Elizabeth Monroe Drews Lipson

Elizabeth Monroe Drews Lipson was born November 25, 1915 in McMinnville, Oregon. She earned her bachelor’s degree and later her master’s degree from the University of Oregon and was awarded her PhD in psychology from the University of Michigan in 1954. She was director of psychological services for the public schools in Lansing, Michigan from 1949 to 1957 and professor of education at Michigan State University from 1957 to 1966. She was a pioneer in the field of gifted education, believing that gifted children are vital in helping to solve the problems of the world. In 1962, Dr. Drews was appointed by President John F. Kennedy to the Education Committee of the National Committee on the Status of Women over which Eleanor Roosevelt presided. She was a founding member of the National Organization for Women (NOW) and the Association of Humanistic Psychology.

Following her tenure at Michigan State, Elizabeth moved back to her beloved Oregon. She became a professor of education at PSU where she taught Developmental Reading and Gifted Education and remained in that position until her death on November 21, 1976. Beloved by her students, Elizabeth gave to them unselfishly of her time, energy, and wisdom, often holding weekend seminars in her home, Saturday seminars at PSU, and class retreats to the Japanese Garden which Elizabeth loved so dearly. She believed in Abraham Maslow’s concept of self-actualization, that each student she taught was gifted, self-actualizing, and capable of realizing potential beyond imagining. She had the innate, yet remarkable, ability of calling forth the giftedness and latent potential in everyone. Elizabeth called her method of teaching “Leading Out and Letting Be,” which she wrote about in her ground breaking book, Learning Together and in her final volume, The Higher Levels of Human Growth.

It has been decades since Elizabeth died, yet in her students she lives on. Many of them continue to stay in contact to discuss the impact Elizabeth had on their lives, and her concepts of teaching which have become their own. In that sense, her vision, inspiration, and belief “that we are so much more than we know ourselves to be” are ongoing. As some of her students have written:

“Altruism was as natural as breathing with Elizabeth.”

“A petite woman, with clear blue eyes, Elizabeth was guileless. What I first noticed about her were her graceful hands, which gestured as she spoke, and the lilt of her soft voice.”

”Her humanistic approach stressed the higher values. I read more, absorbed more, and worked harder than ever before or since, but it was not specifics but values that I learned. I learned caring, trust, learning for joy and challenge, introspection, self-awareness, and to aim for higher goals.”

“Her gentleness made me gentle. Her probing questions made me look deep inside myself for what was truest, best, and most lasting. When she taught, it was like a fire igniting. Sparks would fly and questions came readily to those of us who learned, in time, to acknowledge our own ignorance.”

“Basically, what Elizabeth did was to inspire us. She quoted the great ethical giants of recent time: Gandhi, Schweitzer, Helen Keller, Martin Luther King. Lifelong learning was a goal she both endorsed and practiced.”

“Perhaps the greatest gift Elizabeth gave to us was one another. She taught us to be a small, caring community.”

“Elizabeth died only one short year after I came to know her. I had so little time with her. I needed so much more.”

Elizabeth was a heroine in the truest sense of the word. She was herself a gifted teacher, mentor, writer, and altruist, a luminous and exemplary human being. She encouraged her students to become life-long learners and was a model in that regard. The ideals, altruism, and higher values she taught are ongoing. In that sense, Elizabeth is not dead. She lives on in her students, in any kind action, and any fledgling effort to fly beyond the constraints of the ordinary to the higher levels of human growth. She lives on in those of her students who are still challenged to answer her lingering and inspiring questions: “What makes a great teacher? How can you become the kind of teacher who changes the world?”

Elizabeth believed that love is the question and the ultimate answer. In the words of Thornton Wilder, whose book The Bridge of San Luis Rey Elizabeth and her second husband, Dr. Leslie Lipson, loved so well: “There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”

Elizabeth’s daughter, Karen White, and one of Elizabeth’s former students, Pat Waalkes, have compiled this biographical information with love and with the belief that we will meet Elizabeth again. During her dying, circumstances and love brought our lives together. Over the thirty-two years since Elizabeth’s passing, we have become close friends. She was a true mother to one of us, and like a mother to the other.

Written by Karen White and Pat Waalkes