BDN cites Hough in article telling story of UMaine’s Caroline Colvin
The Bangor Daily News quoted Mazie Hough, an associate professor of history and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at the University of Maine, in an article telling the story of Caroline Colvin. Colvin was a UMaine history professor from 1902 to 1932 and the namesake for Colvin Hall, home to UMaine’s Honors College, as well as the first woman in the United States to be appointed chair of a university department when she assumed the position in UMaine’s Department of History in 1906, serving until 1932. She also was the university’s first female professor at a time when less than 20 percent of the student body was female. At the time, female students had curfew, clothing and etiquette requirements that male students did not, the article states. “(Academia) was close to a total boy’s club at that time. When UMaine added a liberal arts program in the early 20th century, for many years, its only female professor was Colvin. She really was unusual for her time,” said Hough. “Interestingly, the history department at UMaine has a long history of female leadership. Alice Stewart was chair of the department for years in the middle of the 20th century.” According to the BDN, Colvin was a suffragist and UMaine’s first dean of women, a position she held from 1923 to 1927. As dean, she advocated for more options for women’s athletics, helped form a women’s student government, and was named one of the first members of the All Maine Women honor society. And legend has it her ghost haunts Colvin Hall, appearing mostly to men. Built in the 1920s, the hall was originally a women’s dormitory, where Colvin was house mother for its first few years. The dorm became co-ed in the mid-1980s, and some male residents reported seeing Colvin’s ghost. Today, Colvin Hall houses 36 Honors students on the middle two floors, with teaching facilities on the first and fourth floors. But Colvin’s legacy is so much more than her name on a building — she paved the way for women at UMaine to have equal opportunity in their entire educational experience, the article states. WGME (Channel 13 in Portland) carried the BDN article.