Repository: UIHistories Project: Dedication - Home Economics - Challenge of Home Economics [PAGE 46]

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THE CHALLENGE FOR HOME ECONOMICS M BUSINESS

Gertrude Austin Mrs. Gertrdue Austin, director of the Consumer Service Division, Sunkist Growers, California, is a home economics graduate of the University of Illinois. She received her master's degree from the University of Chicago, then was research assistant to the head of the Home Economics Department, University of Chicago. At the Elizabeth McCormick Memorial Fund she worked with both professional and lay groups concerned with families. For six years she was director of Consumer Education for the American Institute of Baking. She authored "Eat and Grow SUm" and "The Wheel of Good Eating'' both of which earned the seal of acceptance of the Council on Foods and Nutrition of the American Medical Association. The following talk was given by Gertrude Austin on Friday, April 5^ 1957, at the dedication symposium of Bevier Hall and the Child Development Laboratory. Our association with each other in these dedication days is thrilling evidence that we share basic concepts of life and simultaneously the basic challenge to carry on creatively in our own sphere of activity. We speak each from our diverse positions in life; yet the concepts of which we speak are so encompassing that they unite us as we know we are united in our profession. The focus of home economics is not narrow but, rather, so farreaching that its influence is felt in every area of life. The fulfillment of our collective professional aims depends on the way we individually accept the challenge that has been set before us. It is for us in home economics to justify such confidence as that displayed in the erection of Bevier Hall by those who guide the over-all policy of education. In it is a meeting of three great and productive activities in our economy today: education, research and business; all three are interdependent. Have you felt as I have, as we've listened to these stimulating discussions, that we owe so much to others, that we'd not have come this far in our profession had it not been for the fundamental truth that we live so abundantly on the work of others? We are co-heirs of the past with a legacy to pass on to the future* Our great cultural heritage from workers in the past and from our contemporaries means that we can go on creatively where others have left off without ourselves going back to beginnings — through lengthy trial and error methods. Examples of our heritage and of today's in46