Jean Brosius Walton (March 6, 1914July 5, 2006) was an American academic administrator and women's studies scholar. She spent the bulk of her career at Pomona College in Claremont, California.
Born to a Pennsylvania Quaker family, Walton grew up at George School and studied mathematics at Swarthmore College, Brown University and the University of Pennsylvania. She joined Pomona College in 1949 as the Dean of Women, and was promoted to dean of students in 1969 and vice president for student affairs in 1976, three years before her formal retirement. During her tenure, she advocated for women's education, engaged with student protests against the Vietnam War, oversaw reform of residential life policies to eliminate parietal rules, and co-founded the Claremont Colleges' Intercollegiate Women's Studies Program. She earned widespread recognition for her work and was praised by colleagues for her independent and dignified personality.
Early life
Jean Brosius Walton was born on March 6, 1914, the fourth of five daughters, in Middletown Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. She grew up on the campus of George School, where her father George was the principal. Her mother Emily () was a homemaker. For high school, she attended George School and enjoyed mathematics classes in which she was often the only female student. She then enrolled at Swarthmore College, where she majored in math. She was socially active and played several sports but found dating difficult. After graduating in 1935 with highest honors, she taught high school math at Moorestown Friends School in New Jersey for three years. She then earned a master's degree in mathematics from Brown University in 1940, following the completion of her thesis on the Riemann–Stieltjes integral.
In 1945, she enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania to pursue a Ph.D. Her relationship with her advisor, German number theorist Hans Rademacher, was at first difficult because she did not fit his idea of a typical mathematician. However, she ultimately won his confidence after completing a difficult assignment that required her to translate French and German papers in an unfamiliar field, topology. She submitted her dissertation, "Theta series in the Gaussian field", on March 12, 1948, and after a successful defense received her doctorate in mathematics that June. It was published by the Duke Mathematical Journal in September 1949. She would later describe the experience as "isolating but confidence-boosting."
Career
Walton began her career teaching math as an instructor at Swarthmore in 1940, serving as an assistant to the dean and then the acting dean of women in 1945. She also taught math at the University of Pennsylvania beginning in 1947.
Walton was hired by Pomona College, the founding member of the Claremont Colleges consortium, in 1949 as the dean of women on the recommendation of Swarthmore president John W. Mason. In her early years, she sought to expand her role beyond its disciplinary aspects and to help women navigate the marriage vs. career conflict by providing them with a broad liberal arts education. Over time, she grew concerned by the sexism she witnessed and the low expectations for female students.
In addition to her administrative duties, Walton taught calculus. However, she became increasingly disconnected from mathematics, which she felt was "too remote from life", and quit teaching after ten years. Together with classics professor Harry J. Carroll, Walton helped found an early iteration of Pomona's study abroad program. During the 1955–1956 academic year, she taught at Japan Women's University in Tokyo as a Fulbright Lecturer and filled a student services role similar to her own at Pomona. During the 1962–1963 academic year, she did a consultancy with the Danforth Foundation.
Walton was the president of the California Association of Women Administrators and Counselors from 1957 to 1959, and was chair of the college section of the National Association of Women Deans, Administrators and Counselors from 1963 to 1965.
In the 1960s, Walton was a key figure in Pomona's handling of the countercultural revolution and student protests against the Vietnam War. During the 1967–1968 academic year, she chaired a student-faculty commission that worked on the college's demonstration policy. Walton also played an instrumental role in the liberalization of Pomona's residential life policies and the elimination of parietal rules that had restricted student freedom and segregated housing by gender. This put her on the forward edge of a nationwide trend toward the elimination of such rules; a colleague later recalled that she "changed with the times to an amazing degree".