Helen Drusilla Lockwood

From Philosopedia.org

A staunch supporter of Priscilla Robertson's editorship of The Humanist, Lockwood taught for 29 years and headed the English department at Vassar College. She taught the usual classes one might expect, but also she invented electives such as "Blake to Keats" and "Contemporary Press."

In 1946, according to Elizabeth Runkle Purcell '31, Lockwood created an experimental course called "Today's Cities" and

Her teaching, and she herself, who was so much a part of it, were a perpetual topic of discussion on campus and later wherever her former students met. . . .Her teaching was electifying; she wanted nothing less than to rouse the unaware. Her influence changed my outloo on the purposes of living and made me feel forever unsatisfied with not quite knowing and not quite doing. She enlarged my whole conception of the fascination and complexity of societies and individuals, past and present, and made it impossible for me to do anything less than my best for the world of which she made me feel so much a part. I could not, after learning what hard intellectual work really was, and after experiencing the excitement that comes with intellectual and self-discovery, possibly have settled for a way of life that demanded too little of me and that could have left my own decision-making to the mercy of whims and moods and accidental events and passing enthusiasms.
To Helen Lockwood there was nothing unfriendly or incompatible in the relationship between the theory and the practice within any field or discipline; nor was there a chasm between art and science. For her also there were no chasms between the community and the student and the teacher. She taught for many summers during the depression at the Bryn Mawr Workers’ School, and served on many boards and committees in her own city of Poughkeepsie.
There is an erroneous notion abroad today that there is a dichotomy between intellectual discovery and self-discovery--that if you are bent on one of these missions, you cannot achieve the other. Helen Lockwood made it clear that a great teacher can help a student to achieve both. Lest there be any misunderstanding of the effect of her teaching, may I say that it has made for a joyous life. She never suggested a life of dutiful self-sacrifice; but suggested rather the deep satisfaction that comes through self-realization in active form. To look at Helen Lockwood’s own life was to understand this. She was a convincing example of wholeness.
When I graduated from Vassar, she became and remained a friend of mine until her death in England in March of this year. Shortly after her death, another friend of hers wrote: "Among those of us who studied under Helen Lockwood there must be many besides myself in whose lives she became an abiding presence, who found in her not alone an incomparable teacher, an enduring challenge to mediocrity and complacency, but also a lifelong friend."
Helen Lockwood was a great teacher and a great human being, and she is at this moment symbolic of the best that a college like Vassar has to offer. We need to remember--students, graduates and faculty, trustees and alumni alike--that the kind of teaching she did, the way of life she exemplified and the part she played in her community illustrate the central purpose of an educational institution. We must not be beguiled by the crises of our times into making colleges political instruments, through the political activities of Vassar students and others in this community should be a source of pride. But there are many avenues for political action in society. Let Vassar play its essential and valuable part as an institution of learning.

Lockwood was a philosophic as well as botanical naturalist. In addition to being an outstanding scholar of the humanities, Lockwood with her brother invested in a young company (Eastman Kodak) which increased in value to such an extent that she was instrumental in setting up and paying for the Shakespeare Garden on the Vassar campus.

Much as she disliked labels and labeling, Lockwood was a scientific humanist like Priscilla Robertson.