Staab, Josephine (1911-1999)

Jo Staab

Jo Staab graduated in 1932 with a degree in Home Economics Education from the University of Iowa, where she studied under Frances Zuill. After teaching at the White Fish Bay High School in Wisconsin for two years, she went to New York and earned an MA from Teachers College, Columbia University. She then moved to Vermont and spent a year as the assistant supervisor of home economics in the public school system before coordinating home economics teaching in high schools in Austin, Texas. From 1947 to 1954, she was professor of Family Economics at the University of Tennessee. During these years she also completed a doctorate in Family Economics from the University of Chicago. From 1956 to 1958 she was a consultant to the Thackersey Women's University in Bombay. She later recalled how rewarding these years were and how much she learned from observing the home economics situation in India. After her return, she taught at the University of Texas.

In 1961, Staab was appointed Associate Dean in the School of Home Economics at UW. She resigned from this position in 1964 to resume full-time work as a professor of Home Management and Family Living, which she continued until her retirement in 1976. Staab then became involved in political organizations such as the Wisconsin Women's Network, the Women's Political Caucus and the League of Women Voters. In 1998, the year before her death, she published Marriage as an Economic Partnership: How One State Made it Happen, a history of Wisconsin's passage of a marital property reform law.