History
The beginnings of the College appeared in the year 1900, when a reading course for farm women was created. In 1907, the Department of Home Economics was created within Cornell's New York State College of Agriculture. In 1919, the Department of Home Economics became a school within the Agriculture College. In 1925, the school was converted to the New York State College of Home Economics, the first state-chartered college of Home Economics in the country.
The focus of the college at the turn of the 20th century was home economics. The field was a critical pathway for women to obtain higher education. From its inception, home economics was multidisciplinary and integrative with an emphasis on science applied to the real world of the home, families and communities. The on-campus program developed in conjunction with Cornell's cooperative extension program that placed extension agents in every county of New York State to teach scientific principles of agriculture and home economics.
| Martha Van Rensselaer and Flora Rose | 1924–1932 |
| Flora Rose | 1932–1940 |
| Mary F. Henry (Acting) | 1940–1941 |
| Sarah Gibson Blanding | 1941–1946 |
| Elizabeth Lee Vincent | 1946–1953 |
| Helen G. Canoyer | 1953–1968 |
| David C. Knapp | 1968–1974 |
| Jean Failing | 1974–1978 |
| Jerome M. Ziegler | 1978–1988 |
| Francille M. Firebaugh | 1988–1999 |
| Patsy M. Brannon | 1999–2004 |
| Lisa Staiano-Coico | 2004–2007 |
| Alan Mathios | 2007–Present |
Eleanor Roosevelt played an integral role in the development of the College of Home Economics from the 1920s to the 1940s. As the wife of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the governor of New York from 1928 to 1932, and later as America's First Lady, from 1933 to 1945 (during her husband's tenure as President of the United States), she employed her fame and influence in ways that resulted in greater financial support for home economics programs and increased publicity for the College. It was with Eleanor Roosevelt's support that in February 1925, that the New York State legislature passed a bill, which made Cornell's School of Home Economics the New York State College of Home Economics.
From 1922 until 1950, Cornell's hotel administration program operated as a department within the college, until it spun off into a separate endowed unit.
In 1949, the College was one of four Cornell statutory colleges included in the State University of New York to reflect on-going state funding. The New York Legislature changed the College's name in 1969 (coinciding with an administrative reorganization of the College) to its present name — the New York State College of Human Ecology — to reflect a more "modern" focus of the College beyond "domestic arts." The college remains a unit of the State University of New York.
Read more about this topic: Cornell University College Of Human Ecology
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