Rhoda Mabel White
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On May 26, 1909, Rhoda Mabel White, doctoral fellow in Sociology at the University of Wisconsin, responded to President John Martin Thomas’s call for a Dean for the Women’s College of Middlebury, stating that she could aid the College as a “builder of women […not as] a ‘house mother’ or ‘social advisor,’ but [as] a real Head of a college.” In 1909 White became Middlebury’s first Dean of Women, and simultaneously its first woman faculty member, serving the college until 1911. She advocated for female students and consulted with architect W. Nicolas Albertson to design the interior layout of Pearsons Hall, erected in 1911 as the first building designed specifically for women.