Charting a legacy: the early deans of women.

 
   Help Wanted: One woman with a PhD and a publication record. Must be 
   able to do scholarship, teach and hold her own with the faculty. 
   Candidate must be fairly attractive, know which fork to use, know 
   what to wear and be able to teach women students to socialize with 
   the upper middle class, whether they came from it or not. In 
   addition, the candidate must be able to convince local landladies to 
   offer appropriate accommodations to women students. Candidate will be 
   expected to live in the residence hall with the female students. 
   Social life will revolve primarily around academics and marriage will 
   be unlikely. 

This was a typical job description for deans of women at the turn of the 20th century, according to Janice Gerda, assistant professor in the department of teaching, leadership and curriculum studies at Kent State University OH,.

She discussed the early deans of women at the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators conference held in Tampa in March, based on her dissertation on the "History of the Conferences of Deans of Women 1903-1922."

Pioneers in the hard stuff

From the conference minutes, Gerda discovered that many of the early deans of women had earned doctorates in the hard sciences and classics. From their students they expected a lot more than simply marriage and children. They weren't feminists, but rather trained academics.

The first conference for women deans was held in 1903 in Chicago, attracting 18 participants. Of the 30 meetings she studied between 1903 and 1922, the year when the last of these conferences joined the National Association of Women Deans, Gerda unearthed 130 names. Here's a sample:

* Margaret Jane Evans Huntington. One of the older deans in Gerda's study, Evans applied for a rural school teaching job and got it--at age 14. She attended Lawrence University WI because it was the only school in the west to allow a woman to study Greek. Receiving a master's degree there, she got a job there as preceptoress, similar to dean of women but without the academics.