The Deans' Bible. Angie Klink

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СКАЧАТЬ first dean of men. Coulter spoke fondly of Carolyn, the student he would grow to know more deeply as a colleague in the following decades. During Carolyn’s memorial service, in a speech titled “Dean Shoemaker, The Woman,” Coulter said: “I recognized in her case I was to deal with an exceptional personality. She had at all times a faraway look in her eyes, which only the years interpreted to me.”

      Emma Montgomery McRae was a professor of English literature at Purdue who nurtured Carolyn’s love of language. The two women had studied together and shared a trip to Europe. Carolyn said that Emma was the greatest influence of her adult life.

      Emma was a solid, broad-faced woman with hair loosely piled atop her head. She had been a high school teacher and principal in Muncie, Indiana, and she was the first woman in the state to be chosen as president of the State Teachers Association.

      A group of women created the Muncie McRae Club in Emma’s honor in 1894 for “intellectual and cultural pursuit” of “education in art, science, literature, and music.” This was during a time when many women did not have the opportunity for education, and the club was an answer to that academic void. The club also discussed social concerns such as suffrage, child labor, and race relations. A program booklet contained the motto, “Study to be what you wish to seem” with a tribute to Emma, “our honorary member—eminent as teacher and lecturer, a woman of rare character and great influence.”

      The McRae Club history goes on to describe Emma as a woman who “… filled her niche in life to the fullest, and with it all, remained so gentle, so plain, so unassuming and yet so dignified. Wherever she walked, people were wont to say, ‘A queen has passed this way.’ [Her] lectures were always masterpieces, her travelogues were unsurpassed [and] couched in the King’s best English.”

      When Purdue President James H. Smart hired her in 1887, Emma became the “unofficial” dean of women. She was known as “Mother McRae,” and because there were few female faculty members and a small number of female students, she served as a counselor on every academic and personal problem these students experienced. Emma epitomized high character, delivered masterful speeches, and garnered immense respect. With Emma, the die was cast.

      Ladies Hall was the epicenter of every academic and social activity for Purdue’s female students and where all of the home economics classes were held. In the early years, home economics was the “foot in the door” to higher education for women. Often, females were “not allowed” to take other courses seen as “unwomanly.” It was the rare woman who bucked the stereotypes and took engineering or agriculture.

      The building also was a residence hall where the women and Emma lived. Ladies Hall was a striking redbrick building with imposing twin towers. An iron fire escape wove a path from a third-floor arched window onto a veranda rooftop, then down a ladder that scaled the side of the building to the lawn. The fire escape was a popular place for photographs, with women students posing in a line on each stair step or clinging to the ladder, smiling, in their hats, gloves, black fur-collared coats, and high-button shoes. Each window bore a roller shade with a dangling string to pull for privacy. When it was constructed in 1872, Ladies Hall was the first permanent building north of State Street, the dirt thoroughfare that divided the Purdue campus.

      Put in context, it is remarkable that any woman obtained a college degree during the late 1800s, for society severely challenged women’s efforts for an education. When Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the first Women’s Rights Convention in 1848, in Seneca Falls, New York, grievances were documented in the “Declaration of Sentiments” and set the agenda for the women’s rights movement. One of the sentiments stated, “The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward women.… He had denied her the facilities of a thorough education, all colleges being closed against her.” An outcome of the convention was a demand for higher education for women.

      Through the 1890s, “scientific” reports were released that showed that too much education could seriously hurt the female reproductive system. Commonly known as the Progressive Era, 1890 to 1917 was a watershed in women’s intellectual history. There was a genuine fear that a good education would make a woman unfit for marriage and motherhood. In fact, nearly half of the first generation of college women did not marry or delayed marriage. They turned their energies to social reform and careers. Society offered educated women two choices—marriage or work, and many chose work. Remarkably, this cultural commandment to choose between career and marriage persisted well into the first half of the twentieth century.

      When Carolyn Shoemaker was twenty-one, she obtained her master’s degree from Purdue with plans to embark on a teaching career; however, as happens to many women, she put her personal goals on hold to care for someone she loved. Carolyn tended to her invalid mother for eleven years. Emma McRae hired Carolyn, age thirty-five, as an English literature instructor in 1900, the same year Carolyn’s mother passed away.

      Carolyn was an inspiring professor who infused a love of literature and drama into her teaching. She was a dynamic orator, on and off campus, and gave book reviews and speeches to clubs and organizations throughout Indiana.

      Carolyn’s office was in University Hall, today the oldest building on Purdue’s campus. In his speech during Carolyn’s memorial service, titled “Miss Shoemaker, The Teacher,” Professor H. L. Creek, head of the Department of English, described Carolyn in this manner:

      She would enter the English Department office to get her mail, smile a greeting to anyone who might be present, and go back to her own office, perhaps without speaking. Ordinarily she seemed quite composed, with something of philosophic calm in her face and manner. Then sometimes there would come a sudden revelation of emotion—deep determination to accomplish something she thought important, a touch of indignation at some wrong, a bit of sorrow at the failure of others to reach her ideals, a flash of sympathy for someone who did not seem to be having a fair chance in life. At such moments we felt that Miss Shoemaker, calm as she might seem, had a deeply emotional life, and that her power as a teacher and as a woman lay in the warmth of her feelings.

      Carolyn enjoyed studying human character. The teaching of drama appealed to her the most because she was interested in the interplay of purpose and personality. She relished mortal complexities found in fiction, biography, and autobiography.

      As a member of Central Presbyterian Church, Carolyn taught “Bible Class in the Sabbath School” to a large group of Purdue coeds. The Bible was filled with the literary concepts Carolyn loved—drama, mortal complexities, purpose, and personality.

      THE “UNOFFICIAL” DEAN OF WOMEN Emma McRae retired from Purdue in 1912. She was the first female faculty member to receive a Carnegie Foundation retirement grant. Andrew Carnegie had just established the Carnegie Corporation of New York in 1911 “to promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding” among the people of the United States. While Carnegie is best known for his establishment of free public libraries throughout America, he also supported education and teachers. He was shocked to discover that teachers, “one of the highest professions,” had less financial security than his former office clerks. His teacher retirement accounts are now called TIAA-CREF.

      The year after Emma retired, Purdue President Winthrop Stone called Carolyn, age forty-eight, into his office and offered her the newly created appointment of part-time dean of women. Many universities were establishing similar positions, and as Stone said, almost begrudgingly, he guessed Purdue should, too. Female students had lost their confidante and counselor when Emma retired. Shoemaker was surprised and in awe of the responsibility; she said she was not sure she could handle such a job. The story repeated in countless chronicles of Purdue history for the last century is that Stone bellowed, “Be a man, Miss Shoemaker! Be a man! Do not СКАЧАТЬ