Cornell Memorial Statement for Professor Ella Mary Cushman, April 22, 1886 — February 21, 1967
"Ella Cushman was born in Akron, Ohio, in 1886. Because of family responsibilities, her college education was delayed, and it was not until 1915 that she graduated from Kent State Normal School. She obtained a B.S. degree from Teachers College, Columbia University, in 1925. While Miss Cushman was studying for the M.S. degree, which she received from Cornell in 1928, she held the Mrs. Henry Morgenthau Fellowship.
Upon completion of her graduate study Miss Cushman was appointed extension instructor in economics of the household and household management. She was promoted to Extension Assistant Professor in 1935. During extension appointments Miss Cushman taught in the resident program for summer sessions in 1934-37 and also in the regular academic fall term of 1936-37. In 1938, Miss Cushman moved into resident teaching full time and was promoted to Associate Professor in 1941. She became a professor in 1950 and was named a Professor Emeritus, following her retirement in 1954.
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Miss Cushman pioneered in such effective teaching methods as management conferences in homes and management tours of homes. Carloads of interested men and women joined the tours to see the improvements that families had made in their homes, to hear the family members describe the satisfactions they had gained from the intelligent use of their resources, and to return home with new ideas. Pictures of work areas in many of the thousands of homes in which she taught from 1928 to 1954 proved to have far-reaching value. They provided ideas to students, homemakers, and social workers in New York and other states, even foreign countries. Builders, carpenters, and manufacturers of household equipment put the new designs into mass production.
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The presence in the Cornell community of her brother, Robert E. Cushman, now Professor of Government, Emeritus, and his family gave to Miss Cushman both pleasure and stimulation."