Meredith Eliassen - San Francisco State University

President Burk developed curriculum to create dynamic energy within students and promoted individualized instructionbuilding skill upon skill. Elasticity in the length of lessons ensured that no student proceeded until a safe foundation was laid. Burk wanted women to succeed to their full potential because teaching provided opportunities to obtain financial and intellectual independence. He recognized that strict curriculum in teachers colleges could stifle creativity and deter individuality. Students, unused to discipline, might neglect to learn the prescribed task or lessons. Some did indeed become distraught, pass, or blas and start to cause mischief. Burk remembered, We undertook to remedy matters by announcing that thereafter no lessons would be prescribed, each would pursue his own lessons and proceed at his own rate. The result was electrifying.

San Francisco State Normal School opened its doors to 31 young women on August 14, 1899. Its original location was Boys High School on Powell Street near Clay Street. The outward structure of the Normal School was distinctly meager, but this did not deter President Burk, who was more concerned with what went on inside a school than with its outward architecture or ornamental embellishment. (Courtesy Gail McGowan.)

President Burk selected young faculty members to maintain his vision. Biology professor Effie B. McFadden (seated to the right of Burk) began teaching in 1900. The first chairwoman of the science department, she taught botany, zoology, and nature study. McFadden became the first emeritus professor from a California State College in 1938. Mathematics professor David Riis Jones (seated to the right of McFadden), first to head the mathematics department, also taught physiology.

The earliest alumnae were motivated in their vocation of teaching. The class of June 1901 included Clara Hoagland, Carolyne Dinsmore, Elsie Considine, Maude Schendel, Muriel Swain, Gertrude Lane, Amy Furlong, Martha Hamill, Ray Flotow, Imelda White, Bertha Moblad, Clara Brown, Ella Hawley, Madge Jackman, Mate Moore, Imogene Stein, Violet Neff, and Eva Fulton. The class of December 1903 consisted of Ethel Bumbaugh, Susie M. Towt, Susie B. Wilson, Nellie Newton, Anne Gaffney, and Leda Piehl.

President Burk implemented the most rigorous entrance requirements of all the California State normal schools, with San Francisco State as the first normal school in the country to utilize entrance exams. Burk personally interviewed all applicants to determine if they had the proper dedication to teaching. San Francisco State Normal Schools graduating class of 1904 is pictured in front of the Powell Street campus.

San Francisco State alumnae became pioneering educators. Clara Crumpton (class of 1901) was appointed to the Normal School faculty from 1905 to 1909 and then left to teach elementary schools in the San Francisco Bay Area, organizing the first public school in Piedmont. Crumpton returned to San Francisco State, serving as registrar from 1919 to 1943.