Cecile Hoover Edwards Portrait of Edwards taken for the 1972
Alumni Centennial Award from Iowa State University. Courtesy
Iowa State University Library/Special Collections Department.
From the time she was in college, Cecile Hoover Edwards
(1926–2005) knew she wanted to improve the health of lower-
income Americans by improving their diets, and she dedicated her
career to doing just that. Born in East St. Louis, Illinois,
Edwards entered college when she was only 15, enrolling at
Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) in Alabama, the
historically black school made famous by Booker T. Washington
and George Washington Carver, among others. After earning her
bachelor’s and master’s degrees there, she went on to earn her
doctorate in nutrition from Iowa State University. She married
Gerald Alonzo in 1952, then joined the faculty of Tuskegee the
next year. In 1971 Edwards left Tuskegee for Howard University
in Washington, D.C., where she was dean of the School of Human
Ecology from 1974 to 1986, and where she