Marlatt, Abby Lillian1869╨1943home economist and educatorBorn in Manhattan, Kansas, on March 7, 1869, Abby Marlatt graduated from the Kansas State Agricultural College (now Kansas State University of Agriculture and Applied Science) in her hometown in 1888. She remained there as a teacher while studying for her M.S. in chemistry, which she received in 1890, and she then was invited to organize a department of domestic economy in the Utah State Agricultural College (now Utah State University) in Logan, where she served as professor until 1894. In that year she joined the faculty of the Manual Training (later the Technical) High School in Providence, Rhode Island, where she organized a department of home economics. During her years in Providence she continued her own studies at Brown University and in summer sessions at Clark University. She also took part in the work of the Lake Placid Conference on Home Economics, serving as chairman in 1903 and vice-president in 1907 under Ellen H. Richards. In 1909 Marlatt was asked by the University of Wisconsin to organize its courses in home economics, lately transferred to the college of agriculture, into a regular department. Under her leadership the department rapidly outgrew its basement quarters, and after a statewide campaign aided by women╒s clubs and by her own students╒ serving pancakes to the appropriate legislative committee, the department moved into its own building in 1914. In her 30 years as director of home economics the staff of the department grew from 2 to 25, the enrollment from 47 to 512, and the course offerings from 12 to 67. More important, Marlatt established high academic standards for her students. Basic courses in English, foreign language, and science were required, and technical courses from bacteriology to physiology to journalism greatly broadened the training available to home economics majors beyond the domestic skills courses that had once been their only education. Her department at Wisconsin set standards that were emulated by institutions across the country. From 1912 to 1918 Marlatt served as vice-president of the American Home Economics Association, which had grown out of the Lake Placid conferences. During World War I she served at the request of Herbert Hoover as chairman of a committee on state participation in the Division of Food Conservation of the Food Administration. She was subsequently secretary of the Women╒s Division of the Wisconsin Council of National Defense. She retired in 1939 and died in Madison, Wisconsin, on June 23, 1943. ╓styl `
