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Student Volunteer Missionaries
 This photograph shows alumni of St.
Olaf College working in the China mission field in 1925. The individuals
are not identified, but the woman in the front row wearing a hat is
Agnes Kittelsby, Class of 1900. Kittelsby taught at St. Olaf College for
some years before going to China in 1914. A dormitory is named in her
honor.
For many years the Student Volunteer
Mission Band was an active organization on campus, including as members
those who were interested in becoming missionaries. The field was open
to both women and men. A significant number of young women in their
twenties went off to China or Madagascar to serve at a time when many
careers, both religious and secular, were closed to them at home.
Solveig Swendseid, in work done on an
oral history project involving women missionaries, discovered that 50%
of the seven hundred and sixty-three women interviewed were college
graduates, while 97% had nurses training or some post high school
training. The interviewees held at least 20 specific types of positions
in fields such as nursing, teaching, animal husbandry and farming.
Several held two or more positions. Some of the interviewees spoke as
many as four languages. (Photo courtesy of St. Olaf College
Archives.)
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