Maria Dobrowolska - 45 lat twórczości naukowej i działalności dydaktycznej

Abstract

On the occasion of Professor Maria Dobrowolska's forty-five years of scientific and scholarly activities, the article presents her attainments and results in this field. An alumnus of the eminent geographers L. Sawicki, J. Smoleński, F. Bujak, and W. Semkowicz, Professor Dobrowolska received an extensive and solid background for her subsequent scholarly research and educational activities. Three different fields: scientific Work, didactic work and additionally the study of local lore with which she had concerned herself first as a University student and then during her professional activities, were united and combined by her into a well-organized whole: she gave an excellent example to follow for her students at the High Pedagogical School, the geography teachers to be. As a student she concerned herself mainy with social and economic geography and this was also the subject of her doctoral thesis (2). Later she worked as teacher and headmistress at a high school: at that time her works beside the purely scholarly articles (4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, & 11) dealt as well with educational problems (1, 13 & 14). After the Second World War she started working at the College of Social Sciences and the High Pedagogical School of Cracow. Her main concern during that period was the educational requirements facing college and university teachers (13, 17, 18, 20, 21. 22. 23, 24, 25, 64); moreover, she wrote a number of works mostly of methodological character, about the economic and social changes occurring in the South of Polland as a result of the industrialiation processes (15, 19, & 26-76). This was also the central subject of research at the Department of Economic Geography directed by her. She has been able to prove that didactic work at university level cannot go without scholarly research, as well as to educate a great many young geographers whose names have been since known in geographic literature, and over two hundred ad fifty teachers, graduates in geography, now engaged in school work all over Poland. In their deep appreciation of Professor Dobrowolska's merits her colleagues and alumni are offering her this Jubilee Book with their best wishes for her further creative work.