Keliher, Alice Virginia, 1903-

Alice V. Keliher was born in Washington, D.C., in 1903. She received Bachelor's, Master's and Doctoral degrees in three years at Teachers College at Columbia University. She then began work with Dr. Gesell at Yale in 1930. She emerged as an expert on early school education, teaching at NYU from 1936 to 1960. An active scholar, she attended virtually every conference on childhood education around the country through the 1940s and 1950s. During WWII, she helped shape the day care system as director of child and youth services of the New York Office of Civilian Defense and secretary of Mayor La Guardia's Committee on the Wartime Care of Children. In addition, she was a close friend and neighbor of Eleanor Roosevelt, with whom she shared a concern for human rights issues. In 1960 she left NYU and went to Wheelock College in Boston, where she became the Massachusetts regional training officer for Head Start, the federal program designed to ameliorate disadvantaged childrens' education.

From the guide to the Alice Keliher Papers, 1918-1995, (New York University Archives)

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