The story of the American Association of Family & Consumer Sciences (AAFCS) begins
with the story of Ellen Richards, one of the leading figures in the emergence of home
economics as a profession. After growing up in modest circumstances in the small town of
Dunstable, Massachusetts, Ellen defied the conventions of her times by leaving home to
attend the newly founded Vassar College, from which she graduated in 1870. She then went
on to be the first—and for many years the only—woman to earn a degree at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.