From time to time I come across something that provides a glimpse into the administrative infrastructure that supports the educational mission of an economics department. When I think of the Yale economics department in the early 1970s where I worked as a bursary boy for the chairman, Merton J. Peck, I remember three women who were essential to the smooth running of the economics department: Mrs. Virgina Casey (secretary to the chairman), Mrs. Mary Doody (Finances and bookkeeping), and Mrs. Eleanor Van Buren (secretary to the director of graduate studies, Professor William Parker). At M.I.T. Del Tapley long-served as the right-hand-woman of the chairman of the department. This of course doesn’t even mention the secretaries who served in the trenches. With only two exceptions (and these are first in the 1980s) I recall only women in all such staff positions. For this reason, this post has a “gender” tag.
Today we have an excerpt from a longer article published in the Harvard Crimson in 1954 that provides a few testimonials to the work done by one, Martha P. Robinson, who ran the tutorial office for the division of History, Government, and Economics. About Mrs. Robinson I have only been able to generate the following leads: according to the 1944 Cambridge City Directory Mr. Seth B. Robinson Jr. and Martha P. Robinson lived at 25 Grozier Road and that in 1953-54 a Martha Robinson lived at Bancroft Court apartments, #33, at 12 Ware Street according to Manning’s Cambridge Directory. Perhaps some genealogical sleuth can come up with more.
Recently in the history of economics community on Twitter there has been some back-and-forth about the women statistical research assistants for major economics research projects. We might want to keep an eye on the evolution of administrative infrastructure of departments too.
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The Secretaries: Keepers of the Wheels
Coterie of Influential Women Make Harvard a Matriarchy
By STEPHEN R. BARNETT
Harvard Crimson, June 17, 1954
Harvard has been the object of much name-calling during its 318 years of existence, dubbed with epithets ranging from “hotbed of Puritanism” to “haven for Communists.” But perhaps the most objective appraisal of the University, and one that emphasizes a quite unheralded aspect of its daily functioning, is the one-word description suggested by an unknown Social Relations man. He simply said, “Harvard is a matriarchy.”
Technically-as the Soc. Rel. man himself well knew-a matriarchy is “a state or stage in social evolution in which descent is traced in the mother’s line,” or, more generally, “a society in which women exercise the main political power.” In applying the term to Harvard, however, he was merely pointing out that the University is essentially run by its female employees.
Nicholas F. Wessell, associate director of Personnel, readily agrees that women play a major role in Harvard’s daily operation. Of 4,360 non-Corporation employees now on the University payroll, Wessell reports, 2,557, or more than half, are women. In addition, 153 of these woman employees have been with the University for more than 25 years, while only 141 men have comparable records of service.
And it is these 2,557 women-whether they be maids, file clerks, dining hall checkers, laboratory assistants, or Secretary to the President-who do the work that keeps all departments of the University functioning. “Male employees tend to get involved in policy decisions,” Wessell explains, “and thus the women must see that the work gets done.”
The credit for this accomplishment belongs, of course, to every woman on the Harvard payroll. But a few of these unheralded employees are particularly conspicuous for their invaluable service in “seeing that the work gets done.”
One of these women is Mrs. Martha P. Robinson, who has served nearly 20 years in the tutorial office of Government, History and Economics, and whom Carrol F. Miles, teaching fellow in Government describes as the secretary “who sort of came with Holyoke 8.”
Assigns Sophomores
As her main function, Mrs. Robinson keeps the tutorial records for all students who concentrate in any of these three fields-a group which last year numbered approximately 1,500, or nearly 40 percent of the whole Harvard-Radcliffe undergraduate body. Each spring she assigns all sophomores in these fields to appropriate tutors; she prepares the records of more than 200 honors candidates in the departments each year, to determine whether they will graduate summa, magna, cum, or sine; she makes sure that somebody reads and marks all the bluebooks that are turned in from general examinations in the fields; and she constantly answers such questions as “Who is my tutor?”, “Do I have to take this course next year?”, “Who is teaching Gov. 155 next year?”, and “What did I get on the Economics general?”.
In the words of Professor Charles H. Taylor, former chairman of the division of History, Government, and Economics, Mrs. Robinson is simply “indispensable to the work of the three largest departments in the College.”
But she does not confine herself to keeping records for the 1,500-odd students to whom she refers as “my concentrators” or “my boys.” In addition, she is the administrative secretary for both Government 1 and Economics 1, preparing the section lists for these courses, recording the grades, mimeographing reading lists, making sure the books are available, and telling countless anxious students that no, she does not have the results of their mid-year exams.
There is even more to Mrs. Robinson’s job; technically, she is also the personal secretary to Professor Taylor. This has now become the least time-consuming of her many functions, however, for as Taylor explains-with obvious awe of his secretary’s importance-“I try to bother her as little as possible.”
But the really unique thing about Mrs. Robinson is not her industriousness or importance; it is the fact that her job exists at all. For the Division of History, Government, and Economics, of which she is still secretary, became essentially non-existent several years ago when it was broken up into separate fields. Since that time, the three departments have dropped their common tutorial function, have developed different formulas for determining honors, and have stopped giving correlation examinations to honors candidates. Also, since Taylor’s period of service there has been no joint chairman for History, Government, and Economics.
Although the three departments had officially separated, however, they still felt it would be convenient to work together in various ways and to keep their tutorial records in the same office. Thus Mrs. Robinson’s job has been to know the members of the three fields within the Division, to reconcile differences between the respective head tutors, to keep the departmental chairmen informed, and-in Taylor’s words-“to keep the departments from forgetting they were part of a whole.” And somehow she has managed to maintain some semblance of unity between the three fields-an accomplishment which, according to Taylor, “could not possibly have been done by anyone without her years of experience, energy, tact, and intelligence.”
Mark-Seeking Students
Thus Mrs. Robinson is single-handedly responsible for the unique inter-departmental unity that still exists in the filing cabinets in Holyoke 8.
What she most likes about her job, however, is not the records and statistics, but the students themselves. Describing her year’s work, she cites the spring as the busiest time; “there is a steady crescendo of activity from mid-years on,” she says. And yet it is this period that Mrs. Robinson likes best, when theses are due and pile up in her office, when honors records must be prepared, and when mark-seeking students either line up far out into the Holyoke House hallway or just swarm wildly into Room 8. For it is then, she says, that “I can finally see some results coming out of my work.”
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