Women at Penn: Timeline of Pioneers and Achievements 1920-1932: Standing Faculties; Undergraduate Life

The University established the position of Advisor of Women, the first administrator at Penn responsible for women’s student life. Louise Hortense Snowden, an alumna who had earned the Bachelor of Science in Biology with honors in 1898, was named the first Advisor. The editors of Women’s Undergraduate Record for 1921 noted, “The girls feel they have a friend who is their very own.”

The School of Education appointed Edith Baer, B.S., to the faculty position of Assistant Professor of Home Economics. She was the first woman to serve as an Officer of Instruction in the School of Education and the first woman to be a member of the standing faculty at Penn.

Also in May, the Trustees voted to establish the Bennett Club, a “clubhouse for women students,” in a former dwelling house at 3322 Walnut Street. The “new clubhouse” was “to be fitted up somewhat after the fashion of the Houston Club, the men’s clubhouse.” The Trustees noted, “the women students have been asking for such a clubhouse for many years and for the last two years have been at work raising a fund.”

At the Commencement held on 15 June, the University awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Economics to Sadie Tanner Mossell. She was the first African American woman to earn the Ph.D. degree at Penn.

Margaret Katherine Majer (pronounced “Mayor”) succeeded Ethel Loring as Instructor in Physical Education for Women. Margaret Majer was an excellent athlete, who had excelled in intercollegiate swimming as an undergraduate at Temple University. She soon expanded her role at Penn and became the first coach of women’s athletic teams. She organized and trained a women’s basketball team and scheduled the first intercollegiate competitions for women. The women’s basketball team played eight opponents in its first year, including Bryn Mawr College, Drexel University, and Temple University. Teams in gymnastics, softball, swimming, and tennis were planned for the next year and Margaret Majer led a successful fundraising campaign to build women’s tennis courts on what, for a few years, was a vacant lot on the southeast corner of Thirty-Fourth and Walnut Streets. Margaret Katherine Majer was soon celebrated as the founder of women’s athletics at Penn. In 1924 she married Olympic oarsman John B. Kelly and subsequently became the mother of two Penn graduates, an Olympic medalist, and the extraordinary actress, Grace Kelly.

Encouraged by work of Margaret Majer, undergraduate women formed an Athletic Association and elected four student athletes – Catherine Elizabeth Riggs (A.B., 1923), Genevieve M. McDermott (B.S. in Ed., 1923), Georgina Pope Yeatman (A.B., 1922), and Mildred Dougherty (B.S. in Ed., 1923) – the first officers of the Association.

The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences established a graduate level course in business, leading to the Master of Business Administration degree. The first degrees were awarded in 1922.

Mortar Board, a “national honorary fraternity for women,” was organized at Penn in 1921. It was only three years old, the first chapter of the organization having been founded in 1918 at Syracuse University. Its membership was open only to senior women who “have been prominent in college activities.”

Twelve seniors and seven juniors were named the first members of the Penn chapter of Mortar Board. These nineteen “honor” women were as follows:

Seniors, members of the Class of 1921:

• Dorothy Aiken Buckley (B.S. in Ed., with honors, June 1921)
• Anne Katharine Canning (B.S. in Ed., June 1921)
• Ruth Celestia Dibert (B.S. in Ed., June 1921)
• Charlotte Easby (A.B., College of General Studies, June 1921)
• Margaret Janvier Hort (B.S. in Ed., June 1921)
• Marion Jordan Johnson (B.S. in Ed., June 1921)
• Regina Catherine Kelley (B.S. in Ed., June 1921)
• Marion Woodworth Masland (B.S. in Ed., June 1921)
• Clara Rabinowitz (B.S. in Ed., June 1921)
• Helena E. Riggs (A.B., College of General Studies, June 1921)
• Ardis Anna Voegelin (B.S. in Ed., June 1921)
• Miriam Edith Woolley (A.B., College of General Studies, June 1921)

Juniors, members of the Class of 1922:

• Margaret Allen Alcott (A.B., College of General Studies, June 1922)
• Dorothy Mary Calby (B.S. in Ed., June 1922)
• Marguerite Burns Evans (B.S. in Ed., June 1922)
• Margaret Frankeberger (A.B., College of General Studies, June 1922)
• Ruby Zarouhie Kevorkian (B.S. in Ed., February 1923)
• Beulah Evelyn McGorvin (A.B., College of General Studies, June 1922)
• Margaret Agnes Sharpless (B.S. in Ed., June 1922)

Also at the Commencement held on 18 June, the University awarded the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree to Margaret Frances Coleman. She was the first woman to earn the B.F.A. degree at Penn.

The University purchased an upscale apartment building at the northeast corner of Thirty-Fourth and Chestnut Streets and converted it to Sergeant Hall, a women’s dormitory and clubhouse. Sergeant Hall provided living and dining quarters for 175 women students, both graduate and undergraduate. It also hosted several women’s student organizations.

The Women’s Student Government Association began publication of a women’s student newspaper, The Bennett News. Grace Marie Haspel (B.S. in Ed., 1925) was the first Editor-in-Chief of The Bennett News. This weekly paper went through twenty-three volumes before its name changed to The Pennsylvania News in the fall of 1947. The Pennsylvania News was published until the fall of 1964.

Women were also beginning to appear among the several faculties of the University. In addition to Carrie Kirk Bryant and Ruth E. Michaels, both of whom had advanced to the rank of Assistant Professor by 1926, three others had held the academic rank of Associate – just below that of Assistant Professor – in the Graduate School of Medicine. They were Katherine M. Starkey, M.D., who was appointed Associate in Pediatric Hygiene in 1923; Emily Partridge Bacon, A.B., M.D., who, in 1924, succeeded Starkey as Associate in Pediatric Hygiene; and Marnetta E. Vogt, M.D., who was appointed a Lecturer in Gynecology in 1925 and promoted to Associate in Gynecology the following year. Elsewhere in the University, there were more than two dozen women who held appointments with the academic rank of Instructor or Assistant Instructor. In addition there were 30 women staff members in the University Hospital Training School for Nurses whose work was, at least in part, teaching of the student nurses. At least two of that number – Madge Timlin, R.N., the Director of Instruction, and Viola B. Brown, R.N., the Assistant Instructor – appeared to devote the majority of their time to teaching and training. At least two others – Mary Louise Snyder, R.N., who had held the position of Directress of Nurses since 1909, and Lucy Mastern, R.N., the Assistant Directress of Nurses – appeared to hold academic administrator positions. If so, they were the only two women Officers of Instruction at Penn in 1926 to serve the University as academic administrators.

Marion Hague Rea (Mrs. B. Lucke), A.B., M.D., was Instructor of Medicine in the Department of Medicine in the School of Medicine (1920-46), Director of Health for Women (1922-31), and Student Physician for Women (1926-46).

Mary M. Search was Superintendent of the Bennett Club from 1925-27.

Board of Managers of the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania included two women, Mrs. Chancellor Clement English and Mrs. Walter Smith Thomson. Board of Managers of the Graduate School of Medicine included Elizabeth Conway Clark and Celia Justine Nicholson. Mary Virginia Stephenson, R.N., was the Superintendent of the Hospital (1921-35) and had previously served as Assistant Directress and Instructor of Nurses in the Training School (1913-1921). Marion E. Smith had served as Superintendent of the Hospital from 1903 to 1921. No women among the six resident physicians, but two women – Julia Russell, M.D., and Katherine S. Andrews, M.D., among the twenty-two Interns. In the Medical Clinic of the Hospital, Elizabeth Glenn Ravdin, M.D., was the Henrietta Heckscher Research Fellow in Clinical Medicine. Lena R. Waters was Director of the Social Service Department.

In June, Penn’s undergraduate women held their own Ivy Day ceremony, placing the first of many ivy stones on the Chancellor Street wall of the new Bennett Hall. Women had participated in the annual Hey Day program from the time of its establishment in 1916, but in 1926 the undergraduate men advised the women that they were no longer welcome. Women quickly responded by organizing their own Class Day and Ivy Day events and by 1931 had combined them in the Women’s Hey Day. Women maintained independent programs and ceremonies until 1968, when they were once again combined with those of the men.

The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences appointed Anne Bezanson, Ph.D., to the faculty position of Research Professor in Industry. In March 1921, she helped found the Industrial Research Department of the Wharton School and became its Associate Director. She served as Special Lecturer on Industrial Management for the academic year 1924-25 and Lecturer on Industry for the year 1928-29. In 1929, she earned the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from Radcliffe College. She was the first woman to join the standing faculty in the Graduate School. She was also the first woman to earn tenure in that School or in any School of the University and the first to hold a senior professorship at Penn.

The women’s undergraduate Class of 1929 established a women’s Hall of Fame at the University of Pennsylvania. The Record of 1929 described the intentions of those who introduced this idea, “Five Pennsylvania women are herewith presented whom we deem highly deserving of honor and esteem. There are others we know to be worthy, and it is our hope that succeeding classes will carry on what we started.” The five nominees were Gertrude Klein Pierce Easby (Cert. of Prof. in Chem., 1878); Anna Lockhart Flanigen (Cert. of Prof. in Chem, 1878; Ph.D. in Chemistry, 1906); Margaret Center Klingelsmith (LL.B., 1898; Hon. LL.M., 1916); Louise Hortense Snowden (B.S. in Biol., 1898); and Ida Wood (Cert. of Prof., 1884). Mrs. Easby was married in 1884, soon became a mother, and was active in civic and social welfare organizations in Philadelphia. Dr. Flanigen was a professional chemist. Margaret Klingelsmith was Librarian of the Biddle Law Library of the Law School from 1898 to 1939. She was a translator of Norman-French digests of common law. Louise Snowden was Penn’s first Advisor of Women, a position similar to the University’s present day chief student affairs officer. When the Graduate Department for Women was established at Penn, Ida Wood was its first Secretary, serving from November 1891 to February 1893.

The School of Medicine appointed Florence Barbara Seibert, Ph.D., to the faculty position of Assistant Professor of Biochemistry in the Henry Phipps Institute. She was the first woman to join the standing faculty in the School of Medicine. In 1937 she was promoted to Associate Professor and became the first woman to earn tenure in the School of Medicine. In 1945 the University awarded her the honorary degree of Doctor of Science in recognition of her extraordinary discoveries on the detection and cure of tuberculosis. In 1955 she was promoted to Professor of Biochemistry, the first woman to hold a senior professorship in the School of Medicine. In 1959 she retired and was appointed Emeritus Professor of Biochemistry in the Phipps Institute.

The Trustees elected Marion Edwards Park an Associate Trustee of the University and appointed her to membership on the Board of Graduate Education and Research. Dr. Park, President of Bryn Mawr College since 1922, was the first woman to serve as an Associate Trustee (the equivalent of a present-day appointment to one of Penn’s boards of overseers).