Edward Fitzpatrick

Edward Augustus Fitzpatrick (August 29, 1884 – September 13, 1960) was an American college administrator, author, editor, government official, military officer, and conscription expert. From 1929 to 1954, he served as president of Mount Mary College in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was known for being one of the country's foremost experts on military draft policy during World War I and World War II.

Early life and education Edward A. Fitzpatrick was born on August 29, 1884, in New York City, where he studied at the New York Training School for Teachers. While earning his advance degrees, Fitzpatrick taught from 1903 to 1908 in New York City public schools. After the war, Fitzpatrick became secretary of the board of the Wisconsin State Board of Education, until its abolishment in 1923.

In 1924, Fitzpatrick became the first dean of the Marquette University Graduate School, located in Milwaukee. In 1929, Fitzpatrick's son Edward A. Fitzpatrick Jr. died, and in his honor the boy's father donated 500 volumes and $500 to Marquette University High School for its memorial library the following year. Fitzpatrick was appointed in 1929 as the president of Mount Mary College, a small Catholic women's college, when it moved from Prairie du Chien to Milwaukee. During the Great Depression, he was also the chairman of the State Recovery Board and the National Recovery Administration conciliation board. as he published Conscription and America: A Study of Conscription in a Democracy in the summer of that year. This work "became the bible of hundreds of military officers in their study of the subject." He and wife Lillian Fitzpatrick had three sons.

Publications The Educational Views and Influence of De Witt Clinton (1911) Budget Making in a Democracy Experts in City Government (editor) The Scholarship of Teachers in Secondary Schools: The Sachs Prize Essay of 1926 (1926) In the Service of God (1938) The Autobiography of a College (1939), co-written with Sister Mary Dominic Conscription and America: A Study of Conscription in a Democracy (1940)