Howe, former Yale dean, dies at 93

ESSEX, Conn. (AP) - Arthur Howe Jr., a former admissions dean at Yale who was an early advocate for allowing undergraduate women to attend the Ivy League school, has died. He was 93.

Howe died at his home in Essex, about 30 miles east of New Haven, on Dec. 16 following a brief bout with a bone marrow disease, said his son, Tom Howe.

Howe was born in Watertown, Connecticut, and spent some of his childhood in Hampton, Virginia, where his father was president of what is now called Hampton University. His brother, Harold Howe II, who died in 2002, was U.S. education commissioner under President Lyndon Johnson in the mid-1960s.

Arthur Howe Jr. was dean of admissions at Yale College from 1956 to 1964. He began advocating for the admission of undergraduate women in his first year on the job, a time when many on the New Haven campus opposed the idea. Women had been admitted to Yale graduate programs since the late 1800s, but it took until 1969 for them to be admitted as undergraduates.

Howe also reduced the emphasis on SAT scores and grades and helped add more racial diversity to the student body, his son said.

Howe graduated from the Hotchkiss School in Salisbury, Connecticut, in 1938 and received a bachelor's degree in education from Yale in 1947.

His Yale degree came after he served in World War II in the American Field Service, a field ambulance corps. He served as president of the American Field Service from 1965 to 1972, when it was an international student exchange program.

Howe also served on the boards of numerous educational, religious, civic and conservation groups.

Two memorial services are planned. One will be held Jan. 10 at the First Congregational Church of Old Lyme in Connecticut, and one next August at the Chocorua Island Chapel at Squam Lake in Holderness, New Hampshire.