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Life and education[edit | edit source]
Woolley was born on November 6, 1874 in Englewood, Illinois as Helen Bradford Thompson. The middle of three children to parents David and Isabella (née Perkins) Thompson, she graduated first in her class from Englewood High School in 1893 with a ninety-seven percent average for her four years. Her interests in what would eventually turn into her future work peaked during her high school career as well, as evident by her self-written valedictory essay, “The Advance Towards Individual Freedom by the Aid of Intervention”.

Because of her high academic standing in high school, she earned a full scholarship to the University of Chicago, which she attended whilst living at home. After being offered a scholarship in psychology in her junior year and earning her bachelor’s degree in the subject in 1897, she went on to do graduate work within her field (as well as philosophy and neurology) with professionals such as James Angell, John Dewey, George Herbert Mead, and Henry Donaldson. It was during this time as a graduate student that she published her first papers in all three fields.

In 1900, Woolley graduated summa cum laude with a Ph.D., also from the University of Chicago. An already exceptional accomplishment, she also managed to be among the first generation of women to receive a doctorate degree in experimental psychology. Her doctoral dissertation assessed the differences between the sexes, a very controversial subject for a woman of her time to be writing about.

In 1901, Woolley decided to leave Illinois and accepted a teaching position at an all women’s school, Mount Holyoke College, in South Hadley, Massachusetts. The college itself is considered to have been founded by an innovator in the area of women’s education, Mary Lyon. She continued to work at the college until 1905, when she married Paul Gerhardt Woolley, MD and became Helen Thompson Woolley. The newly married couple moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where Woolley’s focus became geared toward vocational guidance. Also during her time in Cincinnati, Woolley served as the director of the Vocation Bureau of public schools from 1911 to 1921, and was both the first psychologist and the first woman to hold such a title.

After her departure from Cincinnati in 1921, she and her husband moved to Detroit, Michigan where she eventually found herself working at the Merrill-Palmer School, and co-developing the Merrill-Palmer Mental Scale for Children until 1926, when she moved to New York, New York to work at the Child Welfare Institute at the Teachers College, Columbia University.

In 1930, an unexpected turn of events left Woolley with no choice but to resign from her job. Health problems, a divorce from her husband, and stress and anxiety stemming from the workplace took its toll on Woolley, and she suffered a serious mental breakdown and was unable to recover before her death.

On December 24, 1947, Woolley died at the age of 73 due to an aortic aneurysm.

REVISED PAGE:

Life and education[edit | edit source]
Woolley was born on November 6, 1874 in Englewood, Illinois as Helen Bradford Thompson. The middle of three children to parents David and Isabella (née Perkins) Thompson. Her father was a shoemaker and her mother a homemaker. she graduated first in her class from Englewood High School in 1893 with a ninety-seven percent average for her four years. Her interests in what would eventually turn into her future work peaked during her high school career as well, as evident by her self-written valedictory essay, “The Advance Towards Individual Freedom by the Aid of Intervention”.

Because of her high academic standing in high school, she earned a full scholarship to the University of Chicago, which she attended whilst living at home. After being offered a scholarship in psychology in her junior year and earning her bachelor’s degree in the subject in 1897, she went on to do graduate work within her field (as well as philosophy and neurology) with professionals such as James Angell, John Dewey, George Herbert Mead, and Henry Donaldson. It was during this time as a graduate student that she published her first papers in all three fields.

In 1900, Woolley graduated summa cum laude with a Ph.D., also from the University of Chicago. An already exceptional accomplishment, she also managed to be among the first generation of women to receive a doctorate degree in experimental psychology. Her doctoral dissertation assessed the differences between the sexes, a very controversial subject for a woman of her time to be writing about. '''Helen was the first experimental test of the Darwinian notion that women were biologically inferior to men. Back then this notion was considered so obvious that everyone knew this for a fact and no research study had to be conducted to prove it. Woolley decided to do her own experiment and administered a series of tests to 25 males and 25 female subjects to measure motor abilities, sensory threshold, intellectual abilities, and personality traits. The results from her research showed no sex differences in emotional functioning and only small non significant differences in intellectual abilities. Her data also showed that women were slightly superior to men when it came to abilities such as memory and sensory perception.'''

In 1901, Woolley decided to leave Illinois and accepted a teaching position at an all women’s school, Mount Holyoke College, in South Hadley, Massachusetts. The college itself is considered to have been founded by an innovator in the area of women’s education, Mary Lyon. She continued to work at the college until 1905, when she married Paul Gerhardt Woolley, MD and became Helen Thompson Woolley. '''Woolley and her husband had left the University of Chicago and moved to Japan, then moving to the Philippines. Helen worked for the Philippines Bureau of Education as an experimental psychologist. In 1907, she and her husband moved to Bangkok where he became the head of a new serum laboratory and she became the chief inspector of health. In 1908,''' The newly married couple moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where Woolley’s focus became geared toward vocational guidance. Also during her time in Cincinnati, Woolley served as the director of the Vocation Bureau of public schools from 1911 to 1921, and was both the first psychologist and the first woman to hold such a title.

In 1921, she served as president of the National Vocational Guidance Association. After her departure from Cincinnati in 1921, she and her husband moved to Detroit, Michigan where she eventually found herself working at the Merrill-Palmer School, and co-developing the Merrill-Palmer Mental Scale for Children until 1926, when she moved to New York, New York to work at the Child Welfare Institute at the Teachers College, Columbia University '''where she became director of the new Institute of Child Welfare Research. As the new direction she still continued her work on learning in early childhood, vocational education, and school guidance counseling.'''

In 1930, an unexpected turn of events left Woolley with no choice but to resign from her job. Health problems, a divorce from her husband, and stress and anxiety stemming from the workplace took its toll on Woolley, and she suffered a serious mental breakdown and was unable to recover before her death.

On December 24, 1947, Woolley died at the age of 73 due to an aortic aneurysm.