Feature: A Century of Vision: The Legacy Continues

Centenarians are special. Whether they are people, places, events or institutions, 100 years of accomplishment deserve recognition and celebration. In 1996, Michigan State University's College of Human Ecology marked its centennial year and saluted the alumni who helped it grow and succeed. It was a time to remember the past and its milestones. It was also an opportunity, in the words of the college's dean, Dr. Julia R. Miller, to use those milestones 'as stepping stones into the 21st century.'

Here's how MSU's centennial college arrived at its 100th birthday and how it hopes to shape the future. On February 12, 1855 when Governor Kingsley S. Bingham signed the law establishing a state agricultural school in the wilderness east of Michigan's capital, it provided equally for the education of women 'as long as they were interested in the same course of study as 'the sons of farmers.' And some of them were. In 1870, the first women were admitted to MACs classes, and in 1879 Eva Coryell graduated with a degree in agriculture. In fact, many faculty members welcomed women on campus because of what they viewed as their 'refining' and 'ameliorating' influence on the often unruly male undergraduates. Reformers of high purpose in nineteenth century America saw the role of women in higher education as something more than ameliorative and decorative, however. Their ideas were as old as Aristotle's belief that good households created good societies, and as current as the century's pervasive faith in progress for all through the application of science to everyday life, including home and family life.

Furthermore, social conditions of the time'poor housing, inadequate nutrition, lack of sanitation and deplorable working conditions for women and children'required the kinds of solutions properly educated women could provide. In Michigan, the crusade for a better quality of life, especially for farm families, along with relevant women's education, was led by Mary Mayo and the Patrons of Husbandry, better known as the Grange. A most able and remarkable woman, Mrs. Mayo traveled the state to gain support for a Women's Program at Michigan Agricultural College. Finally in 1895, according to Dean Maude Gilchrist's The First Three Decades of Home Economics at Michigan State College (East Lansing: Michigan State College, 1947), the State Board of Agriculture appointed a faculty committee 'to get in touch with the people of Michigan, especially the farmers of the state, to secure attendance of their sons and daughters and consummate the object sought by the state and general government in founding and endowing the institution.'

In 1896, MAC's energetic new president, Jonathan LeMoyne Snyder, formulated the Women's Course of Study and hired Miss Edith McDermott to serve as its first teacher. Old Abbot Hall, a men's dormitory, was remodelled to house the Women's Program, with rooms for forty women and Mrs. McDermott. Here students lived, worked and studied, following a three part domestic science curriculum covering the house, food and health. The goal was to balance technical and general education, in order to prepare women to run their households effectively and to participate in the professions now opening to them.

Women trained in the new MAC program were soon helping people in Michigan's cities and on the farm make the best use of the resources available to them. As domestic educators, dietitians, and later institutional managers and extension home economists, they promoted good nutrition and sanitation, labor-saving in the home, smart shopping for food and clothing, functional interiors and child care. They communicated their message through individual home visits, lectures, extension bulletins, MAC's annual 'Farmers' Week,' their own 'College Week' and even radio, with the popular 'Homemakers Hour' on WKAR.

So successful was the program that the original forty-two women enrolled in 1896 soon grew beyond the capacity of Abbot Hall. In 1899, the state legislature appropriated $95,000, 10 percent more than the Board of Agriculture asked for, to construct the new Woman's Building, now Morrill Hall. Dedicated on 25 October 1900, it contained classrooms, laboratories, kitchen, dining room, faculty and staff offices, a gymnasium with gallery, literary society meeting rooms, dormitory rooms for 120 students, and even a woodworking shop. The program, since 1909 known as 'home economics,' would outgrow this building as well in the next twenty years.

Construction was begun in 1922 and completed in the spring of 1924 on another new building, with the move from the rechristened Morrill Hall completed during the term break so that no class time would be lost. A model of its kind, this structure stands today just east of the MSU Union as the home of the present College of Human Ecology.

The home economics program's high standards were to rise even higher in the 1920s with the expansion of the dietetics program, more and better vocational home economics teacher training to meet an increasing demand, an emphasis on home management and family economics, and the introduction of courses in child development.

In 1922, Dr. Marie Dye was appointed to the program to develop research and graduate education in nutrition. Home economics research was also advanced thanks to the Purnell Act of 1925 which provided supporting funds. In 1929, Marie Dye was appointed dean of home economics, a position she held until 1956. An interest in child study had been evident in the curriculum from the early years.

In January 1922, the first six senior honor students from the College were sent, along with their professor, Miss Lola G. Yerkes, to Detroit's Merrill-Palmer School 'to study child life from the scientific point of view.' ( Gilchrist, p. 84) In 1927 a nursery school was founded on the third floor of the home economics building for eighteen students aged eighteen months to four years, and this began what was to become a significant international role in early childhood education. The Laboratory Preschool and Spartan Nursery School remain an important part of the College of Human Ecology to this day.

During the twenty-seven years of Dean Dye's leadership, which saw depression, world war, and major advances in science and technology, home economics expanded to serve the particular needs of Michigan's families and households. When past and present members of the School of Home Economics gathered for their golden anniversary celebration in May 1947, they had all the professional skills necessary to meet the challenges of the post-war era. Those challenges would include the growth of consumerism, a post-war baby boom, the increase in single-family dwellings and a major social revolution in the 1960s. Home economics had always been concerned with people's near environments'food, clothing and shelter'but in 1970, influenced by developments in systems theory and a growing interest in the preservation of the biological environment, MSU's College of Home Economics became the College of Human Ecology.

Its emphasis has shifted to the study of interrelations in our near environments, but the strong foundation laid down by those first 'household scientists' and the scholars who followed them remained, as the College advanced toward its 100th birthday. Today, with quality programs for both men and women in foods and nutrition, human environment and design, and family and child ecology, the College continues to adapt and expand its teaching, research and outreach. A curriculum which served as the beginning of MSU's courses in music, applied arts, ethics, health, women's physical education, and student teaching, continues to successfully prepare a diverse student body for careers in education and business.