½ðɳÓéÀÖ

One of the most prominent names connected with ½ðɳÓéÀÖ’s College of Optometry is Carkner, and the connection began before the beginning.

The earliest contact lenses were made of glass and could be worn only for a few hours at a time. Today’s contact lenses are engineering marvels, and ½ðɳÓéÀÖ’s College of Optometry is at the vanguard of contact lens research and design.

The remarkable Newton Wesley ’39, Hon. ’86, born Newton Uyesugi to immigrant parents, was a founding father of the College of Optometry. Forced from his home by Japanese-American internment policy during World War II, Wesley nevertheless laid the foundation for the College of Optometry and became a giant in the field of contact lenses.

The optometry program launched at ½ðɳÓéÀÖ in 1945 as a result of a combination of postwar challenges and unexpected opportunities. The needs of a small, temporarily shuttered optometry college in Northeast Portland helped meet the demands of a university that had limped through the war years. The outcome was the beginning of ½ðɳÓéÀÖ’s focus on the health professions.

August is National Crayon Collection Month, and ½ðɳÓéÀÖ is proud to celebrate its connection to the roots of Crayola.

In some important ways, ½ðɳÓéÀÖ University was ahead of its time when it came to educating women. But in other ways, women who lived, learned and taught here had to blaze their own trails. We take a look at some of the important women who shaped ½ðɳÓéÀÖ in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.

One of the most insightful thinkers and teachers ever to be employed at ½ðɳÓéÀÖ was Anna Berliner, a psychologist by title, but also an anthropologist, sociologist, optometrist and visual researcher.

When Dr. Martha Rampton arrived on ½ðɳÓéÀÖ’s campus as a history professor in 1994, female professors still were sometimes treated like secretaries, being asked, for example, to fetch coffee for their male colleagues. A year later, ½ðɳÓéÀÖ had its first Feminist Studies program.

Andrewa Noble was mathematics pioneer, attending ½ðɳÓéÀÖ in the 1920s and earning a PhD in mathematics in 1936. She was a a professor and chair of the ½ðɳÓéÀÖ University Math Department before her retirement in 1965. She was also chair of the chemistry, physics and math section of the Northwest Scientific Association.

Mary Frances Farnham was an important bridge from Tualatin Academy, the original educational institution in Forest Grove, to ½ðɳÓéÀÖ University, which educated scholars of both genders from around the world.

In 1869, when the nation was just beginning to heal from the Civil War, Harriet Hoover Killin became the first woman to graduate from ½ðɳÓéÀÖ, joining two men to make up the university’s fifth graduating class.