Professor succumbs to breast cancer
By TIM LOGAN
News Editor
Maureen Mulligan, a visiting assistant professor of history and core course instructor, died of breast cancer Saturday at her home in Dowagiac, Mich.
Mulligan, 53, began teaching at Notre Dame in August. She taught a section of core and a class on Revolutionary America last semester. This spring she was teaching core and a class on the history of the American West.
Mulligan's colleagues remember her for her courage and dedication to teaching.
"She taught all the time that she had this serious illness," said Chris Hamlin, chair of the history department. "She acted with an enormous courage, which I think really meant a lot to all those her around her. We will miss her."
History professor Walter Nugent directed Mulligan's dissertation when she was a doctoral student at the University, and he praised his late student and colleague.
"God will love her," he said. "She did beautifully with the gifts she was given, and those were considerable. She was renowned as a teacher, both in her commitment and execution. The real loss is to the 20 or 30 years of students who can not benefit from her teaching."
The students who had Mulligan in the one semester she did teach appreciated her as well.
"I think she was a wonderful teacher. She really motivated her students," said sophomore Joe Grabenstetter, one of Mulligan's core students. She brought her perspective as a history professor into her teaching of non-historical subjects in core, he said, and touched the lives of those she met in the classroom.
"Bless her family," he said, "And everyone who knew her. They're better off for having known her."
Mulligan specialized on women in the American West and had a contract for her book "Common Cares: Women and the Family Farm in the Midwest, 1920-1930."
She received her Ph.D. from Notre Dame in 1996. She also received two masters degrees from the University. Before joining the Notre Dame faculty, she taught at the University of Nebraska and Grand Valley State University in Michigan.
She leaves her husband Mike, and her two sons, Michael and Brian. Visitation and funeral will be Thursday at 6 and 7 p.m. at the McLaughlin-Clark Funeral Home in Dowagiac.
All News Stories for Wednesday, January 26, 2000
