Ethel Acuff Poore (Mrs. Harry T.), who graduated from UT in 1913, became the first woman to head a state school for the deaf when she went to Tennessee School for the Deaf as superintendent in 1921. She was also the first woman to be elected president of the American Instructors of the Deaf, the world’s largest organization of its kind. She was awarded an honorary doctorate (LHD) by Gallaudet College in 1947. She retired as superintendent of TSD in 1951.