Wu Yi Fang

Description

Alternate spellings of name found in primary documents:
Wu Yifang (Wu Yih-Fang, Wu Yi-fang, Wu Ih-fang, Wu I-fang)

(1893-1985)
Wu was born and raised in what is now Wuhan (Wuchang City), Hubei and then went to school in Hangzhou, Shanghai, and Suzhou. After Ginling, she taught in Beijing at the Government Higher Normal School for women, eventually becoming head of the English Department there in 1922. She got her PhD in Biology at the University of Michigan (1922-1928; MA in 1924, PhD in 1928) after receiving the Barbour Scholarship. While at the University of Michigan, she served as the president of the Chinese Christian Association in North America, as well as the vice-president of the Chinese Student Alliance in the United States. She became Ginling College’s second president, and the first Chinese president, in 1928. In 1947 she was elected as the first president of the Chinese Organization of University Women. She was involved in many councils in China as well as international meetings, such as the National Congress of Women in Chicago, the founding conference for the United Nations in San Francisco, and the 4th Biennial Conference of the Institute of Pacific Relations in Shanghai. She received the University of Michigan Alumnae Athena award in April, 1979.

Source

Photograph: Ginling College Magazine June 1928, Archives of the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia, Group 11, Box 151, Folder 2950, Yale Divinity Library, http://divinity-adhoc.library.yale.edu/UnitedBoard/Ginling_College/Box%20151/RG011-151-2950.pdf.