Lucy Sprague Mitchell

Mitchell was the first dean of women at the University of California at Berkeley,^[7] where she lectured in the English Department and promoted educational and career opportunities for women students from 1903 to 1912.^[8] She was succeeded by her assistant, fellow Radcliffe alumna Lucy Ward Stebbins.^[9] In 1916, influenced by the work of John Dewey, Mitchell cofounded the Bureau of Educational Experiments (BEE) in New York City to study and develop optimal learning environments for children.^[10][11] The BEE evolved into the Bank Street College of Education.^[12]

Mitchell wrote over twenty books,^[7] including North America (1931),^[13] Streets: Stories for Children Under Seven (1933), Horses Now and Long Ago (1938), The Here and Now Story Book (1938),^[14] See What's in the Grass (1945),^[15] Our Children and Our Schools (1950),^[16] and Believe and Make Believe (1956).^[17] She also wrote a memoir of her marriage, Two Lives: The Story of Wesley Clair Mitchell and Myself (1953).^[18]

Lucy Sprague married economist Wesley Clair Mitchell in 1912.^[19][9] They raised four children together, including social scientist Arnold Mitchell. W. C. Mitchell died in 1948.^[20] Lucy Sprague Mitchell died in 1967, aged 89 years, in Palo Alto, California.^[7] Columbia University holds a collection of her papers.^[21] Joyce Antler published a book-length biography of Mitchell, Lucy Sprague Mitchell: The Making of a Modern Woman (Yale University Press 1988).^[22]