Agnes Edwards was born in 1892 in Jefferson County, Florida, two miles from the little town of Floyd. She earned her Bachelor’s degree from Florida State College for Women (now Florida State University).
After teaching French and history at Sanford High School, she took a job with the U.S. Army’s Department of Vocational Rehabilitation set up to handle injured World War I veterans. Her first assignment as a reconstruction aide was in Denver, Colorado. Pascagoula, Mississippi was her second post and she went there in 1921. She served as educational director until the vocational school closed in 1924. Then she spent two years teaching blind war veterans at the Evergreen School in Baltimore, Maryland.
Edwards became the Assistant to the Dean of Women at her alma mater in 1926. Three years later, she took a job as dean of women at Southwestern Louisiana Institute (later known as the University of Southwestern Louisiana and now as the University of Louisiana at Lafayette). When she began her tenure, the school was a one building industrial institute. During her early years there, she earned a Master’s degree from Columbia University, likely by attending summer sessions.
When she retired in 1957, it was a different institution than it had been upon her hire. Edwards had a hand in that transformation. She advocated the building of religious facilities for students. During World War II, she organized a Red Cross chapter on campus. She established a clubroom for female commuter students so they could feel like they had a “home” on campus and she encouraged the building of a sorority system comprised of inter/national organizations.
The Sigma Sigma Sigma chapter at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, the first national sorority on the campus, gives Edwards credit on its current webpage. The chapter mentions Edwards’ decision “that a chapter with national affiliation would be an asset to sorority life on campus, prompted this historic event.” Tri Sigma, then a member of the Association of Education Sororities, was the first national sorority on campus. In 1956, Edwards helped establish Kappa Delta’s Gamma Kappa Chapter.
Daily Advertiser (Lafayette, LA), April 28, 1960
Edwards was a member of many organizations including the National Association of Deans of Women. It honored her in 1956 for her work with Louisiana youth.
On September 8, 1965, the Agnes Edwards House, a privately financed and owned women’s residence hall opened. The Alumni Association bought the building in the 1970s and named it Conference Center. In 2017, the building was renamed in honor of Agnes Edwards.
Edwards was 75 years old when she died on September 2, 1967. Her “very presence on campus was a living example of the high principles and virtues each of us hope to find in the folks we love,” said one of her eulogists.
