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 let this or any other task worry you.” Carolyn accepted the position of part-time dean of women in 1913, but she served Purdue very much like a woman.
Student Marion L. Smith (in her memorial speech for Carolyn, titled “The Dean of Women”) described her:
High aims and high ideals alone were not enough for Miss Shoemaker. One of the significant characteristics to which practically every coed made reference was her willingness to help—no problem brought to her by a coed was too small for her to consider; another characteristic was her desire to be reached easily by the coeds—she tried to be in her office whenever possible, and she was never too busy to see one; another trait was her sympathetic and understanding nature. She realized how important those problems were and what they meant to the girls who brought them, and she sincerely tried to solve those problems. Girls have actually gone into her office weeping and come out smiling.
Female faculty members in colleges across the United States were asked to serve a dual role as deans of women from the 1890s to the 1930s. The deans were to oversee the women who were the minority population on campus. They would insulate the women from the “maleness” of the campuses and, in turn, protect and guide the women. The deans were scholars who were concerned about the intellectual development of women, especially in competition with men.
The presence of women on campuses made university presidents and male faculty members uneasy. Women in colleges raised concerns about propriety, delicate matters of health, and female “problems,” as well as the institutional responsibility to families to protect the safety, sexual virtue, and reputations of daughters far from home. For the uncomfortable males, appointing a dean of women to handle all those “unpleasant” female needs was the perfect solution.
Yet Carolyn helped the less than one hundred females on Purdue’s campus with much more than matters of propriety. When women did not have enough money to finish their degrees, Carolyn gave them financial assistance from her own pocketbook. She also abetted social troubles, “scholastic adjustments,” rooming house supervision, and general overseeing of all coed organizations and activities. The Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) was one of the oldest campus institutions. The YWCA sponsored the Big Sister Movement, by which the women in the upper classes familiarized the freshmen females with activities and customs. In later years, this program at Purdue would be named the “Green Guard.”
Carolyn became Purdue’s first part-time dean of women the same year Alice Paul and Lucy Burns formed the Congressional Union (later named the National Woman’s Party) to work toward the passage of a federal amendment to give women the right to vote. Paul, age twenty-eight, “cut her teeth” as a suffragist in England. While there, she met Burns in London.
On March 3, 1913, one day before President-elect Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration, Paul and Burns organized a strategically timed, majestically staged women’s suffrage parade with more than 5,000 marchers striding down Pennsylvania Avenue. Stunning and confident, Inez Milholland, a lawyer, led the parade. Draped in a cream cape that billowed in the breeze, she rode astride a snow-white horse. Holding a place of honor, immediately following, were women from seventeen countries that had already enfranchised women. Then came the “Pioneers,” women who had been struggling in the American suffrage movement for sixty-five years to secure the right to vote.
The next section of the parade celebrated workingwomen, grouped by occupation and wearing the appropriate