In 1939 Virginia Withers was appointed by Dean Harriet Greve as director of all residence halls for women, supervising the hostesses in charge at the individual halls and supervising the new project of integrating the residence hall program with the academic program of the university. The five hundred women living in residence halls were to be given special guidance in their courses of study by the hall hostesses in cooperation with faculty advisors, and a carefully planned social program was to be directed by the hostesses, under Withers’ leadership. Withers moved to Knoxville from Richmond where she had served as director of religious education for Second Baptist Church. She held the AB from Mississippi Women’s College, the BRE from the Women’s Missionary Union Training School of Louisville, and had taken courses in personnel work at New York University.