Stratton became Purdue's first full-time Dean of Women in 1933, expanding academic opportunities and enrollment for women students.
In 1933, Dorothy Stratton was appointed Purdue University's first full-time Dean of Women, a landmark position that placed her at the forefront of expanding educational opportunities for women in a era when higher education was still largely oriented toward men.
In this role, Stratton worked tirelessly to broaden the academic horizons available to female students, pushing back against the assumption that women's collegiate education should be confined to home economics. Under her leadership, women's enrollment at Purdue nearly tripled, and she helped establish new academic and extracurricular pathways for women across the sciences, engineering-adjacent fields, and liberal arts.
Her tenure as dean was marked by a philosophy of active mentorship and institutional advocacy, positioning her as a champion for gender equity in American higher education decades before such efforts became mainstream. She remained in this position until she left for military service during World War II.
This appointment marked the beginning of a lifelong pattern in Stratton's career: repeatedly being the first woman to hold significant leadership positions, and using those platforms to open doors for the women who followed her. Her work at Purdue laid important groundwork for the university's later reputation as a leader in women's STEM education.