Jacquelyn Mitchell Dies At 59, Dean of UB Graduate School of Education

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- A memorial service will be held at 3 p.m. Wednesday (May 5, 1999) at the waterfall in Glen Park, Williamsville, for Jacquelyn Mitchell, 59, dean of the Graduate School of Education at the University at Buffalo. Mitchell died at home Friday (April 30, 1999) after a short illness.

Mitchell came to UB in 1997, the first African-American dean in the university's history. She quickly established a reputation as an innovative, forward-looking administrator and educator with a great commitment to urban schools.

Throughout her career, Mitchell conducted research in ethnographic and sociolinguistic studies, cognitive development and community intervention, particularly among low-income children. Her long-standing interest in the interface of learning with race, ethnicity and gender led to her studies of educational decision-making in students' careers, literacy resources in a pre-school context, family stress and coping strategies, and neighborhood social organization.

Her friend and colleague, Mecca S. Cranley, dean of the UB School of Nursing, said that of all the innovations Mitchell had hoped to implement here, she was especially proud of new research, teaching and other cooperative programs planned with the Buffalo Public Schools.

UB President William R. Greiner said: "Jacquelyn Mitchell's death is a major loss to the university. She was a highly energetic, intelligent person who brought new vision to her faculty and the university. She had barely begun her work at UB when she was diagnosed with a terminal illness. As a profile in courage, she was extraordinary. "

UB Provost David Triggle concurred. "In the brief time she was with us," he said, "Dean Mitchell had shown her desire to move the Graduate School of Education in new directions and to launch many new enterprises. To be deprived of her vision in such an untimely fashion is a great loss to the university and community."

"One of her great sorrows, besides leaving her children," said Cranley, "was not being able to complete her work here. She was entirely devoted to the Graduate School of Education and her extraordinary commitment to urban schools was enhanced by her 21st-century vision of a university-school district partnership that would strengthen the university's graduate teacher-training programs and benefit urban children."

Former UB Provost Thomas E. Headrick noted that Mitchell came to UB with a "quiet determination to move the Graduate School of Education in a direction that would respond to the demands of 21st-century education and would focus on the needs of our children in the urban centers and on the changes being wrought by technology on the methods, content and structure of education.

"Her vision and her belief that the school could make a difference in the real world of classrooms, children and community is her legacy to UB -- an important and valuable legacy," Headrick said.

Before coming to UB, Mitchell was a visiting scholar and researcher in the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition at the University of California, San Diego. Prior to that, she served as vice president and dean of the faculty at Scripps College, Claremont, Calif. From 1990-93, she was associate dean for academic affairs in The Johns Hopkins University School of Arts and Sciences, and earlier taught for several years at the University of California, Davis. There she received a major award for teaching excellence from the undergraduate student body, one of several teaching awards she received in her career.

In 1979, she earned a doctoral degree in education, cultural anthropology and sociolinguistics from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, where she was a teaching fellow. A graduate of Trenton State College, she held a master's degree in education and child study from Smith College.

Widely published in her field, she received many national and regional awards and citations for her work. In 1989, she was named an American Council on Education Fellow at the Center for Leadership Development in Washington, D.C. The same year, she received the Distinguished Scholar and Researcher Award from the American Educational Research Association.

A native of Buena Vista, Ga., Mitchell is survived by her mother, Ethel Mitchell of West Orange, N.J.; two sons, Michael Gibson of Tucson, Ariz., and David Gibson of New York City, and a daughter, Jill Gibson of Phoenix. The family requests that memorial donations be made to the UB Foundation, Box 900, Buffalo, N.Y. 14226, for the benefit of the Jacquelyn Mitchell Memorial Fund.