15. She was The First Female Dean of a University: Edith Abbott
The daughter of a abolitionist, suffragette, and Lt. Governor, Edith Abbott was born in Grand Island, Nebraska in 1876. Throughout her life, Edith advocated for immigrants and the humane implementation of social welfare reform. She earned her first degree at the University of Nebraska in 1901. After teaching for two years she went on to attend the University of Chicago having received a fellowship. There she earned a Ph.D. in political economy in 1905. A stellar academic, she was awarded a Carnegie Fellowship and studied at the University College London and the London School of Economics.
While in London, Edith lived at a local settlement house and actively worked to repeal British poor laws that for centuries had criminalized the poverty stricken. With activist experience and academic work guiding her, Edith joined the “social experiment” at Hull-House in 1908. A settlement house with ties to the University of Chicago, Hull-House provided Edith with the opportunity to further statistical teachings and how data could be applied in ways to help the working poor immigrants.
The foundation of Edith Abbott’s work was to use her research to implement social welfare programs that were humane and would actually help the working poor instead of criminalizing them. From her research she co-authored several studies between 1910 and 1917 that centered on working women’s compensation, the link between family life, juvenile delinquency and the court system, the adverse conditions of the Cook County jailing system, and how refusal of municipal and state governments to enforce child labor laws ultimately led child to become wards of the state.
In 1924, Edith Abbott became the dean of the University of Chicago’s school of social work. She designed a curriculum that professionalized social work by dealing with the root cause of social problems, historically, legally, economically, and politically. In doing so, Edith chartered a course that would humanize social welfare programs. After the death of her sister, Grace, in 1939, Edith retreated from her public and academic life. She died in 1957 in Nebraska and was remembered as a leader who made “enduring contributions” to education and the professionalization of social reform.