[3] When the Morrill Act passed in 1862, the "mechanic arts" became an important curricular reform movement for the U.S., offering wider access to education which until that time had focused on preparing young men for white-collar professions.
By 1908, the American Home Economics Association was formed out of a series of annual gatherings at Lake Placid, New York.
This organization lobbied federal and state governments to create home economics research and teaching opportunities, especially focusing at first on agricultural extension services.
Sweeney taught physics and chemistry at Campbell-Hagerman College before she came to work at the University of Kentucky as a specialist in home economics extension.
She opined that a graduate from the new college would equally "rank with the man who takes his degree in law or medicine.
She returned to the University of Kentucky in 1923, but in 1925 left to become the Physical Growth and Development department chair of the Merrill Palmer School (later Institute) in Detroit, Michigan.
After the war, Sweeney served as the North American Delegate to the International Missionary Conference in Madras, India.