Katharine Elizabeth McBride

Katharine Elizabeth McBride (1904 - 1976) was an American academic in the fields of psychology and neuropsychology. She served as the fourth president of Bryn Mawr College from 1942 until 1970.

Early life and education Katharine McBride was born May 14, 1904, in Philadelphia. She received her A.B. cum laude in 1925, her M.A. in 1927, and her Ph.D. in 1932, all from Bryn Mawr College. While a graduate student at Bryn Mawr College, McBride's dissertation advisor was James Leuba, the founder of Bryn Mawr's psychology research lab. In 1929, Katharine McBride was invited by neurologist, Dr. Theodore Weisenberg, to join an aphasia study. McBride had recently collaborated with Dr. Agnes Rogers, and Dr. Rogers recommended McBride to Dr. Weisenburg for the study. The study was funded, spanned five years and focused on the classification and assessment of aphasia in adults.

Aphasia study The aphasia study included 230 patients and healthy adults, including 60 patients with aphasia. The study was monumental because it was the first aphasia study to use normal controls, to compare patients with and without aphasia, and to use standardized methodology. McBride used a subset of Head's individual tests for their assessment battery, but also supplemented the tests by adding measures of reading, writing, mathematics, and language intelligence. In 1938, she was also appointed Assistant Dean at Bryn Mawr. In 1940, she left Bryn Mawr to become the Dean at Radcliffe College in Boston. In McBride's first year as president, she taught Child Psychology and co-led the Psychology Journal Club. McBride also was the Vice President of the College of Entrance Examination Board and Chair of the Committee on Tests.

McBride developed the Child Study Institute, a clinical, educational service that in present-day serves as a mental-health services center. She also oversaw the construction of the Mariam Coffin Canaday Library, Erdman Hall, Haffner Hall, and additions to the Park Science Center.

McBride made a televised appearance on ABC News Issues and Answers program on September 19, 1965. To a national audience, she espoused her beliefs in equality in higher education, and that greater assistance was needed for disadvantaged individuals to even the playing field in higher education. Katharine McBride died on June 3, 1976, after sustaining a heart attack. A chapter of The Oxford Handbook of History of Clinical Neuropsychology was devoted to Katharine McBride's contributions, and the author stated, "It can be argued that McBride was one of the best neuropsychologists we never had.

Quotes From her research she internalized what she called "an inclination to ask about every event or kind of behavior, 'What can we learn from this?'"

Works McBride, K. E. (1932). A psychological study of aphasia. Unpublished dissertation, Bryn Mawr College. Weisenburg, T. H., & McBride, K. E. (1935). Aphasia: A clinical and psychological study. New York, NY: The Commonwealth Fund. Weisenburg, T. H., Roe, A., & McBride, K. E. (1936). Adult intelligence: A psychological study of test performances. New York, NY: The Commonwealth Fund. McBride, K. E. (1941). Henry Head: 1861–1940. The American Journal of Psychology, 54, 444–446. McBride, K. E. (1950). Review of "Language and language disturbances: Aphasic symptom complexes and their significance for medicine and the theory of language." Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 45, 404–405. McBride, K. E. (1972). Higher education and the pace of change (Vol. 1971). [Pittsburgh]: University of Pittsburgh Press.