As Women’s History Month begins, WNMU recognizes the accomplishments of its first graduate, Isabel Eckles.

Born in Delaware in 1877, Eckles graduated from what was then known as New Mexico Normal School in 1895 with a diploma that was “to be considered as a first class teacher’s certificate in any of the counties of the Territory of New Mexico,” according to the language of the Council Bill that established the school.

After teaching in Silver City for 16 years, Eckles was elected to the State Board of Education in 1912. She then successfully ran to be the Grant County Superintendent of Schools, a position to which she was reelected.

After being term-limited from continuing as County Superintendent, Eckles became the Registrar of New Mexico Normal School in 1919. (The school’s name would be changed to New Mexico State Teacher’s College in 1920.) While working as Registrar, she also served as the President of the State Teachers’ Association.

In 1922, following the resignation of President J. J. Chamberlain, Eckles served as Acting President of the college, a position of leadership that would have been exceedingly rare for a woman at that time.

While the college’s Board of Regents chose to seek out a man to serve as the next president, an article in “The Normalite,” the school newspaper at the time, shows that Eckles was highly esteemed by the student body. “Her standard is a high one,” the article reads, “but her great humanity makes us feel it is a not unobtainable one. … From the highest to the humblest her quick sympathy responds to every appeal and her great executive ability is never more keenly nor effectively applied than toward helping us work out the daily problems of our lives.”

In 1922, Eckles was chosen by the Democratic State Convention to be its candidate for the office of State Superintendent of Public Instruction. Eckles won the seat and was reelected to a second term. She and Secretary of State Soledad Chávez de Chacón, who was also elected in 1922, were the first two women to hold statewide office in New Mexico.

Following her service as State Superintendent, Eckles was made Superintendent of Santa Fe Schools, a position she held for ten years. When she retired from the field of education, she served as State Director for the Division of Service Projects for the Works Progress Administration. She was instrumental in the establishment of museums in Silver City and Roswell.

Eckles died in Santa Fe in 1971. Eckles Hall, which stood on the WNMU campus from 1959 until 2019, was named after her and her family.