Alumni College Fellow

Lynn Whitfield

Practice Houses in Texas

The groundwork for the development of the U.S. home economics curriculum was strongly influenced by the Lake Placid Conferences of 1899 through 1908, with its emphasis on the application of scientific principals in the burgeoning field of home economics, and the Smith-Hughes National Vocational Education Act of 1917, with its teaching mandates and sizable federal funding to states. Both led to the formation of the Home Management House (HMH) program, a required live-in course where female home economics students "played house" for a set length of time to complete their degree requirements and receive a vocational teaching certificate. In Texas, the first documented practice house opened in the same year as the first one cited nationally, and the program soon spread to other parts of the state. The home residency course would continue to flourish for more than sixty-five years in U.S. colleges and universities before being completed phased out by the end of the 1970s.

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