Grace Raymond Hebard - Influential University Trustee

Influential University Trustee

In 1891 Grace Hebard parlayed the recommendation of Republican U.S. Senator Joseph M. Carey of Cheyenne, whom she had known since childhood into an appointment by acting Governor Amos Barber as a salaried secretary to and member of the University of Wyoming Board of Trustees. The 30-year-old woman found herself in uncharted territory as she navigated the male-dominated world of university governance. She soon learned that her administrative journey through the halls of higher education would not be without hazards. Yet from the beginning, Hebard wielded her position as trustee with considerable force, serving until 1903 but continuing as secretary until 1908. Hebard dominated the university administration for 17 years, exercising "all pervasive" influence.

She administered from a position of strength, ranging from setting university policy to managing its finances. Hebard directed the university's finances with near independence, excluding an annual review, from any administrative oversight of the daily expenditures she authorized. Hebard later remarked that "The Trustees gave me a great deal of power, and I used it."

The university struggled financially during the recession years of the mid-1890s. The six high schools in sparsely-populated Wyoming in 1894 could muster but eight graduates from which the university could seek to enroll freshman students. The under-funded university relied upon federal research grants to its Agricultural Experiment Station. The president of the board of trustees, with Hebard as secretary, chaired this important arm of the university. Hebard consolidated her position with the Agricultural Experiment Station, as she had with the trustees, into one of decision-making authority.

The influence that Hebard exercised over the university finances, its president, and faculty was considerable. Rumors emerged that conflict with Hebard and her oversight of faculty appointments prompted President A. A. Johnson to resign. Her "iron rule" of campus invariably revolved around her authority over finances, including expenditures of federal grants. Questions about the use and perhaps misuse of federal funds arose, sparking increased scrutiny of the board of trustees, all of whom were Republicans.

Democratic furor at the "Republican regime" played out in the local newspapers where 1907 charges of graft and partisan awarding of university printing contracts and improper expenditures of federal grants brought fierce criticism of Hebard's authority and domination, according to university historian Deborah Hardy. The state's Democratic press piled on. One sharply worded account claimed: "It's a standing remark in Laramie that no professor or employee of the institution can hold his job without being branded 'OK' by Miss Secretary Hebard, and whenever she decrees it the president's head will fall in the basket." Yet despite the uproar, a governor-appointed investigative commission found "that there had been no interference by Miss Hebard." Nonetheless, still under attack from the press and internally at the university, Hebard resigned as secretary to the trustees.

The end of Hebard's university administrative career in 1908 marked the beginning a rich phase in her teaching, writing, and field research. In 1908, the same university board which had been under the harsh spotlight of public criticism during Hebard's tenure as trustee appointed her as full professor. Hebard held the post until she died 28 years later.