To learn more about the history of the College of Human Ecology, visit From Domesticity to Modernity: What was Home Economics? Students collaborated with staff in the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections to create this 2001 exhibition in recognition of 100 years of home economics/human ecology at Cornell.

1900

Liberty Hyde Bailey, then a professor of horticulture in the College of Agriculture, hired Martha Van Rensselaer to develop a home economics correspondence course for the women of New York state. 

1901

Van Rensselaer sent the first bulletin in Cornell Reading Course for Farmers’ Wives, titled “Saving Steps.” The course integrated emerging scientific knowledge with accessible learning opportunities for women and their families.

1903

The College of Agriculture (now the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences) offered the first credit courses in home economics. 

1907

The College of Agriculture formed the Department of Home Economics. Nutrition researcher and educator Flora Rose joined Cornell to lead the new department with Van Rensselaer. The program was free for New York state residents, making it a critical gateway to higher education for women who wouldn’t otherwise have had access.   

1911

Van Rensselaer and Rose became the first full-time female faculty at Cornell.
(Anna Botsford Comstock was named assistant professor in summer 1899, but her title was revoked before the fall term.) The university faculty noted that they were making an exception for home economics, “not favoring in general the appointment of women to professorships.” Bailey advised Van Rensselaer and Rose not to attend faculty meetings “for a while at least” to “let the memory of opposition be forgotten.”

1913

The department moved into the new Home Economics Building. The facilities included a model cafeteria in the basement that served as a laboratory for institution management students. One of the oldest buildings on the Ag Quad, it is now the Computing and Communications Center.

1914

The Smith-Lever Act created the Cooperative Extension Service. This partnership between the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the land-grant university in each state enables the universities to share research-based knowledge through public outreach. At Cornell, the law resulted in a new organizational structure and new funding for extension work in home economics.

1915

Beulah Blackmore joined the faculty as the first full-time clothing instructor, developing a textile collection for teaching, today known as the Cornell Fashion + Textile Collection.

1922

The school began offering courses in hotel administration.

1923

At the request of the Commission for Relief in Belgium (an effort led by Herbert Hoover) Flora Rose sailed to Europe in the spring of 1923, leading a nutrition survey of nearly 5,000 Belgian children and teens to study their health in the war’s aftermath. Van Rensselaer, honored that year as one of America’s 12 greatest women by the League of Women Voters, followed in June.

1925

For their work assisting in the reconstruction efforts in Belgium following WWI, Martha Van Rensselaer and Flora Rose were awarded the insignia of Chevalier of the Order of the Crown by Belgium’s King Albert.

Feb. 24, 1925

The College was founded.

The school became a separate college when the governor of New York signed legislation establishing the New York State College of Home Economics. According to the law, “The object of said College of Home Economics shall be the improvement of human welfare by means of education, investigation, and extension teaching.” The new college had six departments – foods and nutrition, textiles and clothing, household management, household art, institution management, and family life. Van Rensselaer and Rose were co-directors, reporting to the dean of the College of Agriculture.

In recognition of the emerging interest in child development and parent education, the college formed the Department of Family Life and a laboratory nursery school with support from the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Fund.

1928

The College of Agriculture joined efforts with the College of Home Economics to launch Farm and Home Week, an annual program of events, lectures and exhibits. An important part of the colleges’ extension work, Farm and Home Week ran until 1959.

1929

Beginning of the Great Depression
 

1931

The college broke ground for a new building, which opened in 1933 as Martha Van Rensselaer Hall. Van Rensselaer died in 1932, just before the cornerstone for the building was laid.

1931

In response to the Great Depression, the college adapted its curriculum to help students make do with less. As one example, courses in the Department of Textiles and Clothing expanded instruction in repairing and refashioning existing garments and opened its facilities to all students at the university.

1933

A research team led by Flora Rose developed Milkorno, a mixture of cornmeal and skim milk, to help deliver cheap nutrition to poor households during the Great Depression. As part of her effort to set a good example for a struggling nation, Eleanor Roosevelt served thrifty menus – including Milkorno – developed by Cornell home economists at the White House.

1939

The college expanded its use of radio into a full schedule of weekly programs and special coverage of events like the annual conferences in nutrition and family life and Farm and Home Week. 

1940

In July 1940 – nearly 18 months before the United States entered World War II – the college’s leadership began preparing to respond to wartime conditions. Faculty and extension staff served on local, state and national committees related to defense and nutrition, and Helen Monsch, head of the Department of Foods and Nutrition, participated in a film with the U.S. Department of Agriculture connecting adequate nutrition to national security.

1941

December 1941 – The U.S. enters World War II.

Sarah Blanding, a political scientist, became director of the college after Flora Rose retired in 1940. In 1942, Blanding became the first dean of the college – and the first female academic dean at Cornell – when her title was changed.

1942

The extension service rose to the task of “helping to win the war on the home front,” with programs on topics like establishing Victory Gardens, preserving food, providing first aid and home nursing, conserving of clothing and household goods, preparing for blackouts or evacuation, and arranging childcare for working mothers.

The Department of Hotel Administration started a two-year certificate program to meet the needs of students – most of whom were men – who expected to be called for service before they could finish the four-year program.

1943

The college reorganized its curriculum to provide an accelerated, year-round program, allowing students to complete a bachelor’s degree in 2 2/3 years. The program continued until the academic year 1946-1947.

The curriculum adapted in other ways too. For example, students in household management made fewer visits to homes – none to rural homes – because shortages of rubber and gasoline affected transportation, and the Department of Family Life worked with the Red Cross to certify students as child-care and home-nursing aides. At the same time, the college was already anticipating the end of the war, preparing students to help with refugee resettlement and respond to an expected housing boom.

1945

May 1945 – World War II comes to an end.

1946

The college’s national and international profile increased as faculty contributed their expertise more frequently at conferences, in publications, and as consultants to governments and organizations. The college also began hosting growing numbers of international visitors interested in starting home economics programs in their own countries.

1947

Catherine Personius, the head of the Department of Food and Nutrition, was appointed coordinator of research, with responsibility for developing, advancing and coordinating the research program in home economics. She was also named assistant director of the Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva, NY.

As part of the college’s growing use of mass media for extension teaching, a faculty member from the Department of Child Life and Family Relationships participated in a television program on Station WRGB, Schenectady, titled "My Child Won’t Eat."

1948

The college was the star of the film, “A College of Home Economics,” produced by the U.S. State Department’s Voice of America program. The 50-minute film was eventually translated into 26 languages and shown in 52 countries.

1949

The State University of New York (SUNY) launched, consolidating 29 institutions, including the College of Home Economics and the other three contract colleges at Cornell, into a comprehensive public university system.

The Housing Research Center (later renamed the Center for Housing and Environmental Studies) brought together faculty from the colleges of home economics, agriculture and engineering and the school of architecture under the direction of Glenn Beyer to conduct interdisciplinary research on social and economic aspects of housing.

1952

The Albert R. Mann Library opened, combining the libraries of the colleges of home economics and agriculture. Today, Mann Library is a hub for research relating to the life sciences, agriculture, applied social sciences and human ecology. 

1954

The School of Hotel Administration separated from the College of Home Economics and became an independent unit in the university.

1962

President John F. Kennedy named Helen G. Canoyer, dean of the College of Home Economics, as chair of the Consumer Advisory Council. Canoyer’s involvement in the consumer protection movement of the 1960s was part of the college’s longstanding commitment to advocating for the needs of consumers.  

1963

The Cornell-Ghana project began, in which college faculty collaborated with Winneba Training College, the University of Ghana and the Ghana Ministry of Education to establish culturally appropriate home economics programs.

1964

Urie Bronfenbrenner, professor of human development, argued before Congress that investment in high-quality early childhood education should be part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty. He joined the Head Start Planning Committee the following year and served on several subsequent government task forces on early childhood education and child development.

The university formed nine faculty committees to study aspects of undergraduate education at Cornell, part of a university-wide period of intense self-analysis.

1966

The committee appointed by Cornell’s president in 1965 to study the college issued its final report. The “Blackwell Report,” named for committee chair Sara Blackwell, affirmed the importance of the college’s mission – “the improvement of human welfare” – and made 38 recommendations, including changing the college’s name.

1969

Following a faculty vote, the governor of New York signed legislation to change the college’s name to the New York State College of Human Ecology. A reorganization accompanied the name change, with seven departments consolidated into five: Community Service Education, Consumer Economics and Public Policy, Design and Environmental Analysis, Human Development and Family Studies and Human Nutrition and Food.

The USDA launched the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP), the nation’s first nutrition education program for low-income populations. EFNEP operates through the land-grant institutions in every state, including Cornell in New York.

The Intersession Program on Women, sponsored by the College of Human Ecology, sparked the first collegiate female studies course offered in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies the next year. 

1969-1973

The college added 166 courses and dropped 124 (and discontinued the home economics core curriculum).

1974

The Division of Nutritional Sciences was founded.

Cornell’s Graduate School of Nutrition and the college’s Department of Human Nutrition and Food merged to create the Division of Nutritional Sciences, which is jointly administered by the College of Human Ecology and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

The New York State Legislature created the Family Life Development Center in the college to develop programs of public service, research and teaching related to child abuse and neglect and parent education in the state.

1977

Human Research Unit opened

1978

The Department of Community Service Education was renamed the Department of Human Service Studies.

1979

The Cornell Migrant Program, created in 1971 by the College of Agriculture and Cornell Cooperative Extension to improving the working and living conditions of farmworkers, moved to the Department of Human Development and Family Studies in the College of Human Ecology. It returned to the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences in 2005.
 

1984

The Sloan Program in Health Administration (established in 1959) moved to the college from the Johnson Graduate School of Management.

1985

Textiles and Apparel and Design and Environmental Analysis became separate departments.

1988

Construction of the addition to Savage Hall was completed, expanding the Division of Nutritional Sciences facilities.

Faculty in the Department of Textiles and Apparel began incorporating computer-aided design into their courses.

The Division of Nutritional Sciences launched the Cornell Food and Nutrition Policy Program to conduct applied research and training on human resource development and food and nutrition policy in developing countries.

1991

In October, 300 people attended a two-day conference at the College of Human Ecology titled "Rethinking Women and Home Economics in the Twentieth Century," which was funded by the New York State Council for the Humanities, as well as the college. The Dean's Fellowship in the History of Home Economics was established following the  conference. 

1992

The Bronfenbrenner Life Course Center was founded in the College of Human Ecology. It became a university-level center in 1993, bringing together faculty across the social and behavioral sciences to study stability and change over time and across generations.

1996

The departments of Consumer Economics and Housing and Human Service Studies combined to form the Department of Policy Analysis and Management.

1997

"Rethinking Home Economics: Women and the History of a Profession," was published. The book became a seminal source for historians studying home economics.

2001

Structural deficiencies discovered in the floors required the sudden closure of the north wing of Martha Van Rensselaer Hall and the relocation of several college units. University and SUNY administrators decided to replace the structure rather than repair it.

2002

The west addition of Martha Van Rensselaer Hall opened, featuring additional teaching space and a new Human Metabolic Research Unit.

2007

The Department of Textiles and Apparel changed its name to the Department of Fiber Science and Apparel Design.

2008

Flora Rose House opened as the fifth and final house in Cornell's West Campus system. Each West Campus House is named for one of the university’s notable faculty members.

2011

The Family Life Development Center and the Bronfenbrenner Life Course Center merged to create the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research.

The Human Ecology Building opened. The 89,000-square-foot building includes faculty labs, drawing and apparel design studios, an art gallery, textile testing labs, a wood and metal shop, the Cornell Costume and Textile Collection, and classrooms and meeting spaces. It was the first building on Cornell’s campus to achieve LEED Platinum certification.

4-H – New York state's largest youth development program – moved from Cornell Cooperative Extension to the new Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research, creating new links between research and practice.

2012

The Cornell MRI Facility opened in Martha Van Rensselaer Hall, supported by the National Institutes of Health and the Colleges of Arts and Sciences, Engineering, Human Ecology and Veterinary Medicine. [It is now a collaboration with Weill Cornell Medicine]

2015

The College of Human Ecology and the School of Hotel Administration formed the Cornell Institute for Healthy Futures, believed to be the world’s first academic center to combine hospitality, design, health policy and management.

2020

Human ecology faculty contributed their expertise to the COVID-19 pandemic response, improving personal protective equipment, helping people adjust to social distancing and remote work, collecting personal reflections on life during the pandemic’s early days and more. In New York City, Cornell University Cooperative Extension (CUCE-NYC) hosted vaccine clinics and outreach.

2021 

Following a university-level review focused on elevating excellence in the social sciences, the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy launched with faculty who had been members of the Department of Policy Analysis and Management in the College of Human Ecology and policy-oriented faculty from the Department of Government in the College of Arts and Sciences and other departments. 

The review also led to the creation of a new multi-college Department of Psychology, bringing together faculty from the departments of Psychology (College of Arts and Sciences) and Human Development (College of Human Ecology). 

The new Department of Human Centered Design (HCD) brought together faculty and staff from two departments: Fiber Science and Apparel Design and Design + Environmental Analysis. 

2022 

The Discovery Kitchen, a state-of the-art teaching kitchen in partnership between Cornell Dining and the Division of Nutritional Sciences, opened as part of the North Campus Residential Expansion. 

The College launched the Action Research Collaborative, an institutional hub for cross-campus collaborations between Ithaca and New York City, as part of the BCTR. 

The College celebrated the 20-year renovation and rededication of Martha Van Rensselaer Hall. All three phases of the renovation achieved LEED Gold certification. 

The Department of Design Tech launched. The multi-college department is administered by the College of Architecture, Art and Planning in partnership with Cornell Human Ecology, Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science, Cornell Engineering, and Cornell Tech in New York City. 

2023

Cornell Human Ecology held its first Cornell Fashion Expo in New York City. The following year it expands to the Cornell Fashion & Design Expo and includes students from all majors in Human Centered Design.