| Henrietta J. Meeteer | |
| Birth Date: | June 1, 1857 |
| Birth Place: | La Porte, Indiana, United States |
| Death Place: | Haddonfield, New Jersey, United States |
| Occupation: | College dean, professor of Greek and Latin |
Henrietta Josephine Meeteer (June 1, 1857 – November 18, 1956) was an American classics professor and philologist. She taught Latin and Greek at Swarthmore College, and was a dean of the college from 1906 to 1918.
Henrietta "Nettie" Meeteer was born in La Porte, Indiana, the daughter of Joseph Chamberlin Meeteer and Henrietta Churchman Meeteer. She trained as a teacher at the University of Pennsylvania,[1] then earned a bachelor's degree from Indiana University Bloomington in 1901.[2] She held the Frances Sargent Pepper fellowship in classical languages at the University of Pennsylvania from 1901 to 1904.[3] She completed doctoral studies there, in her forties, with a dissertation titled The Artists of Pergamum (1904).[4]
Meeteer taught school as a young woman. She was Dean of Women at the University of Colorado from 1904 to 1906.[5] She joined the faculty of Swarthmore College in 1906, as Dean (later Dean of Women),[6] succeeding Elizabeth Powell Bond.[7] Her Opening Day address to the student body in 1906 included this declaration:
I come here as your friend, your co-worker. Not to look on from the outside, but to stand shoulder to shoulder with you always. If you need a mother, my heart is ready to respond to that call; if you need a sister, a friend, a comrade in pleasure, that is what I want to be — what I am here to be. Everything that concerns you concerns me — your work, your pleasures, your difficulties. Nothing that affects you is too trivial to claim my interest, my sympathy. Whatever the limitations and deficiencies I bring to my work as your dean, I can promise a deep and unfailing sympathy.[8]She helped to organize the first national conference of deans of women at state universities in 1905,[9] and served on the executive committee for another national conference of deans of women in 1914. She resigned as dean in 1918, but continued at Swarthmore as a professor of Latin and Greek.[10] [11]
Meeteer died in 1956, at the age of 99, in Haddonfield, New Jersey.[13]