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| Stella
Patton |
Throughout her twenty-seven
years teaching institutional management, Stella Patton's favorite
task was directing the home economics
tea room. This course, officially called "Practice in
Institution Management" in the course catalog, gave students
the chance to run a noon-time restaurant in the home economics
building for six to twelve weeks every semester. Students planned
menus and ordered all food, and then took turns as cook, hostess,
and cashier for the sixty to one hundred patrons who arrived every
day. When she retired in 1952, Patton recalled the students' pleasure
at seeing the results of their work: "I always like to tell
the girls when customers had something nice to say about the food--and
the waitresses are quick to pass compliments on to the cook. It
sort of takes the ache out of sore feet."
Patton earned her BS
and MS from the UW. Before accepting the institutional management
position at UW, she taught in schools in Indiana and Madison and
supervised the cafeteria at East High School in Madison.
