Women’s educational attainment

Spencer Beasley

Object

My object comes from a collection of papers written by Sarah Parke Morrison that includes correspondence with peers, schedules, and other writings. The series of correspondence writings span from 1897 to 1913 and were written primarily in Bloomington. One person she was in correspondence with often was the former President of Indiana University, William Lowe Bryan. Morrison’s series of schedules occur much earlier at her time at the Western Female College from 1855 to 1856. Her personal writings, are dated from 1911 to 1912, and include much more insightful accounts of her daily life, thoughts, and feelings as the first female student at Indiana University. These papers are so valuable because they not only give us insight on factual information about her years at Indiana University, but they also provide context to how she was received and how she felt about the reception she got. This information can help the reader empathize with her and of women in general at this time.

Object Importance/Research Hypothesis

I believe because Sarah Parke Morrison and the other first admitted female students of Indiana University were successful in their studies, opportunities for females such as faculty positions were made available. As the first positions opened for women in the 1870’s, in the decades to follow we see more women filling faculty positions of both similar and more significant roles. At the end of the 19th century, we begin to see female faculty positions created that are responsible for overlooking female students and other female faculty members, such as Director of Physical Education for Women or the Dean of Women. Juliette Maxwell was also one of the earliest female students at IU, and became the first female Director of Physical Education in 1897 and held that position until 1928. In 1906, Miss Louise A. Goodbody became the first women appointed the position of Dean of Women, which was needed to oversee all the new female students Indiana University was allowing to enroll (Shively). Before Goodbody was chosen as the Dean of Women, the IU board of trustees held this interim positon for eight years, discussing it every year from 1898 to 1906 until she was appointed the position (Jenkinson). Women continued to fill the role as Dean of Women and positions as professors (mainly for teaching English) for many years, but there didn’t seem to be any other positions being appointed to women outside these roles and men continued to dominate all professions and hierarchy. Morrison did not like this though, and as one of the most defined women of her time in Bloomington, she often wrote to IU official to exercise her frustration.

Although Morrison and many other current and former female students argued for spots on boards of IU and for other faculty roles, they usually did not want to fill these roles themselves. Morrison and these women did not want these roles because they were much too ambitious for them as these were the women who were running for Congress, Governor, and other positions that were on a much larger scale than a University board position. For these reasons and many more, we see a large decline in advancement for professional women after graduation after this short era. In a Bloomington Council Faculty Minute from 1972, there is a proposal mentioned for a woman to reach chancellor’s level at IU (Bloomington Faculty Council Minutes). In this proposal, it is very clear that women were still not seen as equal to men by the men who held these positions as the proposal is quickly shot down.

Digital Method

For my digital method, I would like to use text mining using Sarah Parke Morrison’s papers found in the IU Archives, specifically focusing mostly on her personal writings labeled “My experience at State University” from 1911. Throughout this semester, I will use my classmates as to help me in the classroom with text mining the original object, as well as spending my own time text mining it. With this information, I would like to use the software Mallet, a topic modeling tool used for analyzing large collections of unlabeled text. to help me retract keywords from her writings as well words and phrases used often. Doing this will help organize the information that I text mined into smaller datasets and focal points from which to continue more research off of. The largest problems I faced when text mining the original document was reading it as well as understanding it. With the document being about 106 years old, the ink has run a little bit and some parts of the papers have fallen apart, only to be taped back together. Outside of the condition of the object, the cursive as well as the language used was very hard to read and interpret, leaving me without knowing what some words are within the document.

Results

List of Topics

  1. father heard year commencement owen public twenty state directions wrote
  2. essay greek woman suppose miss courses school colleges letter knew
  3. unreadable make war bloomington term electives horror lacked considerable put
  4. women question words dr save latin lady hard studied continue
  5. day freshman thought found write week fashioned work people noon
  6. read mother mind subject began soul law possibly university
  7. class gold part boys debating spent capable horizon professors finished
  8. professor men home wylie minutes called board verse hat paid
  9. time easy senior indianapolis vote suffer daily languages enter
  10. young appeal morrison open doors gave long pretty debate sophomore
  11. years study mrs volume saturday library ballantine ancient health

Results Explained

The results of running my digital text version of Sarah Parke Morrison’s personal writings in MALLET shows key words of importance in her writing that highlight her experience at IU being a woman on a male-dominated campus. Keywords that I found most important in the topic modeling results may be different than those who have not personally read Morrison’s writings. However, we do see a clear pattern of discussion highlighted by the key words that show her devotion and affection for her family and school work. Words such as wrote, essay, greek, latin, law, and debating give us insight of her coursework during her time at IU. War, vote, suffer, as well as a variety of adjectives help paint a picture of society in Bloomington and the US at this time for the average college student, but the keywords horror, lacked, hard, appeal, and suffer portray more the experiences specific to being a woman. Being both a student from IU and from studying this subject copiously, I can easily connect meaning between all the words, but I worry that someone with a lack of general knowledge surrounding this subject will have problems understanding the significance of each word.

Works Cited

Bloomington Faculty Council Minutes. (1972, February 8). Proposal for Women’s Representative on Chancellor’s Level, Faculty Council. IU Archives, Bloomington.

IU Board of Trustees Minutes. (1898, March). March 1898 Session. IU Archives, Bloomington.

IU Board of Trustess Minutes. (1906, November). November 1906 Session. IU Archives, Bloomington.