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Purdue News
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A century of women deans leaves legacy of benevolent leadershipStanley Coulter, dean of men from 1919 to 1926, was quoted as saying of Carolyn Shoemaker: "Purdue was not a part of her life. Purdue was her life."
Shoemaker served as Purdue's first dean of women from 1913 to 1933. Coulter's words also apply to the five other women who served Purdue as deans of women and deans of students during the 20th century. Each has demonstrated unselfishness, competence, warmth, high principles, courage, humility and a strong commitment to students. Because of their similarities, those still living also enjoy a warm friendship. Two of the former deans of students, Barbara Cook and Betty Nelson, recently sat at Cook's kitchen table to reminisce. "We're family by choice," Nelson said of her "family" of former deans. "We function very much that way. And if you don't like your family when you're family by choice, it's your own fault!" she added with an easy laugh. "There are things that happen in the world of 'deaning' that you can't share with very many people. Sometimes you need to make fun -- exaggerate something just to be able to laugh over it. Then you pull yourself back and then you go off and do what you need to do." The women who did what they needed to do and much more are the late Carolyn Shoemaker; Dorothy Stratton; Helen Schleman, who died in 1991; Beverley Stone; Barbara Cook; and Betty Nelson. Beginning with Carolyn Shoemaker, each dean tried to make her office a place where students would want to be -- not just where discipline problems were handled. The deans all made it a point to get to know students' names -- an increasingly tough goal as the West Lafayette enrollment grew from 1,000 in 1900 to 37,000 in 2000. In the early 1900s, one-on-one attention was a Shoemaker hallmark. Her successor, Dorothy Stratton, built on that tradition. Now 102 and living in West Lafayette, Stratton came to Purdue as dean of women in 1933 during the Great Depression. Her first order of business in earning a $3,300 annual salary was to convince administrators to let her move out of a well-hidden top-floor office in the old Fowler Hall to one where students could find her. Over some administrative objection, Stratton's office was moved to the ground floor in the Engineering Administration Building, right across from the Office of the Dean of Men. But becoming accessible was just one step toward making students feel welcome. "Parents of students all thought that the dean's office was a disciplinary office," Stratton said during a 1984 conversation among former deans that was videotaped by the Mortar Board honor society. "I wanted to change that concept if I could." In a move that showed her compassion, Stratton proposed deferring sorority rush from the first to the second semester, to ward off hurt feelings. "I had, of course, to deal with those who were not chosen, and this, to put it simply, broke my heart," Stratton said in the videotape. "So, with the objections of National Panhellenic … we had deferred rush. This at least gave students a base of friendship for a semester to get their feet on the ground and decide whether they did or didn't want to join a sorority -- or whether they could -- or if it didn't matter quite so much." Deferred rush, which remains the practice for sororities and fraternities at Purdue today, became an example that other campuses followed. Stratton worked closely with Helen Schleman, director of Duhme Hall for women, who would later succeed her. It was a time of steady growth in women's enrollment. But in 1942, both women went to serve their country during World War II. Clare Coolidge became acting dean of women while Stratton joined the Women Appointed Volunteer Emergency Service, or WAVES. She was soon named director and captain of the Coast Guard Women's Reserve, becoming the first woman officer in Coast Guard history. Stratton also gave the Coast Guard Women's Reserves their name: the SPARs, from the initials of the Coast Guard motto, "Semper Paratus - Always Ready." Schleman, too, would serve in the Coast Guard during World War II, also achieving the rank of captain. In 1947, when Stratton became director of personnel for the International Monetary Fund, Schleman returned to Purdue as dean of women. In 1947, when Stratton became director of personnel for the International Monetary Fund, Schleman returned to Purdue as dean of women. Schleman soon learned that her military experience forever changed her attitudes toward women's capabilities. "The experience I had had in Washington with the SPARs was that young women were certainly as capable of looking after themselves as young men were," Schleman said in the 1984 videotape. "I felt very much that the women's 'hours' were nothing to help them to assume responsibility and help them become self-sufficient." So began a prolonged administrative disagreement about the merits of a curfew for women in residence halls. Schleman understood why eliminating a curfew was unpopular during the early 1950s, but she held her ground. "The admissions office was absolutely sure that nobody -- nobody -- would ever let a daughter come to Purdue if we didn't have 'hours,'" Schleman said. "The administration, the Board of Trustees, and the rest were very skeptical about this, too." Schleman did not give up, but she had to wait more than 10 years for the Purdue administration, and perhaps the rest of the country, to come around. In 1966, "hours" were eliminated for sophomore, junior and senior women, and not much later for freshmen women. Schleman's initiatives and her thinking were ahead of their time -- even radical - in other ways as well, say Barbara Cook, dean of students from 1980 to 1986, and Betty Nelson, dean from 1987 to 1995. "I think Helen had more influence on all of us than anybody else," Cook says. "She was about 50 years ahead of her time in her thinking. She started a freshmen conference program and invited each freshman woman to come in and meet somebody in the dean of women's office. "One of the questions posed, was, 'What do you think you're going to be doing 20 years from now when your last child is finished with school?' Well, students were just dumbfounded with that question. Students from that era still talk about that and what an impression that made on them. It was the first time that they ever thought about it." As Schleman was waking up freshmen women to the realities of their future and their own capabilities, she also was demonstrating her contempt for racism. "Helen was fearless, really," Cook says. "She was never afraid to tell anybody anything that she believed. Helen delighted in taking black staff to the country club for dinner, which I loved. People didn't do that back then. Helen was never raucous about it, but she was firm." Schleman also took up for black students when she saw injustices, Nelson says. "If there was an African-American student or staff who were not treated well, Helen would kind of stomp around over it and then she'd take the bull by the horns," Nelson says. "She did not follow the sheep; she was a real leader. With Helen, if something was right, that's what you would do." Exemplary leadership was a trend that continued under Dean Beverley Stone, also a WAVES volunteer during World War II. Stone became dean of women in 1968. Though in declining health today, she, too, lives in West Lafayette. The turbulence of the Vietnam War era defined Stone's time as dean. She later recounted one event that dramatized the challenges she faced. It was a 1968 Green Guard big sister event at which new freshmen women were accompanied by sophomore big sisters at a picnic on the Slayter Center lawn. The invited speaker, Exponent student newspaper editor Bill Smoot, launched into an anti-authority diatribe sprinkled liberally with four-letter words. "It was the most incredible experience I had ever had up to that point with students," Stone recalled in 1984. "He advised the students not to believe anything their parents had told them. He said don't pay any attention to University regulations and he openly advocated free love. It went on and on." Many years later, former student Jan Aikman Dickson, '63, would tell Stone in a letter, "When campuses all over the country quaked with turmoil, it was comforting to know that for Purdue University, you were there." In 1974, the administration decided to consolidate the men's and women's deans offices into a Dean of Students Office. Purdue nearly lost Stone as a result. "Many of us had fought such a consolidation for many years," Stone said. "We had seen this happen in lots of other institutions and in almost every instance, a male had been designated as dean of students and the dean of women was subordinated to associate dean of students -- even when her qualifications were stronger. "I almost left the University. There was a lot of pressure, I think, put on Dr. Fischang (interim vice president for student services) from faculty people who supported the decision to establish a Dean of Students Office and to offer the position to me." They did and she stayed. When Stone became dean of students in 1974, she also became the first woman to hold that title in the Big Ten. Following Stone's 1980 retirement, associate dean Barbara Cook moved up and served as dean until 1986. "Barb is kind and gentle and compassionate," says Nelson of her predecessor and friend. "She genuinely likes people and believes that people are good. And people trust Barb." Former student Mary Jane (Martin) Jones would tell Cook in a letter: "You came into my life during the tough school year of 1968-69. Instead of students dancing to the 100th Anniversary Waltz, they demonstrated and held sit-ins. You used your heart as well as your head to seek solutions. You found rainbows and you shared them!" When Cook retired in 1987, associate dean Betty Nelson stepped up. An intensely energetic leader, Nelson still volunteers tirelessly for Purdue. "Those of us who still write to our first-grade friends just can't let go," Nelson says, laughing. As dean, she left a legacy as an advocate for the disabled, organizing student groups and other campus organizations in the effort to make the entire West Lafayette Campus accessible to those with disabilities. Her time as dean also was marked by accelerated growth in both the number and the size of student organizations -- particularly those offering leadership opportunities. Nelson remembers as her greatest challenge the students with great minds who weren't ready to stay on track academically. As dean, she displayed a poster in her office that she says started many conversations. It said, "Freedom is the opportunity to discipline yourself." As Cook and Nelson sit chatting at Cook's kitchen table, the phone rings. After a short conversation, Cook hangs up and says, "That was Dorothy! "She said, 'All systems go?'" Cook adds with a grin, imitating the authority and enthusiasm in Dorothy Stratton's 102-year-old voice. You bet they are. And they will be for the foreseeable future as the legacy these women left inspires those who follow them in the Office of the Dean of Students. As Cook once told a national conference of women deans: "If we survive, and I think we will, it will probably be because of the sense of purpose which started with Dorothy Stratton and has been refined through these past 50 years." Story by Amy Raley for Purdue Perspecitve PHOTO CAPTION: Deans Dorothy Stratton, Barb Cook, Helen Schleman, Betty Nelson and Beverly Stone were photographed in 1990 at the entrance to Schleman Hall of Student Services.
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