UK's FIRST WOMAN FACULTY MEMBER

 

In December 1901, the college employed Florence Offutt to serve as Assistant Physical Director of the Gymnasium in charge of women's instruction.  Offutt was a cousin of Henry Stites Barker, future president of the University of Kentucky, in whose home she spent a great deal of her youth.  After graduating from Louisville Girls' High School in 1896, Offutt studied physical education for a few months at the University of Chicago before completing a two-year degree in Physical Education at the highly regarded and coeducational New Haven Normal School of Gymnastics.

Florence Offutt

 Offutt recalled that while living in Lexington with her Uncle James and Aunt Ella Offutt Pepper in 1901, she waited for her chance to “uplift” the public with her “specialty” which was new to Kentucky.  She also made note of the recently completed “handsome new gymnasium” at UK that had no woman director of physical education.  Offutt secured a meeting with President Patterson to discuss a possible teaching position.  Patterson told her "courteously but firmly" that "no vacancy existed or would."  However, only six months later at the December 1901, meeting the board voted unanimously to hire Offutt as the Assistant Physical Director of the Gymnasium in charge of women’s instruction at a salary of $800 per year.  Offutt took great pleasure in pointing out that, due to illness, President Patterson missed the meeting at which she was hired, thereby losing the opportunity to argue against her employment. 

 Soon after Offutt’s appointment to the faculty she “happened to see” a letter written by President Patterson to the board harshly criticizing her employment.  But Offutt did not shy from a possible fight and noting that, “she loved his courage,” she went to see Patterson.  She recalled that since she and the president were both Scottish, they each “liked a good fight for something we believe in.”  She eventually won the president's grudging respect and support despite telling him at one point, “I love to think of your being older than my grandfather.”  According to Offutt, the elderly president replied to such remarks "with a lack of enthusiasm."  She also noted that Patterson worried about her first appearance before the faculty senate's "solemn enclaves" since "no weak female" had been there before.  Offutt admitted that she "enjoyed" her "scraps" with the other faculty which were at times "quite colorful, if a little strenuous."  She considered such skirmishes "inspiring in the extreme.."