Shafer, Helen Almira

Helen Almira Shafer, (born Sept. 23, 1839, Newark, N.J., U.S.—died Jan. 20, 1894, Wellesley, Mass.), American educator, noted for the improvements she made in the curriculum of Wellesley College both as mathematics chair and as school president.

Shafer graduated in 1863 from Oberlin (Ohio) College. After two years of teaching in New Jersey she joined the faculty of St. Louis (Missouri) High School, where her work as a teacher of mathematics attracted the favourable notice of the superintendent of St. Louis schools, William Torrey Harris, later U.S. commissioner of education. In 1877 she was given the chair of mathematics at the two-year-old Wellesley College. Her work in establishing high standards in mathematics at Wellesley was widely noted, and the quality of work done by her students was generally held to be higher than that of their male counterparts at nearby Harvard University.

Shafer became president of Wellesley in 1888. Under her administration the college’s curriculum was reorganized and considerably broadened, and an elective system was introduced that was long to remain in effect with few modifications. Shafer also oversaw a liberalization of the social life of the college. Her work at Wellesley was cut short, however, by tuberculosis.