Mount Holyoke College • Vista • Spring 2013, Vol. 18, No. 1


Then and Now
The Education of an Activist


 Child labor laws, a federal minimum wage, the 40-hour work week, unemployment insurance, the legal right to organize and join trade unions, Social Security—each is the legacy of Frances Perkins, class of 1902. From 1933 to 1945, Perkins served as President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Secretary of Labor. She was the nation’s first woman cabinet member and remains one of the most influential champions of economic and social protections for all Americans.


Before making history, Perkins was, in fact, a chemistry and physics major at Mount Holyoke. But she was pursuing science within the broad scope of the liberal arts, and at an institution that believed in connecting women’s education with the world beyond its gates.


“Fannie, as she was known then, studied with Anna May Soule, who taught political science and history in innovative ways,” explained Professor Daniel Czitrom in “The Switchboard of History: Frances Perkins and Social Justice,” a talk delivered at the College’s 175th anniver- sary celebration. “Soule brought Perkins and other students into the textile and paper mills of [the neighboring cities] Holyoke and Chicopee, to confront directly the realities and consequences of industrial labor.”


Soule also had founded a campus chapter of the National Consumers League (NCL), a group devoted to abolishing child labor and tenement sweatshops by edu- cating the public and improving state laws. Perkins became active in the chapter and, during her senior year, met the NCL’s founder, Florence Kelley, during a campus visit. According to Czitrom, Perkins was so impressed by Kelley that she dedicated her life to working for social justice.


One hundred and eleven years later, Mount Holyoke continues to offer women a life-changing education.


Into the Community and Abroad


Since her sophomore year, Rebecca Neubardt ’13 has traveled weekly to the nearby city of Holyoke to work at the Holyoke Health Center. She’s there through Mount Holyoke’s Community-Based Learning (CBL) Program, which links students with opportunities to connect aca- demic learning to social issues via experiential learning and campus-community partnerships.


As a CBL Fellow, Neubardt is paid for her work with Dr. Anne Nugent, a pediatrician who develops public health programming. She assists with Nugent’s La Linda Manita program, which focuses on early parenting education. Its workshops cover a range of topics, from nutrition and safety to developmental stages, as well as life skills, such as self-care and managing money.


“I’m a Spanish major and a chemistry minor. When I started at Mount Holyoke, my plan was to become a pediatrician who worked with Spanish-speaking communities. I couldn’t have had a better CBL opportunity for that goal,” said Neubardt. “I always feel like I get a lot more out La Linda Manita than the program gets from me—I’ve learned so much from my coworkers and the people participating in the workshops.”


While starting at the health center in the spring of her sophomore year, Neubardt took a class at UMass Amherst called Grassroots Community Organizing thatproved influential. “It taught me about various injustices that marginalized communities grapple with daily as well as how to enter space as an outsider, among other strategies and philosophies of activists and organizers.”


That summer, Neubardt traveled to Lima, Peru, as the recipient of a Global Studies Summer Fellowship from MHC’s McCulloch Center for Global Initiatives. There, she honed her language skills while working with Socios En Salud (Partners in Health) on an educational curriculum for a cultural center in Carabayllo, a periph- eral community of the capital city. Neubardt stayed in Lima that fall, studying at La Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and assisting with Socios En Salud’s training program for community health promoters.


When Neubardt returned to Mount Holyoke for the spring of her junior year, she resumed her work as a CBL fellow at the Holyoke Health Center and found herself increasingly drawn to the intersections between social justice and public health. The summer before her senior year, Neubardt interned with Corporate Accountability International, a corporate watchdog nonprofit based in Boston. While assisting with a campaign challenging the tobacco industry she says she suddenly recognized how a commitment to public health and an interest in community organizing could merge as a career.


“It was that ‘ah-ha’ moment of ‘This is something I can do right now that effects change,’ ” said Neubardt. “Organizing fit me so much better than anything else. I want to be working with people and on issues that I really care about.”


Where the Path Leads


Throughout this academic year, she’s continued her involvement with Corporate Accountability International and has spearheaded a campaign to remove bottled water from campus. Likewise, she remains a CBL Fellow at the Holyoke Health Center, one with a new awareness of how environmental abuses disproportionately affect the poor. After graduation, she’ll be working on environmental campaigns for Green Corps.


“Before last summer, I hadn’t put public health in the context of global environmental issues and corporate abuses of natural resources. I’m really excited about what’s ahead. When I first started college, I never would have imagined myself doing environmental organizing.” For Neubardt, that potential for discovery is what sets Mount Holyoke apart. “I learned here that I wasn’t limited to what I already knew I was good at. Instead, I was encouraged to figure out what it is I like to do. My liberal arts education connected me to all kinds of paths and provided me with the skills to succeed.”


To learn more about Frances Perkins and other Mount Holyoke Women of Influence, visit www.mtholyoke.edu/175.

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