Ida Louise Anderson was born in Morganton, Tennessee, on 6 November 1900. At three years of age she and her parents moved to Colfax, Washington. Five years later, she returned to Tennessee with her family for a visit. While there, she became gravely ill. Doctors diagnosed her condition as infantile paralysis or polio. During the next several years, Anderson underwent medical and physical therapy in attempt to lessen the disease's effects. Nevertheless, Anderson was physically handicapped, with a severe curvature of the spine. In 1924, Anderson received an undergraduate degree in speech from the State College of Washington. She spent a summer in Alaska before returning to Pullman to begin a sixteen-year teaching career at WSC in the school's Department of Speech. Anderson took advanced speech work at the Boston School of Expression and at the University of California during two summers. She also studied a year at Northwestern University. Her teaching career ended in 1939, when the lingering effects of polio forced her to retire. Shortly, Anderson moved to Oregon to be nearer her sister. She died there on 16 September 1941. Anderson was buried in Colfax, Washington.

Ida Lou Anderson was one of the State College's most respected instructors with a powerful mind and character that reached well beyond the classroom. She pioneered the field of radio broadcasting. One of Anderson's earliest and most impressive students was Edward R. Murrow, a European news correspondent during World War II and a journalist and executive for the news division of the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) through the early 1960s.