Mrs. Mabel Mack, Assistant Director of Extension Service, 1953

Title: Mrs. Mabel Mack, Assistant Director of Extension Service, 1953
LC Subject: Universities and colleges--Faculty Oregon State College. Federal Cooperative Extension Service Portraits
Creator: OSC News Bureau Photo
Description: Mabel Clair Mack was a home demonstration agent, Extension Nutritionalist, Professor, and Assistant Director in the School of Home Economics from 1928 to 1967. She was born in 1897 in Aldrich, Missouri, and grew up on a farm in Linn County, Oregon where she attended Lincoln High School in Portland. She received her Bachelor of Science from OSC in 1928. She completed graduate work at OSC and Cornell University, eventually receiving her Master of Science from OSC in 1940. She published an article titled “After the Growing Comes the Harvest” in the Agricultural Bulletin, of the Oregon State Department of Agriculture in September 1944. She was a member of the Christian Church and many honorary societies and clubs, such as the Oregon Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs, Omicron Nu, and the Oregon Home Economics Association. She began as a home extension specialist in Clackamas County, and was briefly transferred to the Central Office in 1934 to cover for a colleague’s leave of absence. In 1943, she took a leave of absence to work with the Federal Cooperative Nutrition project during the World War 2, and was made Assistant State Supervisor a year later. In 1945, she transferred back to the extension project in home management, where she supervised the activity of emergency assistants. She took sabbatical leave during Spring term of 1938 to do graduate work at OSC. She was made Acting Specialist in Nutrition in 1940, hoping to develop projects in family financial planning in addition to nutrition work. However, to meet the demands of the national defense program in nutrition, she was appointed to the newly-created Specialist in Nutrition in 1941 during the war. Later, her titled was changed to “Extension Nutritionist.” She received a Farm Foundation Extension Scholarship in 1948 to spend a year studying at the University of Chicago, in the Division of Social Sciences of the Department of Education, on half salary. She was appointed to the instructional staff of the School of Home Economics in 1956 on a part-time basis to assist in teaching coursework on home economics extension to prospective extension workers. In 1963, at a salary of $13,632, she announced her retirement. Her friends and colleagues declared this date an “important one in the history of the Extension service as it marks the termination of a distinguished career in Extension from both state and national standpoints.” They referred to her as one of the “ablest” home extension agents in the entire country, claiming that she had done so well in Oregon that her services were eagerly sought on a broader scale, and threw her an inter-departmental goodbye party. In 1966, OSU requested permission to employ her on a part-time basis, hoping to use her assistance in organizing and conducting special training conferences.
Work Type: negatives (photographs) photographs
Location: Corvallis >> Benton County >> Oregon >> United States
Date: 1953
Identifier: P082:70-1463
Rights: In Copyright
Local Collection Name: Gwil Evans Photographic Collection, 1930-1968 (P 082)
Type: Image
Format: image/tiff
Set: OSU Special Collections & Archives Research Center Historical Images of Oregon State University
Primary Set: OSU Special Collections & Archives Research Center
Institution: Oregon State University