Alice Elizabeth O'Connor, class of 1928

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Overview

Year:: 1982
Contributor:: O'Connor, Alice Elizabeth (interviewee); Linn, Karen E. (interviewer)
Genre:: oral histories (literary works)
Subject:: 1920s; Academics; Administration; Athletics; Children; City Girls; Employment; Professors; Social Life

Abstract:: Alice Chmielewski begins by discussing her life growing up in East Providence and assuming guardianship of her brothers and sisters after the early deaths of her parents. In Part 1, she also talks about changing careers to become a social worker, the state of public welfare services and her work for the Rhode Island Department of Children, her marriage and children, and earning a Master's degree later in life. Alice recounts several aspects of her life as a student at Brown, including the different social experiences of boarders and day students, the separation of the Women's and Men's Colleges, her memories of Dean Morriss and an inspiring female professor, gym class uniforms, social events, dancing the Charleston, Chapel and singing, and her thoughts on the Women's College's name change and the later Pembroke-Brown merger. In Part 2 Alice discusses following the rules of the Women's College, changing her goals after graduation, and her decision to pursue a graduate degree.
Notes:: Class year: 1928; Biographical note: Alice Elizabeth O'Connor Chmielewski was born in Providence in 1906, the oldest of six children to parents of Irish descent. Alice attended Hope High School before entering Brown and graduated with an AB in history in 1928. She worked briefly as a teacher before becoming a social worker, and later attended graduate school at Boston University. She passed away on January 30, 1998.

"Alice Elizabeth O'Connor, class of 1928" (1982). Pembroke Center Oral History Collection. Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library. https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:583359/

Pembroke Center Oral History Collection

This collection contains oral history interviews with alumnae of Brown University, which admitted its first women students in 1891. The Women's College at Brown was renamed Pembroke College in 1928, and in 1971, Pembroke College merged with the Men's College …
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