Virginia C. Shipman, the former chair of the family studies program in the College of Education at the University of New Mexico, died earlier this summer at a healthcare facility in Albuquerque.
A native of Brooklyn, New York, Dr. Shipman was an alumna of the University of Rochester and Pennsylvania State University. She earned a doctorate at the University of Pittsburgh.
After teaching at the University of Chicago, Dr. Shipman led a landmark longitudinal study of children and their families in the Head Start preschool program as a senior researcher at the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, New Jersey. She joined the faculty at the University of New Mexico in 1986 and taught there for nearly 30 years until her retirement in 2015.
Professor Shipman endowed a fellowship for doctoral students in the family studies program for students who came to the University of New Mexico from out of state.