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Nanette Shaw
Former CUNY Graduate Center Provost and NEH Deputy Chair Geoffrey Marshall, recently retired Provost of The City University of New York Graduate Center and former Deputy Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, died early morning on Saturday, November 18, at his home in Cranbury, New Jersey. He was 62 years old and died from pneumonia associated with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease). A distinguished scholar of Restoration drama, Marshall retired from The Graduate Center in 1998. "For his thirteen years at the Graduate Center—as Associate Provost and then as Provost— Geoffrey Marshall will be remembered as a gentle and wise person, a champion of academic excellence, ever graceful and gracious," said Graduate Center President Frances Degen Horowitz. "A man of unquestionable integrity, Geoffrey Marshall’s many contributions to The Graduate Center, including the role he played in the planning of our new home, will be everlasting." When serving as Interim Chancellor of The City University of New York, Christopher M. Kimmich described Marshall as "a most capable administrator...a shrewd negotiator...; a consensus-builder in the quest for academic excellence; a diplomat in a world where diplomatic acumen is in short supply; a subtle thinker in the Byzantine whirls of academic program planning and academic budgeting." Marshall was born on February 6, 1938, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He received his B.A. from Franklin and Marshall College (1959), and his M.A. (1961) and Ph.D. (1965) from Rice University, all in English. He joined the English Department faculty at the University of Oklahoma in 1964, and in 1973-74 served as Assistant Provost of that University. From 1974-‘84, he worked for the National Endowment for the Humanities, where he was Director of the Divisions of State Programs and Education Programs and then Deputy Chairman. He came to The Graduate Center in 1985 and until 1992 served as Associate Provost and Dean for Academic Affairs and also as a member of the doctoral faculty in English. He was named Acting Provost in 1992 and was appointed Provost and Senior Vice President in 1994. He played a key role in the initial stages of planning The Graduate Center’s new campus in the former B. Altman building on Fifth Avenue, where the school moved in 1999. Marshall was the author of numerous articles and papers and the book Restoration Serious Drama (University of Oklahoma Press, 1975). He held honorary degrees from Mansfield State College and Ursinus College, served on the Inter-Institutional Network Advisory Board of New York University and on the Board of Directors of Ursinus College, was on the Board of Visitors of the College of Arts and Sciences of Ohio University, and in 1996 he was elected President of the Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools. "If I have a wish for The Graduate School," Marshall said in an interview just before his retirement, "it would be for every program to have faculty with a wide range of perspectives because I think we lose when we have monolithic faculty with a shared position on issues. Students need to be aware that there are a variety of issues and positions, and that there are hard-headed reasons—not careless or slipshod or emotional reasons—for supporting those positions. In part, diversity, for me, means intellectual diversity." During his tenure at The Graduate Center, Marshall was a familiar figure to the many scholars who passed through the institution. When asked about his role in interviewing prospective faculty members for The Graduate Center he said: "Maybe ‘interview’ is too strong a word. It suggests a process where I ask penetrating questions. The truth is I’m hopelessly enamored of smart people, and I tend to ask questions to educate myself; after all, these people are finalists for positions at one of the best graduate schools in the country." Marshall is survived by his wife, Mary Marshall; his mother, Mary E. Marshall of Norman, Oklahoma; a brother, Tony Marshall of Manhattan; a sister, Terry Marshall of Norman, Oklahoma; daughters Eden Marshall Hagelman of San Marcos, Texas, and Erin Marshall Lancer of Buffalo, New York; and grandchildren Nicholas, Walden, Waverly, and Carson. The family requests that no flowers be sent but contributions may be made to the ALS Society. Family and friends will be received on Tuesday, November 21, 3:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at A.S. Cole & Sons, 22 Main Street, Cranbury, New Jersey. There will be a private funeral. The Graduate Center is the doctorate-granting institution of The City University of New York, the largest urban university in the U.S. The only consortium of its kind in the nation, The Graduate Center draws its faculty of more than 1,600 members mainly from the CUNY senior colleges and cultural and scientific institutions throughout New York City. Established in 1961, The Graduate Center has grown to an enrollment of nearly 4,000 students in 32 doctoral programs and seven master's degree programs in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. The Graduate Center also houses 28 research centers and institutes and administers the CUNY Baccalaureate Program. According to a recent National Research Council report, more than a third of The Graduate Center's rated programs rank among the nation's top 20 at public and private institutions, nearly a quarter are among the top ten when compared to publicly supported institutions alone, and more than half are among the top five programs at publicly supported institutions in the northeast. |