1/27/2012:
The first meeting of the Fargo-Moorhead American Association of University Women was held on this date in 1922. North Dakota’s third AAUW branch, it was founded by Mrs. R. L. Weber, a new teacher at NDSU.
The national organization, founded in 1881 by Marion Talbot and Ellen H. Richards, “…began as an organization with the goal to create higher educational opportunities for women, bring women together who had earned a college degree, and find opportunities for educated women to use their training.”
Marion Talbot served as the head of the Department of Household Administration and dean of women at the University of Chicago. As the dean of women, she witnessed the unfair treatment that female students received on a daily basis.
Ellen Richards is today considered the founder of Home Economics and was the first woman admitted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Although she received a Bachelor’s degree from MIT in Chemistry, the school refused to award her a PhD on the grounds that they did not want their first PhD in Chemistry to be awarded to a woman.
The two women became quick friends and realized that they both shared an immense desire to level the academic playing field between men and women. They believed that starting an organization for women in academia was a crucial step in that direction. In the late 19th century, the AAUW merged with the Association of Collegiate Alumnae, allowing the two organizations to create policies encouraging fair treatment for female students.
In 1922, Mrs. R. L. Weber moved with her husband to Fargo, North Dakota. Mrs. Weber had been a member of AAUW branches in Ames, Iowa and Ithaca, New York, where her husband worked as an entomologist. She began teaching at NDSU, and realized that both her students and fellow teachers could greatly benefit from such an organization. She called an initial interest meeting on January 27th, and seventeen women came. A month later, the group was officially recognized as an AAUW branch, with sixty-two charter members.
Today, North Dakota has eight AAUW branches, and there are over 100,000 AAUW members nationwide. The Fargo-Moorhead branch is active in the community with a variety of programs and workshops throughout the year. As of 2005, the average female college graduate still earned only 72% of her male counterpart, making the founding principles of the AAUW as relevant today as they were in 1881.
Dakota Datebook written by Jayme L. Job
Sources:
http://www.distinguishedwomen.com/biographies/richards-es.html
http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/spcl/centcat/fac/facch05_01.html