A native of Charlotte, North Carolina, Maude Broadaway spent her initial college years at Salem Academy (now Salem College). She taught for several years in the Winston (N.C.) Public School System, and it was there that she met Charles Duncan McIver, a principal in a Winston public high school. McIver later founded the State Normal and Industrial School, and, in 1892, Broadaway enrolled to seek further coursework and experience in pedagogy. Although Broadaway was officially a student, she also acted as a teacher’s assistant. She also worked closely with the first college physician, Dr. Miriam Bitting, who was also the head of the Department of Physiology and Health.
In this role, Broadaway helped professors create a personalized exercise program for each student, concentrating on posture and movement. She eventually became the director of the school’s first gymnasium, which was located in the Main Building. It was here that the girls were trained to work with weights, clubs, and a vault. She also taught the students how to design exercise programs that could be easily translated into the classroom, as many of the State Normal students were studying to become teachers.
Broadaway graduated from State Normal with her certificate in May of 1893. A year after graduation, she wed Dr. Edward McKee Goodwin and moved to Morganton, North Carolina. Goodwin was a strong advocate for education for women and had been on the original board of directors for establishing the State Normal and Industrial School. He was also instrumental in founding the North Carolina School for the Deaf. Broadaway not only assisted her husband with his work with the Deaf School, she also took on many of her own projects. She was heavily involved with foreign missionary work, and spent twenty-four years as an officer with the Women’s Missionary Conference. She also led the drive to establish a public library in Morganton.
Maude Broadaway Goodwin died of pneumonia on June 2, 1934. The public library in Morganton was opened in October of the following year.