International Women's Day 2009

Oregon State University salutes and celebrates the contribution of all the women you’ll find reflected in the images across The Flickr Commons. Nationally and internationally, you see their rich, varied, and tremendous contributions captured on film.

At OSU we are also proud to showcase some of our famous female faces. Historically, women have played a significant role at our university: Ida Callahan was one of the first earliest instructors at Corvallis College, and the only woman pictured in one of the earliest known photos of the faculty (taken in 1883 and featured in this set); Alice Biddle made her appearance as one of the first three graduates in 1870, completing her degree in just over three years (with perfect grades and perfect attendance); Betty Crocker started cooking on our campus; and now Jane Lubchenco, an OSU marine biologist, is headed to Washington D.C. to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Who will you see here? We’ve put together an eclectic collection of images. Some pay tribute to OSU’s professors (like Helen Gilkey in Botany; Ava Milam Clark in Home Economics; Margaret Comstock Snell in Household Economy and Hygiene; Alice Edwards in Entomology, Zoology, and Home Economics; and Zelta Rodenwald, director of women's programs at KOAC), while others recognize our students (including Alice Biddle and those famous “Coeds with Hoes”). But The OSU Archives’ collection houses so much more!

You’ll also find 1940s images of Dorothy Burleson bandaging the nose of a Braceros worker and women waiting to get on a bus to work the bean fields, former Benton County Commissioner Annabelle Jaramillo shaking her fist in the rain, 2 very different but equally stunning shots of Japanese women, and one of my favorites of a Native American woman sitting in a tipi with three children from the turn of the last century.

So far, we’ve concentrated on releasing images that pertain to natural resource and forest history, so this is a wonderful opportunity to show a bit about us! If you’d like to know more about this history of OSU, please visit the Oregon State University chronology.

Also, check out our blog posts from Women’s History Month.

Another great resource for finding out more about the women in the history pages of the Pacific Northwest is the Northwest Digital Archives. NWDA is a union database that provides access to archival and manuscript collections in Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Alaska, and Washington.

And remember, if you know or want to know more, please let us know!