Dr. Margaret L. Rowe 1948-1950

Margaret Louise Rowe was a 1944 charter member of Evansville’s Pi Chapter and was elected its first vice-president. The following three years she was chapter president.
In 1948 she was elected state president. She described the following story about her election. “The previous state presidents had been older women. Edna Boyd said (as I was later told) ‘There is a dynamic, pretty young woman in Evansville and I think it is time to have a pretty state president.’”  
During the biennium prior to her state presidency, Margaret Rowe was National Chair of the Educational Roster Committee that consisted of state president-elects. The committee’s purpose was “to submit names of 3-6 outstanding women educators or authors from their states to be included in a booklet for distribution at convention.” 
After her term as state president, she served as chairman of the state expansion committee.  
Dr. Rowe is credited with establishing the first speech services in the Evansville public schools in 1938. Ten years later she established the same services at Indiana State Teachers College in Terre Haute for students and future teachers. She soon organized the Nu-Voice Club for survivors of esophageal cancer to help those afflicted learn to speak without a larynx. About this time she moved her DKG membership to Delta Chapter in Terre Haute.  She later became a charter member of Beta Omicron Chapter. 
When she retired from ISTC, the School of Education named its new speech pathology clinic the Margaret Rowe Center for Communication Disorders. With contributions from Dr. Rowe and friends, a scholarship of the same name was established in 1977 to aid students of speech pathology.  
Dr. Rowe was applauded for her community service. She received the 1963 Business and Professional Women Award as a distinguished woman educator. In 1971 she was named an Outstanding Educator in America.  Always interested in dramatics and music, Margaret Rowe participated in local theatre productions and sang professionally.

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