Get To Know Your Team

The Basics

Name: Emma Jane Reed

Work Area: Web Admin and Desktop Planner Employee
Years with Deere: 7 Picture
Manager: Barb McGovern
Location: EW

Work

Current Assignment:
I am a web administrator and work with IIS and Front Page server extensions on our
content servers, and Sun One and Tomcat on our Application servers. We recently added
a wiki site. I also am the desktop planner and work with both hardware and software
requests and planning.

Past Work Experiences:

I’ve been working with PCs since 1983, since before the MAC, most of it in training or
some phase of support. I taught grade school many years ago. I get kidded when I talk
about my previous job experiences. I have had a lot of them, having started working
while still in Junior High, and moved around Iowa quite a bit. My past jobs include
several green houses and flower shops, a couple restaurants (pity the customers!),
teaching grade school, working for a printing company, selling insurance, a couple of
factory jobs, bookkeeping, and even welding.

What do you like about working for John Deere:

I especially appreciate the trust that Deere has in its employees, and the freedom provided
to do your work in your own style and to pursue personal growth.

Personal

Personal Statement:
Life is too important to be taken seriously – Oscar Wilde

What are your hobbies?

First there are my three kids and their families (four grandsons). Then my critters,
flowers, plants, reading, and games. I enjoy science and nature, both fact and fiction.

Optional Fun Questions

Something most people at work do not know about and the Most Interesting / Strangest
job you have ever had:
I started college in an accelerated aerospace engineering program at Iowa State and tested
into a student co-op program with NASA. Two girls from ISU got in, but did not get
their notification of acceptance until about 3 months after the guys got theirs. Some ten
or so students were selected in nation-wide testing and all but two were from ISU. This
was about the same time that Linden Johnson, as recently revealed, summarily put a stop
 to having women in the astronaut program. My fellow student and co-worker, Sheryll
Goecke, went on to be an outstanding woman in NASA’s engineering staff. I,
unfortunately, lost my courage and changed schools and majors. Women in Flight
Research at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center from 1946 to 1995

I worked for NASA at the Flight Research Center for 6 months in 1963, as an
engineering co-op student, when the original X-15 rocket research plane was still flying.
I had my own research project studying lift over the body at altitudes above something
like 40 miles. While there, I saw the first un-powered test flight of what would become
the space shuttle. A plywood and Plexiglas mockup was towed to 10,000 feet behind a
B-52 and cut loose for Milt Thompson to ride down. It dropped like a rock for 9,000 feet
and finally developed enough lift over its wingless bathtub shape in the last thousand feet
to give Milt enough control to land it on the dry lakebed.

What is your dream job?

If someone would pay me to go to school, that would be wonderful.

If you could travel anywhere, where would you go?

The space station.

If you could have dinner with anyone in the world who would it be?
Scott Bakula, Rick Berman, Brannon Braga; or maybe join Ed’s supper club!