Naomi Albanese was born in Pennsylvania in 1916. She served as Dean of the School of Home Economics 1958-1982. It was under her leadership in 1964, that the School of Home Economics became the first to offer a Ph.D. degree at the newly name University of North Carolina—Greensboro.
Before coming to the Women’s College (now UNCG) in 1958, Albanese served as a high school home economics teacher in Pennsylvania from 1942 to 1950, and the college dietician at Glenville State College in West Virginia from 1950-1953. She began her graduate studies at Ohio State University in 1951 while working at Glenville State. From 1953 to 1955, she was able to pursue her studies full time and earned her Ph.D. from Ohio State in 1955. In 1964, Albanese served on Governor Mark Sanford’s Commission for fact-finding and recommendation with respect to the status of women in the state. Through her voluminous publications and frequent speaking engagements throughout her long career, she became nationally recognized, and served a consultant to several other universities, including West Virginia University, Purdue University, and Memphis State University. In 1971, she was elected president of the American Home Economics Association. Also in 1971, she began something of a “side career” serving on numerous corporate boards and commissions, when she was elected to the board of directors of the appliance manufacturer Scovill. By 1980, she had served or was serving on the boards of Blue Bell, Inc., Armstrong Cork Co. (becoming the first woman elected to these boards), Duke Power, and on the advisory committee to the Federal Energy Office (1974, to help deal with the country’s energy crisis), as well filling seats on the Charlotte branch of the Federal Reserve Board (becoming chairman of that board in 1981), the Federal Reserve bank of Richmond, and as a consumer advisor to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Cotton Board. After her retirement from UNCG in 1982, Albanese served on even more corporate boards, and on the Board of Trustees of her undergraduate alma mater, Muskingum College, in Ohio.
Much of Dr. Albanese’s professional work and publication concerned nutrition and wellness in children. She herself never married or had children. In a 1964 article about her in the Greensboro News and Observer, the reporter observed that Albanese was known for working especially long days: “is in her office each morning by 8 o’clock, and she frequently remains there until 7 p.m.” Albanese died on December 6, 1989, at the age of 73.