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Description
At 29, Laura Ensign’s appointment to the faculty of Iowa’s new State Normal School should have been an unqualified triumph. Yet her hiring by the Board over the objections of James Gilchrist, the school’s principal, placed her under an administrator who detested her from the start. She lived, ate, and worked with her colleagues, pupils, and Gilchrist and his family in the same isolated building on a hill two miles from town. Near her wits’ end after eight years, Ensign tried one final maneuver, one so risky that it would have cost her job had it failed: She began secretly recruiting a replacement for her nemesis months before the Board met and decided to force him out. And so Homer Seerley came to Cedar Falls, where he became the most significant figure in the university’s history, and made Ensign’s life a lot easier.
Publication Type
Book
Publication Date
11-2025
Publisher
UNI ScholarWorks, Rod Library, University of Northern Iowa
City
Cedar Falls, IA
Department
Department of History
Disciplines
Higher Education | United States History
Object Description
1 PDF File
Copyright
©2025 Thomas G. Connors
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Connors, Thomas G., "UNI’s First Woman Professor: Laura Ensign and the Struggle for Fair Pay, Rank, and Faculty Governance under Gilchrist and Seerley" (2025). Faculty Book Gallery. 771.
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/facbook/771
