1907
Mother's Day was first celebrated. Oklahoma was admitted as the 46th state. Transatlantic
wire service began. The first Nobel Prize in Physics went to A. A. Michelson of the University
of Chicago for his studies in the speed of light. Lehar's The Merry Widow received its first
American production. Yale had followed the humane new football rules so well that during
1905 and 1906 and for the first nine games of 1907, it went undefeated. When it met an
unbeaten Harvard team, it used a new play called the forward pass, and beat Harvard 12-0. J.
Pierrepont Morgan single-handedly saved the country from financial collapse in the panic of
1907 by holding 125 leading New York financiers under lock and key in his palatial library
near Madison Avenue until they produced the capital to stave off disaster.
• Engineering Assembly • Tech Nite
• Commencement • Nonsectarian Policy
• No More Women • Summer School
Engineering Assembly.
The New York State Regents chartered Clarkson's Engineering
Assembly as an organization composed of faculty, alumni, and student representatives. (See
1906)
Commencement.
Baccalaureate exercises were held on Sunday, June 9, at 2:30 p.m.
Examinations were given during the following week with Commencement held on Friday, June
14, in the chapel. At 9:45 a.m., the academic bodies assembled in the Director's house, just west
of Main Building, and at 10:00 a.m. formed in front for the procession. After the exercises, a
reception was held in the school library on the first floor of Main Building. Along with the
Senior Ball, this formed the pattern of graduation week.
No More Women.
In 1907, the domestic science and arts course was dropped from the
curriculum. Since the fall semester 1901, a four-year course allowed women to earn a BS
degree in domestic engineering. Women who completed only the two-year course received a
certificate, not a diploma, and all special students received only credit. By the 1906-07 school
year, Clarkson employed two home economics teachers:
Myra Brewster Clarke, AB, AM, professor; and Mildred Mae Parker, BS, assistant in
home economics.
In that same fall semester of 1906, only one freshman woman started the four-year
baccalaureate course, while four freshmen women started, and six sophomore women continued
in the two-year certificate course. In the spring semester of 1907, the five women in the first
year of the certificate course and six women in the second year were graduated; the home
economics course was dropped.
In the April 3, 1907, minutes of the Board of Trustees, the following entry confirmed
the decision, but gave no explanation:
It was moved and duly seconded that the Department of Home Economics be discontinued on and after
June 14, 1907, as recommended by Miss Clark, professor of Home Economics, a committee, and the
faculty.
