Nancy Boyd Leidenfrost Papers

Nancy Boyd Leidenfrost was a national program leader for the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program, Extension Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) from 1969 to 1989, and a national program leader for the Hunger and Undernutrition Extension Service, USDA, from 1989 to 1994.

Note: Extended autobiographical and biographical sketches of Nancy Boyd Leidenfrost are available in Box 1, Folder 15.

Nancy Boyd Leidenfrost began her career in Extension Service work after her graduation from Shepherd College in 1956, when she took a position with the West Virginia University Extension Service. Among other things, she was responsible for implementing extension education programs in home economics, and organizing Extension Education Clubs in Raleigh County in southern West Virginia.

In 1962 Leidenfrost joined the University of Maryland as a home economist for the Extension Service until 1969 and worked in two counties - Anne Arundel and Prince George’s. In 1967, she acquired a Master of Science in Home Economics from the University of Maryland.

In 1969, Leidenfrost joined USDA’s Cooperative Extension Service as the National Program Leader of the newly formed Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP). Working with land-grant universities across the country, she led the effort to extend the program, which uses local paraprofessionals to provide meal planning and nutrition education to low-income families. Leidenfrost developed national policy guidelines and training materials for the program in concert with representatives from the land-grant institutions. She also made efforts to expand the reach of the program beyond the 50 states, working with colleagues in United States territories and other countries.

After 20 years leading EFNEP, Leidenfrost was asked to take on a new project in 1989. She became the National Program Leader for the new Hunger and Undernutrition Program, Extension Service, USDA, Washington, D.C., addressing issues of food security and poverty. During this time, she worked more closely with international colleagues, which led to her leadership of the International Year of the Family efforts at the Extension Service from 1992-1994. She also represented the International Federation for Home Economics at the 1995 United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China. During this period, Leidenfrost authored or edited numerous publications related to her work with education, food security and poverty. These include Families in Transition (1992), Handbook for Teaching Families (1993), and Food Security in the United States: Guidebook for Public Issue Education (1994).

Leidenfrost retired from USDA in 1994, but continued working on issues of food security and poverty with the American Association of Family & Consumer Sciences and International Federation for Home Economics.

The bulk of this collection includes information on the first 20 years of the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP). EFNEP began as a pilot program in 1964 and was launched in several rural Alabama counties to develop new ways of reaching low-income homemakers to ensure that they had basic skills to assist with nutrition education and planning and providing budgeting. As part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War on Poverty”, the staff of the pilot program trained paraprofessionals, who were generally homemakers themselves, as educators.

A successful pilot program, combined with studies showing that nationwide levels of nutrition consumption was suffering, led to the launch of the nationwide EFNEP in late 1968. Funded through the same Smith-Lever Act that supports Extension Services, EFNEP is a partnership between USDA and Extension Programs at land-grant universities across the country. It uses the paraprofessional model to teach homemakers, first at the rural level and later in urban areas, to become home economics educators within their communities. A youth EFNEP program, implemented through 4-H, teaches children many of the same skills.

The remainder of the collection includes information regarding Leidenfrost’s time as National Program Leader for the Hunger and Undernutrition area of the Extension Service now referred to as Hunger & Food Security. Much of Leidenfrost’s work during this period was dedicated to raising awareness of food security issues and their connection to poverty.