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A practical visionary: Mary Emma Woolley and the education of women
Abstract
This dissertation is a study of the professional life and, to a lesser extent, the personal life of Mary Emma Woolley (1863-1947), an American educator, feminist, social reformer, peace activist, and religious leader. As one of a handful of women presidents of elite women's colleges, Woolley created a unique style of leadership while she worked with others to establish unifying organizations to support the further development of women's opportunities. This narrative biography focuses on Woolley's intellectual and professional roots, training, and achievements. After a theoretical introductory chapter, the next four chapters study the years during which Woolley developed skills, a philosophy, and personal style that reflected the ideas, mentors, opportunities, and challenges that she encountered. Chapters six through nine are organized around four major challenges that faced Woolley as President of Mount Holyoke College. These included the challenge to advocate successfully for the higher education of women, to bring Mount Holyoke to equal status with other elite women's colleges, to inculcate students with a lasting sense of their social responsibility as educated women, and to create a fulfilling personal life for herself. Woolley's professional life paralleled significant gains made by women in education and the professions. However, by the end of her career, women experienced significant losses both in opportunity and status. The final chapter of the study documents the controversy over Woolley's presidential succession which ended in her replacement by a man. The study concludes that Woolley's exemplary leadership demonstrated what it was possible to achieve in a single-sex institution. Woolley and women like her in positions of leadership were able to transform single-sex women's colleges into institutions where professional women could achieve and students could receive both high-quality education and full exposure to the world beyond the colleges. Woolley herself used the college as a platform from which she influenced a much wider audience through her speeches and articles. However, Mount Holyoke's loss of female leadership in 1937 was a casualty of a generalized loss of female leadership opportunities.
Subject Area
Education history|Higher education|Biographies|Womens studies
Recommended Citation
Meeropol, Ann Karus, "A practical visionary: Mary Emma Woolley and the education of women" (1992). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI9305868.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9305868