This dissertation uses the development of the Boston School for Social Workers, the first university-affiliated social work school in America, as a window on the complicated nature of professional identity in a female-dominated field in the early twentieth century. It draws together scholarship on the development of the profession of social work and transformation of education in the turn-of-the-century U.S. The scholarship on social work typically focuses on how mid-nineteenth century philanthropy became the welfare state of the New Deal era; there is extensive treatment of the gendered nature of the field, which describes the emerging profession as one of the "feminized" pink-collar occupations that used the rhetoric of science to de-emphasize its dominance by women. Few historians, however, have delved into the role of education in creating this science-driven discourse, or into the relationship of that discourse to the changing character of women's education at the turn of the twentieth century and the concurrent development of (male) research universities. For men, education based on scientific principles was generally preparation for paid employment. As such, the discourse in social work—emphatically masculine and thus implicitly professional—conflicted with the voluntary nature of the work performed by most of the overwhelmingly female practitioners. Though the Boston School sought to create a professional identity by establishing educational standards for all social workers, debate over the very definition of what a professional was, complicated by the public's ambivalence towards women as professionals, made it clear that though women may be well-educated and specially trained, their gender precluded any easy transition from "Ladies Bountiful" to paid experts.