- By Patrick Ball
- Editorial Staff
“Massachusetts points to her women;
their works do follow them.”
- Ellen H. Richards
- The department of
consumer sciences at Framingham State College is located in Hemenway Hall,
which is named for Mrs. Augustus Hemenway – a woman of means from Boston
whose financial contributions began with the introduction of sewing to grade
school classes around 1860, and culminated with the posthumously established
Mary Hemenway School of Household Arts of the Framingham State Normal School
in 1898.
- Today’s ambitious students within the
department – aspiring dietitians, fashion designers, health teachers and
nutritionists – are a testament to Hemenway, Ellen H. Richards, and the
other influential women, such as Anna Billa and Constance Jordan, who
created the road that leads to their dreams.
- Home to three majors, fashion design and
retailing, food and nutrition and health and consumer sciences, the consumer
sciences department, formerly known as the family and consumer sciences
department, and home economics before that, is “very career oriented.
- We do not do ‘family orientation,’” said Janet
Schwartz, the department chair. “As the world changes, we have to be
flexible. We have advisory boards in food and nutrition and fashion design
and retailing. We use them. We need them. They show us what happens,
changes, in the businesses.”
- There was a time, however, when family and
“family orientation” were very much a part of the department. The businesses
that Schwartz speaks of had yet to come into their own, never mind gone
through changes, and the home was at the base of home economics.
The Evolution of a Department
- Professor Rebecca Taylor said, “Home economics
dealt with economic issues or consumer issues,” such as food sanitation and
“how you could take the limited money you have to provide for your family.”
- She said although the American Home Economics
Association did not change its name to the American Association of Family
and Consumer Sciences until the 1980s, many schools changed their names
during the 1960s, when “home ec had a negative connotation because of
hippies,” and the prevailing, if near-sighted sentiment that women were no
longer relegated to their kitchens.
- She said the department has always been
oriented toward both the family and the consumer. However, the department
eventually dropped the “family” because it became more “business oriented.”
- In 1898, the Mary Hemenway School of Household
Arts became a part of the Normal School at Framingham, but Hemenway’s
influence began much earlier than that.
- According to a timeline for Framingham State
College and the consumer sciences department, and a brochure entitled “Mary
Hemenway: Household Arts to consumer sciences department at Framingham State
College,” both provided by Taylor, Hemenway began her work in educating
women in a venture that would help in the Civil War effort after witnessing
the poor quality of stitching done for Union soldiers by school girls.
- Driven by a fundamental interest in the
education of women and the belief that mothers were unsatisfactory teachers
of sewing, Hemenway paid for sewing materials and the salary of a teacher in
a Boston Public School in 1864. Between 1885 and 1888, she started Vocation
schools to train girls in food preparation, and in 1886, the Boston Normal
School of Cookery was started by Hemenway. Louisa A. Nicholass, an 1890
graduate of the school, became principal in 1892.
- Hemenway died in 1894. Through a provision in
her will, her work was to carry on for fifteen more years, and the program
at the Boston Normal School expanded to two years.
- The school’s name was changed to the Boston
Normal School of Household Arts in 1896, and was moved to Framingham two
years later, based on the cooperation of Hemenway’s trustees, the State
Board of Education and the Framingham Normal School’s principal, Henry
Whittemore.
- In September of 1898, in a room in May Hall,
which previously functioned as a gymnasium, held a class of five students,
and the Household Arts program was launched.
- The Framingham Normal School absorbing the
Boston Normal School of Cookery was a union between the oldest school in the
United States for training teachers of cookery with the first publicly
funded college for the education of teachers. Nicholass was retained as head
of the department, and Miss Amy Morris Homans was asked to oversee the
organization and installation. The curriculum length was two years: one for
the household arts, and one for normal courses. The department’s purpose was
to train teachers adequately in various household arts, and the goal was
instilling self-reliance among students. Courses offered during this time
were Household Sciences, such as Physics, and Bacteria and Yeasts. There
were also courses in the Household Arts Laboratory which included High Class
Cookery, and Special Cooking for the Very Sick. There were also classes
which covered fats, batter and dough mixtures, fermentation, frozen dishes
and even practical laundry work according to a report of the Paris
Exposition of 1900.
- In 1901, a Home Management course was started,
in which students would move into a “Practice House” and essentially
practice managing a home for themselves. A course in sewing was introduced
in 1903. The program’s curriculum expanded to three years in 1905, and by
1909, the curriculum included sewing, textiles, costume design and related
arts. The program, which originated to assist in the Civil War effort, again
aided wartime endeavors during World War I, when student projects included
victory gardens, knitting camp clothing, preparing surgical dressings and
canning.
- It became a four-year program in 1922, with the
culminating degree being a bachelor’s of education. In 1949, the department
was renamed the Home Economics Department.
- Virginia Ferguson, Class of 1959, was a Home
Economics major during her time at FSC. She said, “When I was here, you only
had two choices: education or home economics. You could be a dietician or
teach. As a freshman, I didn’t have to decide textiles or foods, just Home
Ec or elementary education. You did student teaching and house practice
during the same semester, which were divided into quarters.”
- According to Ferguson, she graduated with enough credits,
from the core curriculum alone to teach clothing and textiles, foods,
chemistry and general sciences at the high school level. “I didn’t like
student teaching, and I didn’t like working as an assistant dietician. So, I
asked ‘What’s left?’ and Constance Jordan said, ‘How about grad school?’”
- She went to Cornell for her master’s right
after graduating from FSC, and worked for a professor with a government
grant to test the components of flour for wheat flour.
- Ferguson fondly remembers her experiences in the Home
Management course. She said the first floor of Crocker Hall was set up like
a dining room, kitchen and living room, and every Home Ec major had to live
there for at least one quarter, even the commuters. “It was meant to teach
women how to run a household – groceries, budget, cooking, cleaning and how
to set a proper table,” she said. “I remember we invited the professor. It
was fall, and we had a hot cider planned. When we poured it into the big,
glass bowl, they had forgotten to put a metal spoon in, and the glass
shattered. Everything was all over the floor, right before everyone arrived.
… It was a lot of fun.”
- The Mary Hemenway Home Economics and Science
building, with a Child Development laboratory – the first of its kind for a
State College – opened in 1962. That same year, a master of education in
home economics was approved, and six years later, approval was granted for a
master of science in food and nutrition.
- Marilyn Manzella, executive administrator of
the Independent Alumni Association (FSC Class of 1969), reflected on her
time in the home economics department. “I remember teaching how to write
checks. It was, it is, a really broad curriculum,” she said. “So much has
changed domestically. [Women today] are out in the workforce. So, there is
less time for the domestic arts. What we were teaching is so you can live.”
- According to Schwartz, after the women’s
movement in the 1960s, “There was a shift in families’ expectations of their
daughters,” and this was the time when the department transformed from
teaching teachers how to teach home economics, to catering to
career-oriented students.
-
- This transition became apparent in early 1970s,
when the clothing and textiles major become a part of the home economics
programs (1970), and the undergraduate CPD program was approved by the
American Dietetic Association in 1972.
- Dr. Judy Zaccagnini Flynn, professor of fashion
design and retailing, was a student at FSC from 1965-1969. During her time
as an undergraduate, home economics students took classes in clothing and
textiles, family development, consumer economics, food and nutrition and
housing. She enjoyed the Home Management course, and actually taught the
class when she returned to FSC as a professor.
- “I think I was the last one to teach it,” she
said. “It ended in 1976-77, around then. Society was changing. We suddenly
had students who were not typical four-year, single students. I was the
first they hired with a clothing and textile degree. [In 1974-75], I built
on what Anna Billa had developed … to move more toward business and design.
It was called clothing and textile – non-business. With the early program,
we were experimenting at the same time as other programs.”
- Flynn also said the 1980s marked a “shift from
how to be the consumer, to how to cater to the consumer.” In 1986, the John
Stalker Institute of Foods and Nutrition was established to train food
service workers at the school and in the community, and the Sesquicentennial
Celebration was held in 1989.
- Dr. Patricia Luoto has been a professor at FSC
for 26 years, and was the original director of the John Stalker Institute,
which she said is a collaboration between the Consumer Sciences department
and the Massachusetts Department of Education. She operated as director for
the first seven years, and then Schwartz took over as director.
- Luoto and Schwartz switched places in the fall,
2005 semester, and Luoto has served as director since.
- She said when Home Economics was in its prime during
the 1950s and 1960s, “the idea was to teach women to run their own
household.” But now, there is more of a “science of food approach. As
nutrition information becomes more available to the consumer, they are more
demanding. Our job is to look at the scientific development and inform the
public. It’s not preparing meals for a family anymore.”
- The impact of nutrition becoming a prevalent
public concern can be witnessed in both the food and nutrition and the
health and consumer sciences departments. Dr. Susan Massad, a 1981 graduate
of FSC, teaches courses that encompass both of the programs, such as
Nutrition for Sports and Exercise, Personal and Community Health, Nutrition
Science and Application and Consumer Economics.
- Massad, whose background is in Health
Education, said people are more conscious about their heath and fitness, and
the technology now available presents possibilities for instruction that did
not exist in past decades. There are many career paths that are not limited
to the clinical program – students are no longer necessarily destined to be
dieticians.
- She takes her sports nutrition class to the
fitness center, where they are able to utilize heart-rate monitors,
body-composition analysis and the cycle ergometer. Massad even has an
athletic trainer come in to speak with the class. “The fitness facility has
made our lives easier,” she said.
- The department is “still very academically
rigorous,” according to Massad. “It’s really a science major. … In the last
five years, especially, we’re all concerned with the childhood obesity
epidemic. We teach more about prevention, have students intern at school
services, and give presentations in the community as assignments.” According
to Massad, there has been an increase in the department’s visibility. “The
MetroWest calls frequently for studies,” she said.
- The department’s name was changed to family and
consumer sciences in 1995, and the word “family” was dropped from the name
in 2001, giving the department its present name of consumer sciences. Most
recently, the clothing and textiles major was re-named fashion design and
retailing in 2003.
- Dr. Irene Foster, professor of Fashion Design
and Retailing, and 1987 alumna, said, “The difference between what we teach
and what we were taught is extraordinary. We didn’t have the merchandising
courses we have today. The curriculum is more specific and developed.
Because the market has changed, the consumer has changed, and we have
changed. It’s an ever-changing discipline.”
- She said that in Fashion Design, today, the
department is not only technically oriented, but “fashion forward. We have
very strong design students who oversee and product manage.” Merchandising
and Retailing students learn buying, planning, and the economics of
businesses, “and we’re talking $12 million businesses. Students not only do
the planning, but crunch numbers,” said Foster.
- Janet Schwartz supports Foster’s theory of the
Consumer Sciences field being “an ever-changing discipline.” She believes
that the department, as a whole, has adapted to new technologies “as the
field requires it. We meet the needs of the industry – as the industry
develops, we develop,” she said.
- One example she provided was ethics becoming an
issue in health care. She said with end-of-life feeding, and patient privacy
laws, “dieticians have to keep up with what’s happening.” Another example
provided by Schwartz was that of an industry partner, who had become sick of
scrolling through e-mails laden with shoddy sentence structure and asked,
“Can you give me some students that can write?”
- Returning to her Food and Nutrition roots, she
provided a final example of the departments’ continual evolution. “We still
have Vitamin A, but a lot has changed. Energy drinks didn’t exist five years
ago … still talking about vitamins, but now I’m talking about
anti-oxidants.”
- She described the department, as a whole, as “a
professional program at a liberal arts school, that takes the liberal arts
very seriously.” Schwartz and the rest of the department strive to “put out
well-rounded students,” who, according to Schwartz, are responsible for
fulfilling more requirements than students of many other departments.
- FSC is one of the only four-year schools in
Massachusetts that offers the Fashion Design and Retailing major, according
to Professor Brianna Plummer. The major has two concentrations: apparel
design, and merchandising. “What’s nice is that design has to take some
retailing, and retailing has to take some design,” said Plummer. “The
department is aware of what’s going on in the world. They definitely take a
very active role in making sure everything is up to date, as far as
forecasting – predicting style –placing people in growing jobs. That has
been a very big focus.”
- The Food and Nutrition major also offers
multiple concentrations, such as Nutrition and Dietetics (Didactic Program
in Dietetics, DPD), Coordinated Program in Dietetics (CPD) and Applied
Nutrition. Both the Didactic and Coordinated Programs are accredited by the
American Dietetic Association, and conclude with the graduate becoming
eligible to take the national Registration Exam for Dietitians. FSC is the
only school in the state to offer a Coordinated Program in Dietetics, and is
one of only three schools in New England to do so. The Applied Nutrition
major is geared toward those who are not planning to take the dietetics
exam. Additionally, the Department has a master’s degree program in Food and
Nutrition.
- Students who pursue a major in Health and
Consumer Sciences can chose a concentration in either Teacher Preparation in
Health/Consumer Sciences, or Consumer and Community Sciences. The teacher
preparation concentration includes student teaching, while Consumer and
Community Services includes a multitude of choices for minors in other
departments, and two internships in Consumer Services.
- Each of the three programs within the
department operates more or less independently from one another. Professor
Rebecca Taylor said, “We get a little territorial. … But, if something goes
on – we all have our niche – but we pull together. One of the things
interesting to me is the diversity of faculty. We all have slightly
different backgrounds academically.”
- Taylor believes the faculty, perhaps because of
their diverse backgrounds and niches, to be a “strong part of our
department.”
- Like many of her professors, Senior Fashion
Design and Merchandising major Joanna Holmes would love to return to her
alma mater to teach, but first wants to get “some real world experience in
the fashion industry, so I can teach from experience rather than theory.”
- Holmes said she chose FSC because of its “well
known fashion department.” Some of her best experiences at the college
include “building strong relationships with peers and professors,” she said.
“The small class size for our major allows us all to get to know one
another, especially our professors, on a name-to-name basis.”
- As far as her future, she is keeping her
options open. She’s been accepted to Drexel University for graduate school,
and is applying for jobs as well. “My professors have been crucial in my
experience at FSC. They have inspired me to want to get my master’s, so I
can teach and become a professor.”
- Kara Graziola is a food and nutrition major
with a concentration in applied nutrition. She chose the major because she
wanted to start better taking care of myself – eating healthier and
exercising.
- In December of 2004, she graduated from
Berkshire Community College, and knew she wanted to study nutrition.
“Community colleges in Massachusetts have something called joint admissions
where if you have a certain GPA at the Community College you’re guaranteed
to get into any State school. The only state schools that had nutrition were
UMass and FSC,” she said. “I liked FSC because it was small, and I knew the
class size would be smaller, so I would get more hands on attention from my
professors. FSC was also much cheaper.
- This semester Graziola will engage in a lab
experience at a foodservice establishment for her Foodservice class, and
said, “I really think I would like to work in foodservice, especially school
foodservice. When I graduate, though, I may work at WIC [women, infants, and
children] just to get some experience.”
- In terms of the education she is receiving at
FSC, she said, “I not only have a better understanding of what foods are
good for you and what aren’t, but I’ve learned how and why people make food
choices – whether it is due to economic or basic knowledge reasons, and also
barriers that people may face when not eating healthy.
- “Also, he courses I have taken in foodservice
management have helped me to better understand the foodservice aspect of
nutrition. The nutrition program at FSC takes a lot of work, but all the
work is manageable and you really learn a lot. The professors here want you
to do well, and are very helpful in helping you achieve that goal,” she
said.
- Senior Caroline Manning chose FSC because it
was the only college in the area that offered both the design and
merchandising programs. At FSC, she was given the opportunity to study
abroad in Florence for a year – an experience she considers to be among her
best.
- Manning is undecided about her future, but is
currently interning at TJX, working in product development for children’s
playwear. She said she helps out the art department, tech designers and
product managers for their private label clothing. “It’s really great,” she
said. “I’ve definitely learned a lot, and also learned that I do want to
work in the fashion industry.
- “I really think that the program here gives
their students a good background for their real-life work. They push you to
think of realistic projects that could sell, as well as letting you be
creative,” said Manning.
- Lauren Mancini is majoring in the Coordinated
Program in Dietetics (CPD). High school health and anatomy classes roused
her interest in the human body, and upon deciding on a major, she realized
“I could take many of the things I am interested in, and apply them to real
life situations.”
- She chose FSC because of its “excellent
reputation. The CPD program here at FSC integrates class-room learning with
hands on learning, something you can not find at other schools.
- Mancini has taken courses in Food Culture and
Society, Medical Nutrition Therapy, Experimental Study of Food and Human
Nutrition Science. She said, “The interesting thing about the courses here
is you don’t just take nutrition courses, you learn about food science,
biology, chemistry, medical and even food service – all these different
topics that make up the nutrition major.
- She’s done an internship through Sodexho at the
Faulkner Hospital in Boston, and outpatient work at Marlborough Hospital.
She is currently doing a clinical internship at South Shore Hospital and
will be doing a foodservice internship at Braintree Public Schools.
Mancini eventually plans on going to graduate school, but is no rush.
“First, I want to graduate, start exploring my options and see specifically
where I want to concentrate,” she said.
- She say’s she’s had plenty of contact with former
students. “FSC Alumni are everywhere! Whether it is at your internship at a
hospital or in the nutrition department itself. Many times alumni will come
and share their experiences with us as students – for example there is an
Eating Disorder workshop at FSC which an alumni is putting on.
- “It is really encouraging when you see alumni
in the workforce making an impact. It makes you realize that hard work does
pay off,” she said.
- Mancini finds the work load for Nutrition
majors to be extensive, with “countless days of studying for exams, putting
projects together or meeting to do group work.”
- She said, “At times, it gets discouraging.
However, when you are at your clinical facility and you can understand
physiologically what is going on with your patient, you know all your hard
work is paying off. Much of what I have accomplished here would not be
possible without the faculty who push the students to take it one step
further, and ask the ask the inevitable question ‘Why?’ It is truthfully the
dedication of the faculty and staff that makes the FSC consumer science
department such a success.”
- The department – started by one determined
woman over a century ago – has come a long way through the years, and in
some ways, has come full circle. Mary Hemenway’s first venture was into the
instruction of sewing, and now that the field has become career oriented
rather than teaching life skills, students must prepare for their own
future, and learn the skills necessary for their careers.
- Schwartz said, “The change in the department
has paralleled how women see themselves in society.”
