Texas Tech University Archives

Left: Pictured are two important women in Texas Tech history. Native Lubbockite Diane Parson was the first African American woman to receive an athletic scholarship. Diane was an acomplished runner and, as you may know, Texas Tech has a long history of exceptional track athletes. In this 1976 University Daily article Diane is pictured with Jeannine McHaney. Jeannine helped establish the women's athletics program at Texas Tech, was the first Women's Athletics Department Director, and was the first woman to be inducted into the Texas Tech Athletic Hall of Honor.

Right: Additionally, Cheryl Greer, in 1976, became the first women in Tech history to receive an athletic scholarship. Susie Lynch, also pictured, was the first coach of the official women's basketball team.

In the February 15-22, 1979 issue of El Editor, Anita Carmona Harrison was recognized as the first native Chicana Lubbockite to graduate from Texas Tech. She was also cited as the first Mexican to go through the entire Lubbock School system and graduate from Texas Tech. Anita received her B.S. in Elementary Education from Texas Tech in 1967 and completed some graduate work here as well. In 1969, she, along with colleagues Maria Salas, Lorene Munoz, and Maria De Leon, taught Bilingual Kindergarten and developed Lubbock ISD’s first Curriculum Guide for Bilingual Kindergarten. Anita retired from LISD in 1999, after almost 30 years of teaching.

Laura Song, a native from Korea, was the first asian student to graduate from Texas Tech. She received a Bachelor's of Science degree in Home Economics on June 5, 1933. In this photo from her senior year, Laura is wearing her native Korean dress and is standing at the door of the Home Management House. She lived in the house for several weeks to complete her degree requirements. The house is now called The Cottage and it was beautifully restored in 2014.

Women's History Month (2014)

In 2014, the "Women Who Shaped Texas Tech" exhibit was created to promote women's history at Texas Tech and to highlight the wide variety of contributions women have made to the university and surrounding communities. The honorees were Margaret Watson Weeks, Mary Woodward Doak, and Elizabeth Howard West.

The foundations of early women’s history at Texas Tech lie largely with the School of Home Economics. Its building was one of the nine original campus structures and housed parts of the School of Agriculture, the bookstore, the college physician, and the Geology Department when it opened.

The original faculty of Home Economics was made up of three women, of whom one, Margaret Watson Weeks, would emerge as one of three important figures in the history of women at Texas Tech. As the Dean of the School of Home Economics for over twenty-five years, Weeks shaped the School’s programs, courses, and the cultural and social activities for women on campus as well as in the city of Lubbock, whose inhabitants participated in many of the early town and gown events. She also served as the first president of the Faculty Club and worked with the Quarterly Club, the faculty women’s organization, to establish Casa Linda, a cooperative residence for women on the Tech campus. When the Home Economics Club was formed that first semester, one of its priorities was to establish the loan program named after Weeks for its students in need of financial support.

The second important female figure in Texas Tech history was Mary Woodward Doak, who would serve as both the Dean of Women and a professor in the English Department from 1925-1945. In 1928, her enthusiasm for a recent visit to the British Museum caused her to vocalize the need for a museum at the college and she enlisted the support of other faculty members, most notably John C. Granberry, whose contact with professor William Curry Holden led to the establishment of the Museum of Texas Tech in 1929. The first women’s dormitory would later be renamed Doak Hall to honor her for all her contributions to the college.

The third woman important in women’s history at Tech was Elizabeth Howard West, a spunky and driven librarian whose notable career included working at the Library of Congress and serving as the Texas State Library archivist from 1911-1915. Her election to State Librarian in 1918 made her the first woman department head in the Texas state government. The limited space and resources allotted to Tech’s first library in 1925 was a huge challenge for West to overcome. Faculty members loaned their own books to students to help cover the shortage of available research material. Ruth Horn Andrews, daughter of the first Tech president and a Tech graduate, described the library as a “ … repository for everything else that expressmen and janitors did not know what to do with… when some sort of order was resolved from the chaos, and a few books began to accumulate, there was not space for them… students taking notes from reference books sometimes had to stand." (1) West herself helped ring the campus Victory Bells when funding for a freestanding library building was passed in 1937.

Though the diligence and dedication of these three early female faculty members Texas Tech became and remains an institution dedicated to providing an excellent education for women.

~B. Lynn Whitfield, University Archivist

(1) Rushing, Jane Gilmore and Kline A. Nall. Evolution of a University. Madrona Press, Inc.: Austin, 1975.

Tech Tips were handbooks for male & female students that described Housing & Dining policies and fees, and the various student organizations on campus. Originally published only for women it was later thought that perhaps the men could use some guidance as well.

Tech alumni that attended before the mid-1970s will recall wearing special beanies nicknamed Fish Caps. It was a rite of passing to go down to Hemphill-Wells to buy one's cap and then decorate it. The University Achives has 3 of these caps, each of different decades, in our holdings.

Longer biographies on the women pictured above as well as other aspects of Texas Tech women's history can be found at the link listed below.

Back to the University Archives Texas Tech Women's History Page