Elizabeth Reynard

She served in the military, helping to establish the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) and was the first woman to be appointed lieutenant in the United States Navy Reserve.

[1][2] Her senior year, she won the $1,200 (equivalent to $21,843 in 2023) Helen Prince memorial prize for excellence in composition.

[4] She took a leave of absence when working as a professor at the college to help the Navy develop a program to incorporate women into the military, which resulted in the WAVES.

[8] Reynard was the companion of Virginia Gildersleeve, who was the Dean of Barnard College, and the sole female US delegate to the April 1945 San Francisco United Nations Conference on International Organization.

[citation needed] Documents by and about Reynard, including digital images of scrapbooks she maintained about the WAVES, are held at the Schlesinger Library at Harvard University.