Katherine Heath Hawes
Lecturer On Women in Industry, 1914 to 1920
Miss Katharine Heath Hawes was a member of faculty from 1914 to 1920 and served as a member of the Board of Managers and later on the Board of Trustees from 1919 to 1932. When the school was founded in 1914, the board members were all men, yet they saw the wisdom of having an advisory board made up of women. "Miss Katharine" was a member of the Advisory Board. In 1921, the Board of Managers was discontinued and the Board of Trustees came into existence with Miss Katharine Heath Hawes as the first Vice President. She held that position until she resigned from the board in 1932. On March 4, 1924, Miss Katharine chaired the committee that elected Dr. Lingle to the presidency of A.T.S. She also served on the ATS building committee that was responsible for the building of Watts Hall, Virginia Hall, and the first three faculty residences. Among her many accomplishments, Miss Katherine worked tirelessly for the YWCA and was a member of the Foundation Board of the Richmond Professional Institute School of Social Work (now the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Social Work).
At A.T.S., Miss Katharine began her faculty work as a lecturer on Women in Industry for the course on Industrial Group of Social Problems. From 1917 to 1920, she taught a class on Social Service which covered a General Introduction, The Family, Industrial Situation, Socialized Charity, Race Questions, Country Life, Social Agencies, Surveys, and Relation of Church to Social Problems. After 1920, she continued to lecture "from time to time to our admiration and profit," wrote Jane Douglas Summers Brown, Class of 1925 in a letter to Dean Melchert dated January 24,1986. In that same letter, Mrs. Brown wrote: "Miss Katherine was the first to awaken my conscious [sic] regarding the sorry plight of the negroes - especially the black woman sending off her children to school not knowing what insult, injury, or slight they might meet with during the day . . . .Their courage!"
At A.T.S., Miss Katharine began her faculty work as a lecturer on Women in Industry for the course on Industrial Group of Social Problems. From 1917 to 1920, she taught a class on Social Service which covered a General Introduction, The Family, Industrial Situation, Socialized Charity, Race Questions, Country Life, Social Agencies, Surveys, and Relation of Church to Social Problems. After 1920, she continued to lecture "from time to time to our admiration and profit," wrote Jane Douglas Summers Brown, Class of 1925 in a letter to Dean Melchert dated January 24,1986. In that same letter, Mrs. Brown wrote: "Miss Katherine was the first to awaken my conscious [sic] regarding the sorry plight of the negroes - especially the black woman sending off her children to school not knowing what insult, injury, or slight they might meet with during the day . . . .Their courage!"
