UK'S FIRST WOMAN MEMBER OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Laura Clay

In 1894 the Kentucky Equal Rights Association petitioned the governor to appoint a woman to the UK Board.  The Association contended that UK’s women students still did not receive equal opportunity.  Two years later the Kentucky General Assembly debated proposed legislation allowing women to serve on the UK Board.  

UK President James K. Patterson, who took credit for the admission of women to the college 14 years earlier, unabashedly appeared before the legislature vigorously opposing the change.  He argued that the education of ninety-nine percent of women did not prepare them to serve on the board.  

Laura Clay, a leading advocate of women's rights who should have been UK's first woman board member, immediately saw the contradiction in Patterson's position.  She noted that most Kentucky women received their college educations at UK so if they were not qualified to serve on the board it must be because their college educations had been inferior!  

Some legislators supported the petition going so far as to stress that since women comprised thirty-five percent of the student body the board should have similar representation.  Nevertheless, a majority of legislators disagreed and the proposed legislation failed.

A woman did not serve on the UK Board of Trustees until 1939 when Governor A. B. "Happy" Chandler appointed Georgia Monroe Blazer.  Upon her appointment Blazer commented that "people feel there is a real place on the board for a woman."  At her first UK Board meeting "Mrs. Blazer was cordially welcomed and she graciously assumed her duties."

UK Board 1958

Ironically, Blazer, an Illinois native had attended the University of Chicago rather than UK.  A resident of Ashland, Kentucky, her husband Paul G. Blazer, ran the Ashland Oil and Refining Company.  Georgia Blazer was active in educational and cultural endeavors statewide.

Blazer served on the UK Board until 1961, many of those years as Secretary of the Board.  Georgia and Paul Blazer endowed the Blazer Lecture at UK in 1947 in memory of their son Stuart.  In 1962 UK named a new student residence Georgia M. Blazer Hall.  UK opened a new Georgia M. Blazer Residence Hall in 2014 as the original building is scheduled for demolition.