Established July 11, 1949, by the Board of Control of the Ohio State Engineer. Income provides a scholarship for an outstanding student in the College.
Biography is adapted from “Conferences With the Engineers: The Innovative Pedagogy and Career of Sada Harbarger, 1884–1942” by Mike Duncan.
Photo of Sada Harbarger from The Ohio State Engineer journal in 1929.
Sada Harbarger was born on August 13, 1884, in Columbus, Ohio. She was the eldest child of James Winfield Harbarger and Adaline Burt Harbarger. Harbarger was well-educated, attending Clintonville High School and then Ohio State University, where she majored in English. She was involved in various campus organizations, including the Gamma Phi Beta sorority and the Philomathean Literary Society. After graduating in 1906, Harbarger taught German at Worthington High School and later earned a master’s degree in English from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1909.
Harbarger’s career at Ohio State was marked by her innovative teaching methods and dedication to instructing engineering students. She developed a specialized English track for engineering students and was highly regarded for her ability to connect with students and understand the technical needs of writing for engineers. Harbarger was the author of “English for Engineers,” published in 1923, the first genre-based technical communication textbook for engineers.
Harbarger’s influence extended beyond the classroom. She was actively involved in the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education (SPEE) and collaborated with faculty from other departments to integrate writing pedagogy across disciplines. Despite facing the challenges of being a female professor in a male-dominated field, Harbarger made significant contributions to the development of technical writing as an academic discipline.
Despite her illness, she continued to be active in her professional life and was still employed at Ohio State at the time of her passing. All the major newspapers in Ohio ran an obituary noting her teaching reputation, and the university Board of Trustees passed a laudatory resolution, calling her College of Engineering efforts “second to none in the country”.