Join us on Saturday, March 9 from 2 - 3 p.m. for a book signing with Patricia Tripple, whose inspiring life and career have been captured in a retrospective by the Nevada Women's History Project as part of their Nevada Women's Oral History Series.

About Patricia Tripple

Patricia Tripple was born in Seattle, Washington in1924 and was a high school senior at the start of World War II.  After earning a Ph.D. in Home Economics Education in 1955, Pat came to the University of Nevada as an Associate Professor in the School of Home Economics and she assisted in the design of a new Sarah Hamilton Fleischmann School of Home Economics building.  Pat also played an important role in restructuring the existing university curriculum to meet the ever evolving role of the “working woman,” who now had the additional responsibility of an out-of-home job added to her traditional duties as wife, mother and homemaker. She became the first Dean of the School of Home Economics in 1973.  Pat in her career, saw the advent of the women’s movement in the 1970s and the quest for equal opportunities in the business world which led to a social devaluation of the traditional homemaker role.  Home economics education in high schools and colleges became a casualty of the times.  Sadly, she was also a witness to the demise of the Sarah Hamilton Fleischmann School of Home Economics at the University of Nevada, Reno in 1989.

In 1995 Pat was elected to the Nevada State Assembly from Washoe County. This legislative session was unusual as the Nevada State Assembly was split in a 21-21 Republican/Democratic tie. Such an event had never happened before and has not been replicated since. Pat’s observations on how the two parties solved the leadership problem give an insight to the collegiality between political parties that seems to be lost in today’s partisan political world.

The Nevada Women’s History Project is proud to publish her “Retrospective”