History 101

Annie Teitelbaum Wise

These days on college campuses across the nation, it's a woman's world. Women have represented about 57 percent of enrollments at U.S. colleges and universities since 2000, according to a recent report by the American Council on Education, and currently at Georgia State, more than 18,400 of the university's 30,000 students are females.

The scene was much different 90 years ago.

That's when, in 1919, at the age of 55, Annie Teitelbaum Wise, the principal of Atlanta's Commercial High School, became the first female graduate of Georgia State (then the Georgia Tech Evening School), receiving a B.S. in commerce. She was, in fact, the first female to graduate from any state-supported college or university in Georgia.

Wise also went on to become Georgia State's first female faculty member when, after earning her degree, she was appointed as an instructor in commercial science. She taught for one year before returning to her role as a high school principal.

Originally from Eperies, Hungary, Wise came to Atlanta early in life. She attended Atlanta public schools, then Columbia University and the University of Paris before enrolling in the Evening School in 1917.

Wise served Atlanta Public Schools for 32 years and is credited with helping found Commercial High School, which closed in 1947 but at one time was the largest high school in the Southeast.

More and more women followed in Wise's footsteps at GSU, but slowly. By 1935, 25 women had received degrees from the institution. It wasn't until after World War II, however, that the enrollment of women began to surge here and at colleges and universities across the nation.

"In the early 1950s and 1960s, more women were taking on degrees in all sorts of areas that used to be dominated by men, especially medicine and law," said Jean Thomas, dean of women at Georgia State from 1963-74, and later dean of student development until her retirement in 1991. "I think it was liberating."