Alma Willis Sydenstricker

Alma Willis was born in Montgomery City, Missouri, the daughter of Virgil Alexander Willis and Lucy J. Phillips Willis.^[1] Her father was a physician.^[2] She attended Montgomery Female College,^[3] and the American Institute of Sacred Literature. She completed doctoral studies in philosophy at the College of Wooster in 1895,^[4] with a dissertation titled "The Power of Expression: A Psychological and Ethical Study".^[5] She was one of the first American women to earn a Ph.D. in philosophy.^[4] In 1925, she traveled to Palestine to study at the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem.^[1]

Sydenstricker taught in the history department at the Mississippi Industrial Institute and College from 1914 to 1917,^[6][7] and Bible classes at Agnes Scott College from 1917 to 1943.^[4] In 1922 she taught at the Summer School of Missions at Montreat.^[8] She visited excavations and ruins in Italy, Greece, Palestine, and Egypt.^[9] She spoke to the Agnes Scott alumnae in Atlanta in 1935, about her travels around the Mediterranean,^[10] and in 1937, about her niece, writer Pearl S. Buck.^[11]

Sydenstricker was a member of the Southern Association of College Women,^[12] the Daughters of the American Revolution,^[13] and the United Daughters of the Confederacy.^[1][14] From 1912 to 1919, she was first president of the Mississippi Synodical, the state chapter of the Women's Auxiliary of the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS).^[15][16] She taught Bible studies into her nineties in Arkansas.^[3]

• "The Power of Expression: A Psychological and Ethical Study" (1895)^[5]
• "Ante-Bellum Women of the South" (1912. also published as "The Ante-Bellum Woman")^[14][17]
• "The Place of the Bible in the College Curriculum" (1922)^[18]