Repository: UIHistories Project: Dedication - Home Economics - Challenge of Home Economics [PAGE 27]

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ities. She has now been sent to Burma to work in a nutrition program which was started by a Dutch home economist a couple of years ago. Frances McKay of Canada has been in Iraq for more than two years on a different type of assignment She has been teaching in the newly-established department of home economics in a girls' college in Baghdad, The development of this home economics department is a good example of cooperation between various agencies working in international home economics programs. The government of Iraq decided back in 1951 that it would like to set up a home economics department, and asked FAO for advice. FAO sent Dean Ava Milam Clark from Oregon to Baghdad to have a look at the situation. She recommended that a home economics department be established in the Queen Aliya College, and helped plan a curriculum for a fouryear course. Three other home economists, Miss McKay from Canada, and Dr. Jane Cape and Miss Bertha Strange from the United States then worked together getting the department going. Dr. Cape was there as a Fulbright professor, Miss Strange was supplied by the International Cooperation Administration. These three people had first to decide how classrooms and laboratories should be fitted, draw detailed plans of equipment and supervise the workmen making it. Finally, the department was ready for students. Several Iraqi women who had studied home economics in the United States or at the American College in Beirut were enrolled as teachers. Now there are about one hundred students taking home economics at Queen Aliya College. The first class to complete the four-year course graduated at the end of last year. Some of these girls are teaching home economics in the schools, a few are working as nutritionists at the Institute of Nutrition, and one or two are working in rural extension programs. So far, there is no Iraqi home economist with sufficient experience to take over the administration of the department. However, several Iraqi women are in the United States doing post-graduate work in home economics. A beginning has been made — although there are still more jobs for home economists in Iraq than graduates to fill them. I could go on telling you about the jobs home economists are doing abroad, but these two examples will give you some idea of the types of program in which they arc working. It will also give you some idea of what is expected of a home economist on a foreign assignment For the most part, she is to be a leader who will assist in developing a program to be carried on by the local home economists. She must

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