Dean of Women
Sarah B. Holmes was named Dean of Women in 1932 after serving as the Assistant Dean under Sarah G. Blanding.
Taking on the position of Dean of Women was certainly not an easy task for Holmes despite her exceptional qualifications, education, and experience. In an interview with the "Louisville Courier Journal" in 1958, Holmes, according to the journalist, was reticent about the difficulty of raising children along, and through a Depression. Holmes explained, “'I was… always fortunate. With my job I could keep my children with me.'”
But still, raising children alone during a Depression while rising through the administrative ranks at a prestigious university could not have been easy for Holmes. Her career and life caught the attention of several other women trying to work and go to school while raising a family.
In July 1943, Mary Louis R. Hibbard, a Columbia University graduate student seeking to eventually work as a Dean of Women like Holmes, sent Holmes a questionnaire about raising children and working as a dean.
Like Holmes, Hibbard was a widow in her late thirties with two young children. While Hibbard had aspirations of becoming a dean, she wrote to Holmes that she had "found a frustrating amount of resistance from male professors who do not feel I can adequately work and raise children at the same time." To combat this attitude, Hibbard reached out to administrators who were also mothers across the country, including UK's Sarah Holmes.
In the questionnaire, Hibbard asked Holmes to answer extremely personal questions - questions that continue to haunt many women and mothers today. For example, Hibbard asked how she perceived her dual role of dean and mother, and also asked if her children ever felt neglected.
Unfortunately, we cannot locate Holmes' answers to the questionnaire. But, the content of the questions makes it clear that Holmes as a woman and single mother in the 1940s in the United States faced an uphill battle in becoming such a successful Dean of Women.
Holmes believed strongly that all women benefitted from a college education. She worked hard to ensure that women already enrolled with the University were studying hard and succeeding in their classes and social activities. She did this by getting to know all of the students - a talent many said she seemed to possess naturally - and by continually checking in on the them and encouraging them in their studies.
Holmes also worked to ensure that women across the state of Kentucky had access to education, despite their financial background. Teaming with the University's Dean of Men, Holmes conducted a study to see exactly how expensive attending UK was for undergraduates. Finding that housing added significantly to a student's expenses, she worked to create cooperative dormitories where women could live together in a house and contribute to the bills in ways that cut costs.
Holmes also believed that women should pursue careers with their college education. As a mother herself, Holmes was aware that women faced special challenges in choosing to raise a family and work in th early 20th century United States. But, as she told a local newspaper in 1934, "'We cannot say to young people ambitious for worthwhile achievement that 'life begins at 40' [after children are grown] and let it go at that - our debt to them is too great.'"
