful, but I made it through.

And then went on from there directly to get a master's degree in astrogeophysics.

- There weren't many jobs opening for women, and one reason that people gave was they didn't have women's bathrooms at different places that were hiring, so they were just hiring the men.

- [Jo Ann] So I was lucky to get a job here for NOAA.

That was great until about 1970, and then the project that I was working on was defunded.

It looked like I might be let go, but my boss at that time said, "Well, if we cut you back to part-time and you may be able to stay on the rolls, do you want possibly go back to school and maybe work on that PhD?"

And [inhales deeply] I thought, really?

Because that had never occurred to my before then, but it was an opportunity.

And I thought, okay, well I'm part-time anyway.

So I started again, and one of the interesting things about my postmaster's degree program there at CU is that entire space science was just coming alive, the launch of the satellites, the discovery of the magnetic field of the earth.

During the time I was getting my PhD, my husband finished his doctorate and became clear that our lives were becoming separate.

- They had a good marriage.

Jo Ann was very happy and devoted to it, and when it ended, she was heartbroken.

- [Jo Ann] Soon after I finished my PhD, we decided to go our separate ways.

- She accepted it and moved on.

[bright music] - [Jo Ann] So when going back after my master's degree looking just at the sun, then my PhD became a project of looking at the earth and seeing the influence of the solar emanations on the earth.

- We're always searching to understand how the earth works, and one of the most important things is what happens in the upper atmosphere.

- And NOAA's job is to understand and to predict weather, and in our organization we deal with space weather.

- [Jo Ann] I was involved here at the time when space weather was just being born.

- Space weather forecasting became a really important thing especially during the late 60s, so we were sending people into space.

We needed good space weather services to keep the astronauts safe.

- After Sputnik was launched by the Russians, the Americans launched the Explorer 1 and they discovered the magnetosphere.

The fact that the magnetic field around the earth is preventing the solar wind from causing damage on the earth even as we speak.

- They had forecaster responsibilities when she first started here prior to us understanding much about earth's magnetic field, and Jo Ann was one of the key people in this forecast center leading the efforts to forecast space weather.

She was one of the pioneers back then to ensure we had this kind of information.

- Information about activity in the solar wind that's just about to impact earth and that's going to affect our systems on earth.

- [Bill] Technology was evolving and the vulnerability of these various technologies to space weather becoming more and more evident.

- [Jo Ann] Working here really set me on the course to try to understand what was going on with the sun.

- One of the important things Jo Ann was involve in was the prediction of sunspot solar cycle.

- We learned that we had to watch the sun, we had to pay attention to the flares, we had to monitor it continually.

[Howard] NASA supported and NOAA led under Jo Ann, the first solar cycle prediction, and since then there have been two more of these solar cycles, where international groups have gotten together, but she laid the foundation for doing that.

- The solar cycle is a period when the sun goes from a minimum to a maximum, and back to a minimum.

It's really kind of a rhythm.

During minimum the sun is almost blank.

It looks like a big Nerf ball.

But then at maximum, we see flares, we see coronal mass ejections.

It's really spectacular.

It's when we get in the way of some of those eruptions from the sun that we feel the effects as well as see them.

During the solar cycle, which is about 11 years in length, there are times when the sun is very active and times when it is not so active.

- It's very important to understand that, can we predict that?

Jo Ann says, "Let's try it."

And she led the efforts back in the early 80s for the first essentially consortium putting people together from around the world to make a prediction of the solar cycle.

- One of the things we learned the sun produces, and I was very instrumental in the beginning, is coronal mass ejections.

We could see these big pieces of the sun blow off, and we thought, well, what happens if one of those hits the earth?

- [Bill] The billion tons of plasma gas lifting off the sun shoots a magnet out into space.

Earth is a magnet.

Two magnets are gonna come together, there's gonna be a disturbance and that's what we call a geomagnetic storm.

When I talk about technologies getting affected by space weather, so much of it is because of these geomagnetic disturbances associated with these coronal mass ejections.

They're affecting satellites.

They're affecting our astronauts in space.

They're even affecting aviation.

- During a major solar disturbance, we can count on the magnetic field disrupting electric power lines.

- On a big scale, forgot one of these big, big events, it can actually bring the grid down.

We can see a widespread blackout.

- One special eruption was in March of 1989.

- And I was working the radio telescopes that day in Palehua Hawaii when we had an extraordinary eruption on the sun, one of the biggest eruptions we've had in the last 50 years.

- That's certainly a day I remember.

When I got into work that night, everything was lit up.

People were calling.

There were massive power outages.

Satellites were dropping out in the sky.

- I'm in the observatory.

I'm panicking trying to get that information out the door.

Where's that information going?

Into the forecast center right here.

And who is the forecaster on duty?

It was Jo Ann Joselyn.

And that particular eruption turned out to be essentially the awakening, if you will, because we had an incredible impact from that eruption, it brought the power grid down and the entire province of Quebec and the City of Montreal.

And we learned we had vulnerabilities we thought we might have, but that proved it.

- [Jo Ann] We have a large alert base.

The satellite operators, power company operators, they need to know when we're under the influence of a major magnetic storm.

- She was the one that really reached out to so many of them and established those relationships and helped us to better understand the operators need.

- Every single major satellite operation service subscribes to our alert and warning, so that during a geomagnetic storm we'll call the companies first of all.

They're on our alert.

- We wanna be part of the resilience plan to make sure that stuff works through the storm and then certainly after the storm, so it's such an important part of what we do.

- One of our more bizarre customer sets, our homing pigeon racers.

They will call and ask what the magnetic weather is.

- The racing pigeon community never have a pigeon race prior to checking the geomagnetic storm conditions.

- And if it's quiet they will race their homing pigeons, and if it's not, they won't because the pigeons get lost.

- They head off 200 miles away.

You release the pigeons.

The pigeons fly, get their bearing.

How do they find their way home?

They've 200 mile trip to get home.

How do they do it?

The magnetite, they can sense earth's magnetic field.

It's like a compass.

Once they get their bearing, they head home.

All works out great until we have a geomagnetic storm.

And even a minor storm can cause some problems.

They often refer to it as a pigeon bust.

- Jo Ann's a people person, and she was really involved with people all over the world, and she started to lead one of the big international programs, the International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomy.

- She was elected Secretary General of IAGA when the time came up for those elections.

- And I accepted that job because of the importance of the international connections.

IAGA deals with the geomagnetism of the earth, so when I became involved, I learned about the other associations and we meet every four years as an IUGG.

The International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics is a network of disciplines that study the physics of the planet.

- [Howard] And it's there to bring together scientists from around the world to do collaborative work.

- And IUGG, just like IAGA, has a secretary general.

- [Howard] Jo Ann became the first woman who was the secretary general of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics.

- What was unusual about Jo Ann becoming secretary general was that she was the first woman and the first American.

She's running the whole organization essentially, so she has to deal with a lot of people from different cultures and it takes some savvy to do that.

- [Jo Ann] IUGG has major conferences every four years.

They're always quite prestigious.

You can track the progress of science by the papers that are presented at these incredible general assemblies.

- We have to learn about ways to mitigate disasters that might come about, and sometimes those disasters involve more than one field, earthquake prediction, tsunamis in the ocean from earthquakes, for example.

And so an organization like IUGG will bring together people who can start to talk about these and find ways to advance our knowledge.

- [Jo Ann] We come together, and geomagnetism and seismology might wanna meet together.

For sure hydrology and the oceans wanna meet together, the fresh water and the ocean water, and how those systems interact.

When I began as Secretary General, there were seven associations, but during this whole time there was another scientific discipline that was trying to get attention and that's the cryospheric sciences.

This is ocean ice, polar cap ice, glaciers, they wanted to become an association which would actually give them credentials as a valid scientific discipline.

It took me almost the entire eight years to work it out with them, but we did.

They had to present papers.

They had to show that they were international cooperation, and that all came together in Perugia, Italy.

And now with climate change, this is where these scientists can all work together.

- And that was really an important thing in our science, because we deal with global problems and we wanna make the world better for everyone.

She, in many ways, fostered international togetherness.

- IUGG, being non-governmental, tries very hard to support their scientists throughout the world, especially in developing countries.

- [Howard] She was active in bringing that huge meeting to Vietnam, to Hanoi.

- [Bob] We make a special effort to bring scientists from developing countries to the meetings, giving financial assistance.

- Some of the messages that she got from scientists all around the world, from Japan, from Brazil, everybody commented on her enthusiasm, how infectious that was and how that made people wanna work together and get things done.

- Jo Ann loves solar eclipses.

She's experienced three so far.

- [Jo Ann] A total solar eclipse is something that is almost emotional, and I hadn't been able to share this experience with my dad.

- [Jeri] In 2017, there was one that crossed United States, and being a good organizer, she got the family together and made plans to go to Grand Island, Nebraska, and take our a hundred year old dad.

[gentle music] - It was a great thing to share with my father who started my life career with that little telescope.

[gentle music] - [Jon] I know he found that trip to be just awesome.

He just loved it.

In fact, he said it was like seeing creation.

[gentle music] - [Jo Ann] In honor of my father, I established an endowed scholarship fund at the University of Colorado College of Engineering, especially to support women and others who are non-traditional students.

- And to girls who are thinking about getting into STEM, knowing what a woman can do, she's just an amazing example for that.

- [Bob] More women are getting into the sciences now, and it's because people like Jo Ann were an example of how you could succeed as a woman in a male dominated field.

- [Jeri] She wants to be inspiring to women in the sciences.

I know in the mentoring that she's done she's always been very easy to approach and to talk to and she shares her knowledge readily.

- My advice is to accept leadership opportunities.

You're never sure why they will take you.

My career has zigged and zagged.

It started out in engineering.

It's been astrogeophysics, then solar studies.

It then moved on to space weather Those were all the result of saying yes to opportunities.

- [Bill] Not only was she a pioneer in the academia world being one of the first women to get her PhD from the University of Colorado Astrophysics Program.

She was one of the first PhD women in NOAA, certainly in space weather.

- She received the George Norlin CU Alumni award.

- George Norlin Awards for a CU alumni for distinguished lifetime achievement.

It's my great honor to present Dr. Jo Ann Cram Joselyn.

[audience applauding] - What a most astonishing honor.

- Jo Ann is a brilliant scientist and a wonderful person who loves her community, loves her church, loves her family.

- I did not learn leadership at school.

I learned leadership in community outreach.

- [Howard] She worked not only on her science and her profession, but she wanted to give back to society and she wanted to give back to her community.

- She'd been very involved in Rotary for a number of years.

Followed my grandfather in that.

- My grandfather was a district governor in Rotary, and it never even occurred to me that women could belong to Rotary.

- Through Jo Ann's world travels, she's experienced Rotary meetings in other countries around the world, and they've honored her with many awards.

- [Jo Ann] I've received a Service above Self award, a Rotarian of the Year award, Lifetime Achievement award.

These are very meaningful to me.

- Jo Ann has also been active in Meals on Wheels.

She delivered meals to people for over 20 years.

- Jo Ann is the epitome of humility.

I knew her for probably four or five years before I had even a clue of what she really did professionally.

- Jo Ann was very active in supporting a number of activities that would make life better for people.

- [Jo Ann] I've always enjoyed working in the community.

- Jo Ann was one of the founders of of Share A Gift, and it started out in a closet and she took it multiple steps further.

- [Jo Ann] And it was a way to give toys away to kids at Christmas time.

We don't give the toys to the kids directly.

We give the toys to the parents.

We hope the kids never know where the toys come from.

[bright music] Parents leave with bags of toys just like Santa Claus would.

- [Jeri] Jo Ann started working with Share A Gift right at its beginnings.

- [Jon] And that's been 50 years now of holiday gift giving to the needy in Boulder.

[bright music] - In that timeframe, Share A Gift has provided holiday toys and gifts for somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 to 200,000 kids.

- This has been a big source of joy for me.

I've never had children.

This is my Christmas.

- It's important to know Jo Ann's story, because it's sets an example for how we can all be more productive.

- She has determination.

So when she sets her mind to something, she works as hard as she can to do it.

- [Jeri] Through all of her busy life, I really didn't know how busy she was, because she always made time for me.

She always made time for family.

I was always proud to have her as my sister, but I am even more proud now.

[bright uplifting music] In 2013, CU was involved with a rocket going to Mars called Maven, and CU invited alums to attend this launch.

Jo Ann was thrilled to get to go.

All the people at the launch had written their names on a disc.

And they didn't even know, but it was put on the rocket.

[bright uplifting music] It was a successful launch, and is still giving out data to scientists now as it's orbiting Mars.

It's fun to think about the little girl with the telescope in Nebraska looking up at the night sky before any satellites are up there, before any space travel.

It's fun to me to think about that girl, and to now know that her name is orbiting Mars.

[bright uplifting music]