Frances Fenton Bernard Park

Frances Fenton Bernard Park
A white woman with short dark hair, wearing a dark collared jacket and a delicate necklace at her throat
Frances Fenton Bernard, from the 1925 yearbook of Smith College
Born
Frances Fenton

December 4, 1880
Washington, D.C.
DiedJuly 21, 1953 (age 72)
Boston, Massachusetts
Other namesFrances Fenton Beranrd, Frances Fenton Park
Occupation(s)College dean, professor, psychoanalyst
Spouse(s)Luther L. Bernard
Edwin Avery Park

Frances Fenton Bernard Park (December 4, 1880 – July 21, 1953) was an American college professor and dean. She succeeded Ada Louise Comstock as dean of Smith College, an office she held from 1924 to 1928.

Early life and education

Fenton was born in Washington, D.C., the daughter of Ernest A. Fenton and Mary S. Welsh Fenton.[1] She graduated from Vassar College in 1902, and served as a trustee of the Vassar Alumnae Association.[2] She earned her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago in 1910.[3]

Career

Bernard taught at a normal school in Minnesota, and at Mount Holyoke College, as a young woman.[4] She became an assistant professor of economics at Wellesley College in 1920. She was educational secretary of the American Association of University Women (AAUW) from 1922 to 1924.[5] She succeeded Ada Louise Comstock as dean of Smith College in 1924.[6][7] In 1932, she was secretary of the Sixth World Conference of the New Education Fellowship, held in France.[8]

Later in life, Park was assistant to the president of Bennington College in 1940, in charge of public relations and fundraising.[9] As the college president's assistant, she accompanied him to Washington, D.C. to meet President Franklin D. Roosevelt on matters related to World War II in 1940.[10] She taught at the William Alanson White Institute from 1947 to 1951, and became a psychoanalyst in her later years.[11][12]

Publications

In addition to her own work, Bernard wrote more than two dozen book reviews for the American Journal of Sociology, between 1912 and 1917.[13] She also wrote reviews for the journal Social Forces in the 1920s.[14][15] In 1946, she wrote the entry on Belva Ann Lockwood for the Dictionary of American Biography.[16]

  • "The Tenure of Office of Trustees" (1922)[17]
  • "The Educational Program of the American Association of University Women" (1924)[18]

Personal life and legacy

Fenton married fellow sociologist Luther Lee Bernard.[4] They had a daughter, and divorced in 1922.[19] She married again in 1928, to Edwin Avery Park, a Yale University professor about ten years her junior.[1][20] She died in 1953, at the age of 72, in Boston.[11][12] After her death, some of her poetry was set to music by Yale professor and composer Richard Frank Donovan.[21][22][23]

References

  1. ^ a b "Dean of Smith College Weds". Burlington Daily News. 1928-01-14. p. 1. Retrieved 2024-01-19 – via Newspapers.com.
  2. ^ "Contemporary Notes" Vassar Quarterly 12(4)(September 1927): 256.
  3. ^ Deegan, Mary Jo (2017-07-05). Annie Marion MacLean and the Chicago Schools of Sociology, 1894-1934. Routledge. p. 158. ISBN 978-1-351-53166-5.
  4. ^ a b Moriarity, Edith (October 27, 1922). "With the Women of Today". The Ada Evening News. p. 4. Retrieved January 18, 2024 – via Newspapers.com.
  5. ^ Attributed, No Writer (1923-10-18). "Notables Coming to Radcliffe Ceremony". The Harvard Crimson. Retrieved 2024-01-19.
  6. ^ Comstock, Ada Louise. "Frances Fenton Bernard, the New Dean of Smith" The Smith Alumnae Quarterly 15(May 1924): 272-274.
  7. ^ "Smith Gets a New Dean; Mrs. Frances Fenton Bernard Succeeds Miss Comstock". The New York Times. February 21, 1924. p. 17. Retrieved 2024-01-19.
  8. ^ Leeper, Mary E. (May 1932). "News from Headquarters". Childhood Education. 8 (9): 489. doi:10.1080/00094056.1932.10723755 – via Internet Archive.
  9. ^ "Appointments Made to College Faculty". The Bennington Evening Banner. 1940-06-21. p. 1. Retrieved 2024-01-19 – via Newspapers.com.
  10. ^ "Pres. Leigh at Conference in Washington". The Bennington Evening Banner. 1940-09-27. p. 1. Retrieved 2024-01-19 – via Newspapers.com.
  11. ^ a b "Deaths Elsewhere". The Miami News. 1953-07-24. p. 8. Retrieved 2024-01-19 – via Newspapers.com.
  12. ^ a b "Dr. Frances Park, Educator, is Dead; Former Dean of Smith College Who Had Taught Economics, Was Boston Psychoanalyst". The New York Times. July 24, 1953. Retrieved 2024-01-19.
  13. ^ Grant, Linda; Stalp, Marybeth C.; Ward, Kathryn B. (September 2002). "Women's sociological research and writing in the AJS in the pre-World War II era". The American Sociologist. 33 (3): 69–91. doi:10.1007/s12108-002-1012-4. ISSN 0003-1232.
  14. ^ Bernard, Frances Fenton (1927). Stephenson, George M.; MacLean, Annie Marion; Davis, James J.; Speranza, Gino; Mariano, John H.; Sharlip, William; Owens, Albert A. (eds.). "Immigration and Nations". Social Forces. 5 (3): 512–514. doi:10.2307/3004516. ISSN 0037-7732. JSTOR 3004516.
  15. ^ Bernard, Frances Fenton. "Mariano, The Italian and Our Courts (Book Review)." Social Forces 5, no. 1 (1926): 514.
  16. ^ Park, Frances Fenton. "Lockwood, Belva Ann Bennett." Dictionary of American Biography 11 (1946): 341-342.
  17. ^ Bernard, Frances Fenton (1922). The Tenure of Office of Trustees.
  18. ^ Bernard, F. F. (1924-01-01). "The Educational Program of the American Association of University Women". Social Forces. 2 (2): 279–281. doi:10.2307/3005363. ISSN 0037-7732. JSTOR 3005363.
  19. ^ "Luther Bernard Granted Divorce". Star Tribune. 1922-08-15. p. 14. Retrieved 2024-01-19 – via Newspapers.com.
  20. ^ "Dean of Smith College Wedded". The Boston Globe. 1928-01-13. p. 9. Retrieved 2024-01-19 – via Newspapers.com.
  21. ^ Locke, Arthur Ware (1964). Selected list of choruses for women's voices. Smith College. p. 38 – via Internet Archive.
  22. ^ "Collection: The Richard Donovan Papers". Archives at Yale. Retrieved 2024-01-19.
  23. ^ "Reviews". Educational Music Magazine. 34 (3): 49. January–February 1955 – via Internet Archive.