In the late summer of 1973, the US Naval Academy achieved a major milestone when Professor Rae Jean Goodman joined the Economics Department, becoming the first woman civilian faculty member at the academy. In a career filled with firsts, Goodman was also the first woman to receive tenure at the academy and the first to achieve the rank of full professor with her promotion in 1987. Along the way, she also took leaves of absence to serve with the Federal Home Loan Bank Board as a Brookings Economic Policy Fellow in 1978 and with the Department of Housing and Urban Development's Office of Economic Affairs in 1985. In 1996, Goodman also assumed leadership of the Naval Academy's Center for Teaching and Learning.
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| Professor Rae Jean Goodman with a midshipman, 1979. |
So, when asking the question "who was the first woman civilian faculty member at the Naval Academy," the answer is obvious: Rae Jean Goodman. However, modify that question to "who was the first woman to teach full time at the Naval Academy," and you will get a different answer. To answer that question, one need only turn the calendar back one year from Professor Goodman's arrival to the fall of 1972, when Lieutenant Commander Georgia Clark became the first woman officer ordered to the academy explicitly as an instructor. Detailed to the Political Science Department, Clark taught international relations and comparative politics.
A watershed moment to be certain, yet, much like Rae Jean Goodman, Clark was also not the first woman to teach at the Naval Academy. Roughly six months before Clark reported to the academy, Lieutenant Junior Grade Martha Johnson, initially assigned to the Academic Dean's office, was assigned additional duty as an instructor on a part-time basis. When Johnson stepped into an English classroom on February 2, 1972, the gender barrier for teaching at the academy was considered officially broken. Shortly after Johnson's classroom debut and Clark's arrival, two more women officers, Ensigns Marlene Durliat and Patricia Hunter joined the academy's teaching ranks in November 1972 and February 1973, respectively.
The full story of women teaching at the Naval Academy does not end, or rather, begin there. True, Johnson and Clark were the first women to teach midshipmen in a classroom setting, but a quick glance at the academy curriculum reminds us that instruction at Annapolis comes in many forms and in many places. During World War II, one of those forms and places came by way of an early form of flight simulation known as the Link Trainer. Due to the manpower needs of the war effort, the duty of operating these trainers and conducting simulated flight instruction fell to the women of the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES). So it was, almost thirty years before the arrival of Johnson and Clark, that Specialist Rosemary Grimes, assigned to the naval air unit in Annapolis in August 1944, truly became the first woman to instruct midshipmen at the Naval Academy.
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| Example of a Link Trainer from the 1942 Lucky Bag. |
Text Sources:
United States Naval Academy Command History, 1972-1973, RG 405, Special Collections & Archives, Nimitz Library.
Faculty & Staff/Women, Naval Academy Archives Reference Files, RG 405, Special Collections & Archives, Nimitz Library.
Image Sources:
The Lucky Bag. Annapolis: First Class, United States Naval Academy, 1942.
Naval Academy Photograph Collection, 1845-1983, RG 405, Special Collections & Archives, Nimitz Library.
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