Helen Bowerman, Ph.D.
Helen Cox Bowerman, PhD
Miss Helen Bowerman taught Latin and Greek at Wilson College from the fall semester of 1912 until the spring semester of 1919. In April 1912, Miss Bowerman wrote to Dr. Anna J. McKeag to say that she had learned of a possible opportunity to teach Latin at the college. At the age of thirty, she wrote the letter. She later stated on a form provided by the college that she had received her A.B from Mount Holyoke College, her A.M, from the University of Rochester, and in 1912 would receive her doctorate from Bryn Mawr College. On that form she also noted that for two years she had taught Latin, German, and English in a high school in Macedon, New York, and that for three years she had taught Latin in the Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio. On the same form she stated that she was a member of the Episcopal Church, for which she worked after she had left Wilson.
She came to Wilson with strong recommendations upon both her scholarship and her ability to teach and remained there for seven years. At Wilson she taught both Latin and Greek with the numbers of classes in each subject determined by the number of students who elected each class. At one time she was concerned that because of varying student interest in the languages she would have too many hours of teaching. In her first year at Wilson, she earned $600 and housing, which included room, board, and laundry when the college was in session, and in the following years, with the exception of the 1915-1916 academic year in which she received a $50 increase, one hundred dollar increments were added to her salary so that in her final year at Wilson she was paid $950.
She was an active member of the Wilson community. In 1914 she was appointed to be a member of the Executive Committee of the Faculty, which was responsible for dealing with individual requests and for making decisions in situations in which a large faculty meeting would be inadvisable. That fall also she volunteered to take some of Miss Criswell’s responsibilities as Miss Criswell was stranded in Switzerland upon the outbreak World War I and could not be at the college at the opening of the fall term. In December of that same year after the faculty and students had held a mass meeting that centered upon providing relief to Allied countries in war-torn Europe, she was appointed to be the faculty member of a committee that worked in conjunction with the Relief Committee of the college and that would provide sewn and knitted articles.
The correspondence in the Wilson College files explains partially her reason for leaving the college officially in 1920 but does not reveal where or how Miss Bowerman spent her last year in affiliation with the college. On February 21, 1919, Dr. Warfield in a letter to Miss Bowerman acknowledged her desire that she should be named a full professor rather than an associate professor and stated that he would like to talk with her. He added: “There is a natural reluctance to appoint a full professor of Greek when so little strictly college work in Greek is done.” On June 10, 1919, he in a gracious letter notified her that the Board of Trustees had granted her a year’s leave of absence with hopes of the Board that she would return “after a year’s experience of other work, refreshed, and assured of your vocation at Wilson College.” In a letter written on March 2, 1920, and addressed to Miss Bowerman at Bethany College in Topeka, Kansas, Dr. Warfield invited her to return to Wilson College as an associate professor of Latin and Greek with a salary of $1200 and home. Thirteen days later, on March 15, 1920, Miss Bowerman responded that she had been working “for my own Church” although she did not state in what capacity, and that “the work itself is increasingly interesting, and my living conditions are almost ideal.” She gave fulsome praise to the person for whom she was working, a Bishop Wise, and ended the letter with the statement that “In any case I should hardly be willing to return with the rank of Associate Professor, as I feel that my preparation and my years of service to Wilson College should entitle me to the rank of full Professor.” She enclosed her resignation and added a statement of appreciation to Dr. Warfield for his many kindnesses and with her best wishes for success in the future.