July 3, 1954

The Vassar Summer Institute for Family and Community Living welcomed family groups, teachers, specialists, students and volunteer community workers from 21 states and two foreign countries to its annual four-week program. An article in The New York Times for July 4 described the institute, begun in 1926, as “the first experiment of its kind in which those involved were both students and the subjects of their own study under conditions approximating scientific standards.”

For the summer of 1954, the institute’s scope, originally focused on family relations, broadened to include courses for improving community living, with field seminars in “Community Organization and Participation” and “Intergroup Relations in the Community.” Parents and children between the ages of two and ten, living in separate residence halls, enrolled in varying programs. Thirty-five undergraduate students from nine colleges, enrolled in a work-study program in “Child Development and Education,” worked in the children’s school under the supervision of Eveline Omwake, directory of the nursery school at the Yale Child Study Center.

The New York Times