Gwendolyn Gunter Morgan '47

Alumnae Achievement Awards 1991

Daycare Policy Analyst and Advocate

Gwendolyn Gunter Morgan, known as America’s “Mrs. Day Care,” graduated from Wellesley with a B.A. in English in 1947. She married Henry Morgan (MIT ’48) at the end of her junior year and started a family after graduation, eventually raising six children.

In the 1960s, Morgan became involved with early childhood education at the Lincoln Nursery School and, subsequently, at the all-day preschool which she designed for children of workers at KLH, her husband’s company in Cambridge. From 1968 to 1973, she was a senior childcare planner for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and began teaching at Wheelock College in 1974. She served as the executive secretary for the Governor’s Advisory Committee on Child Development, and she was able to influence policy-making related to childcare issues on a local level. On a national level, she has been a policy specialist for the American Institute for Research and a member of the National Task Force on Administration of Day Care Licensing, for which she produced the 1974 publication Guide for Day Care Licensing.

Morgan has served as a consultant or a staff member for numerous child care policy research studies, and she has helped found many organizations. She is a board member of the National Association for the Education of Young Children and on the board of the Child Action Campaign. She has also been a founding member and the vice president of the Day Care and Child Development Council of America. Morgan helped found the Center for Career Development in Early Care and Education at Wheelock College; the Massachusetts Office for Children; and Work/Family Directions, a child-care consulting organization, now WFD consulting. In 2006, she was honored with the Distinguished Service Award from the National Association for Regulatory Administration.

Gwendolyn Morgan’s Alumnae Achievement Award Citation reads: “We applaud your unsurpassed contributions as an educator, researcher, writer, consultant, policy analyst, and advocate on child care issues. We are indebted to you for your determination to see that our children are ‘welcome in this world.’”