Lesley University

Anna Tikkanen Savolainen, '11

"In the schools I fear that the tendency is to crush out the individuality of the child. Freedom of expression should be encourage and not handicapped by unwise suppression." 

Anna, a Finnish immigrant, was the first student enrolled when the University opened its doors as the Lesley Normal School in 1909. She graduated at the top of her class of 11 students in 1911. Upon graduation, she became social welfare worker in the Dorchester Settlement House in Dorchester, Massachusetts, where she taught sewing, millinery, cobbling, folk dancing, singing, and theater. In 1916, Miss Tikkanen moved to Virginia, Minnesota where she became a social worker for the Oliver Iron Mining Company, establishing child welfare clinics in the city.

For the remainder of professional life, Anna became a County Home Demonstration Agent, traveling nearly 10,000 miles of rural St. Louis County each year in her Model T Ford to teach housekeeping techniques and child nutrition to the pioneers' wives. She would bring toys for children and recreational material for older adults to lighten the load of homesteaders.

A suffragette, activist, social reformer, and child welfare advocate, Anna received an honorary degree from Lesley in 1959 and was the first alumna to be so honored by the University.