In Memoriam: Carol Louise Nagy (1939-2011)

Carol Nagy, the first woman dean of the division of social sciences and communication at the Dornsife College of Letters at the University of Southern California, died earlier this month at her home in Julian, California. She had been suffering from cancer.

A native of Chicago, Nagy earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in psychology at the University of Connecticut. She held a Ph.D. in experimental child psychology from Brown University. She was the coauthor of the widely used textbook The Psychology of Sex Differences (Stanford University Press, 1974)

Before joining the USC faculty in 1983, Dr. Nagy taught at San Jose City College, West Valley College, and Stanford University. At Stanford she helped establish what is now the Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research. At USC she was a professor of psychology and director of the Program for the Study of Women and Men in Society, now the university’s gender studies program. Dr. Nagy served as dean from 1992 to 1995 when she left to become dean at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.