Adele and Dale Young Child Development Laboratory
Consistent with Utah State University’s land-grant mission, the Adele and Dale Young Child Development Laboratory has a three-pronged focus: engagement (providing service for children and families), discovery (research) and learning (training pre-professionals in the field of early childhood).
The laboratory has a rich history, beginning in the early 1930s with the creation of Utah State Agricultural College’s Department of Child Development and Parental Education. At that time, the laboratory was housed in a war-surplus Quonset hut, located where the current Taggart Student Center now stands. Over the years, the laboratory has moved six times; it is now a permanent fixture on the first floor of the Family Life building.
The lab’s programs are devoted to the development of social competency skills in children, both theoretically and practically. Children learn most effectively through active exploration and participation in their environment. Every child has specific interests, curiosities, talents and a self-esteem that must be nurtured and enhanced. The lab’s programs offer children a hands-on, discovery-based learning environment and teachers focus their planning on the interests and needs of individual children in their classrooms.
Emily Elder Barrus (1978-2004) Outdoor Imaginarium
Emily Elder Barrus was born May 18, 1978 in Logan, Utah to Reed and Valerie Elder. Emily grew up in Hyde Park, Utah, and attended schools in the Cache County. She graduated from Sky View High School in 1996, where she participated on the swim team. She continued her education at Utah State University and graduated in 1999 with a degree in family human development with an emphasis in early childhood development.
Emily worked for a few years managing some of the child development laboratory classrooms at USU. Emily loved children and her dream was to open a preschool someday. She tragically passed away in 2004 before she was able to realize that dream, but the playground in the Emily Elder Barrus Outdoor Imaginarium continues to enrich the lives of children enrolled in the Adele and Dale Young Child Development Lab.
Phyllis R. Snow (1912-1993) Conference Room
Room 113
Phyllis R. Snow was born August 26, 1912 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her early years were spent in Park City, Utah, where her father practiced medicine. In 1927 the family moved to Philadelphia, where Dr. Snow earned his specialty in orthopedic surgery. They settled in Salt Lake City (tthe first orthopedic specialist in Utah). Phyllis graduated from the old LDS High School in Salt Lake City then earned her degree in home economics from the University of Utah in 1935. She taught briefly in the Salt Lake City and Jordan school districts and later worked as home consultant for the Mt. Fuel Supply Co.
Phyllis continued her education at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, receiving master’s and doctorate degrees and then taught for six years. She returned to Utah as department head and later as dean of the College of Family Life at Utah State University in Logan from 1961 to 1978.
Phyllis’s innovative thinking changed the direction of two established departments, where she was responsible for merging the departments of Food Science and Nutrition with Agriculture and Family Life to produce a unique doctoral study program that made USU a “host” institution for a doctorate in the home economics and consumer education field (family). After her retirement in 1978, she remained active in community affairs and the status of women through numerous organizations and commissions.
Reva L. (1896-1986) and W. Rulon (1899-1978) White Auditorium
Room 206
W. Rulon White was born into a pioneer family in Willard, Utah on January 5, 1899, the third of eight children. He attended grade school in Willard before going to Box Elder County High School in Brigham City, Utah, where he was student body president in 1918. Immediately after graduating from high school, Rulon enlisted in the U.S. Army. He arrived home in Willard on July 19, 1919.
Rulon enrolled at the Utah Agricultural College (now Utah State University), where he met a young coed named Reva Lewis. The couple became engaged and Rulon decided he had better get a job “to keep Reva in the style to which she hoped to become accustomed.”
Rulon first tried his hand in the wholesale fruit business, a business in which his father also had been engaged. He went to Chicago as a salesman for the old South Water Street Wholesale Fruit Market for two years. From Chicago, he went to Norton, Kansas, where he was active in the wholesale fruit business.
In 1926, Rulon came back to Utah to marry Reva and the couple returned to Kansas. During the following winter, the young couple decided they wanted to make their permanent home in Utah. They returned to Utah in the spring of 1927 and established a residence in Ogden. Rulon went into the pipe and clay business and proceeded to build one of the most successful business firms of its kind in the Intermountain Area.
The Caine Room
Room 212
The Caine Room is located in the Family Life Building, which is listed on The National Register of Historic Places in recognition of its architectural and historical significance. When the building first opened, the Caine Room was known as the Women’s Lounge, used for student meetings, activities and by the Faculty Women’s League.
With the development of the Interior Design program in the College of Family Life, Kathryn Caine Wanlass was approached to assist with refurbishing the lounge in order to provide an aesthetic environment for receptions and meetings — and for Interior Design students to see firs-thand high-end residential furnishings. In appreciation for her gifts of time, talent and resources, the room has been designated by Utah State University as the Caine Room.
Ferne Page and Allan M. West met in 1931 while attending Utah State University. In 1932, Ferne graduated with bachelor’s degrees in English and political science, and Allan graduated with a bachelor’s in business. The couple wed the same year and enjoyed 72 anniversaries together.
Education and leadership were important parts of the West’s lives. Ferne obtained post-graduate education, engaged in the Women’s State Legislative Council and other civic organizations and played a key role in raising the couple’s two sons. She supported Allan throughout his career, but especially as he served as executive secretary for both the Utah Education Association and the National Education Association (NEA).
Allan did graduate-level work at USU, the University of Utah and the University of Chicago. After leaving Utah in 1961 to assume NEA leadership posts in Washington, D.C., he promoted collective bargaining by educators and worked to unify African American and white teachers’ affiliates under one organization. In addition to his Distinguished Service Award, he received an Honorary Doctor of Education degree from USU in 1973.
Tanner Room
Room 306
The Tanner Charitable Trust, in abiding interest in and love for Utah State University, gifted a dining suite, sculpted from the salvaged beams of the old Sorbonne University in Paris that was demolished and rebuilt in the 1880s.
Made by Estevan Jarnach and Claude Delin in Paris from 1894 to 1896, the suite includes a large buffet with carved panels depicting French agricultural life with two 2/3 size figures, one at each corner, supporting the cornice; a marble top server; a large table; and 18 chairs, each representing one of the 18 provinces of France with the predominant agricultural product of the province carved across the front stretcher and two busts of peasants dressed in the native provincial costume on each corner of the back.
*Note: All bios are current and up-to-date as of Summer 2022.