Papers of Alice Blackmer Skinner, 1961-1972

Alice Blackmer Skinner received her A.B. from Radcliffe (1945), M.S.W. from the University of Minnesota (1951), and Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard University (1977). She was married in 1946 to Wickham Skinner, professor at Harvard Business School and in the Harvard Radcliffe Program for Business Administration. They lived in Minneapolis, Florida, Concord and Weston (Massachusetts), and since retirement have settled in Maine. Alice Skinner is president of the Swedenborgian Foundation, and is at work on a longitudinal study of decision-making in a cohort of thirty college-educated women.

In the 1960s Alice Skinner was active in Radcliffe alumnae affairs. She was chair of the/a Think Committee (1962) which studied continuing education for the college educated woman and published The Next Step a guide to volunteer opportunities in the Boston area (1963). She was a member of the New Opportunities for Women (NOW) committee and participated in its Urban Suburban Problems study group. She was vice-chair of Alumnae Council (1962), chair (1964) and served on the planning committee (1966). She attended the Alumnae Councils (1968, 1970) and Back To Radcliffe Day (1969). Her most important role was serving as co-chair with Barbara Voss of the Radcliffe College Alumnae Association Study Committee on Merger (1969-1971). Their report recommended that corporate merger of Harvard and Radcliffe be shelved and a partial merger take place. As a result, in 1971, Radcliffe remained a separate corporation with its own students, endowment, and programs, while merging some functions and delegating responsibility for housing, academics, and extracurricular activities to Harvard. This arrangement was formalized by the Agreement of 1977.