<P> The Morrill Act of 1862 propelled domestic science further ahead as land grant colleges sought to educate farm wives in running their households as their husbands were being educated in agricultural methods and processes . Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Illinois, Minnesota and Michigan were early leaders offering programs for women . There were women graduates of these institutions several years before the Lake Placid Conferences which gave birth to the home economics movement . </P> <P> The home economics movement started with Ellen Swallow Richards, who was the first woman to attend Massachusetts Institute of Technology and later became the first female instructor . Through her chemistry research, she became an expert in water quality and later began to focus on applying scientific principles to domestic situations . At the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, she designed the Rumford Kitchen, which was a tiny kitchen that served nutritious meals to thousands of fair goers, along with a healthy dose of nutrition education . She shunned an invitation to participate in the Women's Building as she said none of her research was just women's work, but rather information for all . </P> <P> Late in the 19th century, Richards convened a group of contemporaries to discuss the essence of domestic science and how the elements of this discipline would ultimately improve the quality of life for many individuals and families . They met at pristine Lake Placid, New York at the invitation of Melvil Dewey . Over the course of the next 10 years, these educators worked tirelessly to elevate the discipline, which was to become home economics, to a legitimate profession . Richards wanted to call this oekology or the science of right living . Euthenics, the science of controllable environment, was also a name of her choice, but "home economics" was ultimately chosen as the official term in 1899 . Richards then founded the American Home Economics Association (now called the American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences) in 1909 . </P> <P> In the 1910s the AHEA won passage of two crucial pieces of legislation that allowed home economists to establish formal niches for research and teaching within institutions of higher education . The Smith - Lever Act of 1914 and the Smith - Hughes Act of 1917 provided funding to expand demonstration work in rural communities and to develop and teach a home economics curriculum on the campuses of most state land - grant colleges . This legislation contributed to the creation of the Office of Home Economics, which grew into the Bureau of Home Economics, at the US Department of Agriculture during the early 20th century . </P>

Where was the first home economics conference held