Rebecca Elaine Emily Spencer (nee Haslop) was an instructor in chemistry and mathematics from 1946 to 1947. She was born in 1919 in Portland, Oregon. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry from Linfield College in 1940. She then attended graduate school at the University of Oregon Med School, where she studied biochemistry, and then went on to the University of Maine, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she studied organic chemistry and mathematics. Her thesis for her doctoral dissertation was on “The preparation of Strontium D- and L- Xylonates, and some related compounds.” It was titled “Sugar Chemistry-Derivatives of Teylonic Acid.” Before coming to OSC, she worked as a research assistant, Teaching Fellow, and Lab Assistant at various universities. During the summer of 1941, she was an assistant in potato research at the Maine Agricultural Experiment Station. She planned to publish a portion of her thesis in Industrial and Engineering Chemistry. She was married with one child when she came to OSC, and planned to receive her PhD. in Chemistry at MIT in the summer of 1947. For the fall term of 1946, she was helping as a temporary instructor on an hourly basis, but wished to be put on salary. She was put on salary at $800 for the winter term. As the enrollment of spring term was expected to increase, she was kept for the remainder of the year. In 1947, her position in the Chemistry Department looked as if it would expire, so she applied to be an instructor in Mathematics. She was hired again at $800 for fall term only. She was a member of Phi Kappa Gamma, a local Linfield scholastic honorary fraternity, and the American Chemical Society.
Evelyn Louise Thurman was an instructor in mathematics in 1946. She was born in 1923 in Ontario, Oregon. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from OSC in 1944, with additional study in physics and German. Before coming to OSC as a employee, she was employed in the Yale University Alumni Office, where she worked on war records. In 1946, enrollment in the mathematics department at OSC was higher than anticipated. Thurman was hired on a term-by-term basis at $700 per term, as she had been working for the past two years as a part-time instructor. She was married with no children when she took on this new position.