Isabel Bevier Essay

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There is little information about Isabel Bevier’s childhood and early life. However, Bevier contributed many motivating influences to home economics. She was born in November 1860, where she grew up on a farm near Plymouth, Ohio. She was the youngest of nine children and was raised in a culture where both men and women were taught to work hard. Therefore, she attended The University of Wooster in Ohio and graduated with a bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1885. Bevier later received her master's degree in Latin and German in 1888. She taught in a country school the summer before she was 16, and taught for three consecutive summers before going to Wooster Preparatory. After her fiancé Elmer Strain who had just graduated from Harvard Medical School drowned, she decided to make a career in the field of science. Also …show more content…

From this beginning, she studied to obtain information on which to form “household sciences.” In 1900, Andrew Sloan Draper, the fourth President of UI, asked her to start a new department for household science at the UI, which she chose to accepted, because both men and women studied at the institution. She believed that men and women should be treated equally and that women should also know science and architecture in order to lead a better life alongside men. Bevier taught her first course on the top floor of Natural History Building without any laboratories or kitchens. In 1903 the first three women graduated with a bachelor’s degree in household

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