Mary Ely Lyman (1887-1975) graduated with a B.D. from Union Seminary in 1919, and was also was the first woman to receive the Traveling Fellowship for the highest academic honors in the graduating class that year. This award sent her to Cambridge, England, for one year. The work she did there was applied toward the Ph.D. in New Testament, which she received from the University of Chicago in 1924. She had two separate appointments at Union. She became the first of 2 women (with Sophia Lyon Fahs) to teach on the faculty and be counted among their number (1927). She 'retired' from that position in the 1940s when her husband and professor of the philosophy of religion, Eugene Lyman, retired. She then became dean of Sweet Briar College for Women in Virginia, until her appointment to Union in 1950 as Jesup Professor of English Bible. Dr. Lyman was the first woman to hold a full professorship and an endowed chair. She also held the inaugural deanship for women students until her resignation from both positions in 1955. She remained in close contact with Union until her death in 1975.