Human Ecology reflects on first century

Our society is a work in progress, and responding to its evolving needs has been the bedrock mission of the School of Human Ecology from the moment its doors opened to students in the spring of 1904.

SoHE will commemorate its centennial with more than a year of special events, starting with a conference on Thursday, Oct. 9. Presentations beginning at 5:30 p.m. at the Fluno Center will recall the school’s history and programs, including the Practice Cottage, which opened in 1911 and became the Home Management House in 1941.

From learning communities to interdisciplinary study to service learning, SoHE has spent virtually all of the 20th century as an academic model for colleges and universities across the country, says Rima D. Apple, professor of consumer science in SoHE. She is also the author of the new book, “The Challenge of Constantly Changing Times: From Home Economics to Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, 1903-2003” (Parallel Press: 2003).

“For example, students from the school were volunteering at the settlement houses in Madison as early as the 1920s,” Apple says, adding that internships were formalized into the curriculum in the 1960s.

Learning in the community as well as the classroom remains a vital component of SoHE’s academic program. According to Robin Douthitt, SoHE dean since 2001, there simply is no substitute for the depth and insight students gain at work in the community.

Consequently, all of the school’s eight majors — consumer science, family and consumer journalism, family and consumer education, human development and family studies, human ecology, interior design, retailing and textiles and design — either offer students the opportunity to work in the community or require them to.

Recent community projects have been as diverse as the school’s departments. A course paired human development students with families with children between the ages of birth and 6 years. Textile and apparel design students continue to help the Meriter Hospital Pregnancy and Infant Loss Program provide hard-to-find tiny clothing to bereaved parents. Other students worked in the South Madison Community University Partnership Office to offer tax return assistance to low-income clients.

And at Smith Barney, one of the world’s largest investment services firms, about 20 students commit some 10 hours a week for three semesters to intern in the firm’s Madison office. First vice president for investment Mary Strickland coordinates the interns at Smith Barney. She says that about two-thirds of them come from SoHE’s personal finance program (the School of Business offers a corporate finance major). The remainder major in economics or finance.

Strickland says that recent graduates find it’s a decided benefit to be able to list a major firm under the “professional experience” header on their résumés.

“The students work with our financial consultants, who work with clients,” she says. “The interns may assist with stock research, planning, marketing and more. They also might provide assistance with our seminars, which cover such topics as retirement or wealth planning.”

However, learning is not advanced solely through the classroom and community. It also requires new knowledge powered by research, and SoHE’s new century promises to follow the lead set by its first.

Last year alone SoHE faculty and staff were the principal investigators of more than $8 million in research funded by outside grants. The 42 SoHE faculty, many of whom hold joint appointments in disciplines as varied as art and engineering, are conducting research and projects around the world. Topics include social and emotional aspects of learning for African-American children; work with the children of incarcerated mothers; the use of computers and the Internet among American Indians and migrant workers; and Cuba’s transformation from chemical-intensive industrial agriculture to sustainable, organic farming.

Technology, of course, has proved a key element in learning and in discovering knowledge. Apparel design students, for instance, are entering their second year using software like Sketch and U4ia, the latter a gift from the French firm Lectra.

However, Douthitt says that the current SoHE facilities on Linden Drive don’t really accommodate such sophisticated programs.

“We’re currently looking at the feasibility of requiring our students to buy their own laptop computers. We, in turn, would invest in the higher-end peripherals needed to, say, print cloth. That may be the best way to advance the talents and skills of both our students, and for our faculty and staff,” she says, adding that renovations to the SoHE building, one of the school’s centennial projects, will include technical support facilities.

Whatever the future delivers, SoHE historian Rima Apple has no doubt that the school will be more than equal to its tasks: “Dean Frances Zuill had no doubt that the school’s past would reflect its future.

“Neither do we.”

 

A SoHE timeline

Spring 1895
Helen Campbell gives a series of lectures titled “Synoptical Lectures in Household Economy,” later published under the title “Household Economics: A Course of Lectures in the School of Economics of the University of Wisconsin.”

1904
Classes begin. The regents vote to make domestic science a department in the College of Letters and Science.

1908
The regents move the Department of Home Economics to the College of Agriculture, which soon forces Caroline Hunt’s resignation.

1910
The program’s first graduate earns a bachelor of science degree.

1911
The first graduate student completes a master of science degree in home economics.

1914
Graduate students begin the department’s first formal research. The Home Economics and UW Extension building is completed.

1924
Home economics is divided into three parts: foods and administration, clothing and textiles, and applied arts, which was soon renamed related arts.

1926
The Dorothy Roberts Nursery School is established at the request of neighborhood mothers. In 1927 it moves to the Practice Cottage, a small house near Agriculture Hall that the university established in 1911.

1932
The first Ph.D. is granted, in education and home economics.

1943
A major in child development is introduced as a joint program among several departments, including home economics.

1951
The regents establish the School of Home Economics. Department head Frances Zuill is named associate dean in the College of Agriculture.

1951-53
The west wing of the Home Economics building is constructed for $975,000. The school moves in during May 1953.

1957
The current Preschool Laboratory is built between Agriculture Hall and the Home Management House.

1968
The school becomes the School of Family Resources and Consumer Sciences in the wake of a 1967 committee review that told the school to increase research, improve its graduate program and adopt a new name. Faculty member Helen Louise Allen passes away, bequeathing her textile collection to the university.

1970
School director William H. Marshall recommends abandoning the live-in practice program and converting the Home Management House to offices and classrooms.

1973
The school becomes an autonomous unit with a dean and associate dean.

1996
The name School of Human Ecology is adopted.

2000
A second preschool site is established to care for infants as well as toddlers.