Women at Auburn University
Original Lecture Date and Time: March 14, 2006 at 4PM
Location: Special Collections & Archives, Ralph Brown Draughon Library
Speaker: Leah Rawls Atkins
About the Speaker
Leah Rawls Atkins recieved her Ph.D. degree from Auburn University, served as founding director of the Center for Arts & Humanities, and has published numerous works on Alabama history, including A Century of Women at Auburn.
About the Lecture
In 1892 the land grant college at Auburn admitted its first three women students. The female enrollment rose from 18 in 1920 to 198 ten years later. It almost doubled from 1946 to 1950. The female students who enrolled following World War II were overseen by Dean of Women Katharine Cooper Cater's firm hand. By the 1970s, however, coed rules at Auburn had been virtually abolished. At the same time, women athletes increasingly competed in intercollegiate sports and female students made inroads into curricula formerly dominated by men.