Born: 16 March 1909, United States
Died: 15 February 1999
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
American political scientist Dr. Victoria Schuck served as the president of Mount Vernon College from 1977 to 1983. According to a 2003 publication from George Washington University, she is believed to be “one of the first 80 or so women to earn a Ph.D. in political science,” which she did in 1937 at Stanford University, where she’d also earned her BA in 1930 and MA in 1931.
Schuck specialized in women’s political participation, as well as New England state politics and the politics of South Vietnam. Over her career, she published more than 80 articles and monographs and co-edited several books. In addition to short-term visiting professor/scholar roles, she worked as a professor at Florida State University (then Florida State College for Women) from 1937 to 1940 before moving on to Mount Holyoke College, where she was a professor of political science from 1940 to 1977.
Schuck helped establish women in politics as a subcategory of political science studies. She was involved in the creation of the Women’s Caucus of the American Political Science Association in 1969 and was a part of the Association’s 1971 Committee on the Status of Women. She was an editor of the books Women Organizing: An Anthology (1979) and New England Politics (1980).
Her alma mater, Stanford University, endows a Victoria Schuck Faculty Scholar Chair in Political Science. The American Political Science Association also gives out the Victoria Schuck Award annually to the author(s) of the best book published in the previous year about women and politics.