Former University of Iowa College of Education faculty member Jim Marshall passed away October 16, 2024, at the age of 74.

For more than two decades, Marshall was an integral part of the college, serving as a professor of English and English Education for 20 years. He also served as associate dean for four years. 

“I will be forever grateful for the opportunity to have known Jim as a colleague, a campus leader, a mentor, and friend. As a graduate student, I had read Jim's dissertation and his early research, and I wanted to follow in his path,” says Carolyn Colvin, associate professor of English Education at UI. “I also came to understand that Jim in quiet, unassuming ways was viewed as a campus leader. I was not surprised to hear colleagues from other colleges quote Jim when the university faced challenging times. He was uncanny in his abilities to understand the higher education landscape both in Iowa and on a national level.” 

Marshall grew up in Western Indiana and graduated from Bishop Noll Institute in 1968. After earning his bachelor’s degree in English from Indiana University, he taught high school English in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he also earned master’s degrees in English and English Education from the University of Virginia. Marshall would go on to receive a PhD in Language, Literacy, and Culture from Stanford University. 

“Jim Marshall was an extraordinary friend and colleague. He was honest, smart, thoughtful, and loyal — and he possessed a kind of quiet charisma that made us all better for knowing him,” says Scott McNabb, associate professor emeritus. “We carried on a dialogue about life that took us from rural roads around Iowa City to the Angkor Temples of Cambodia. I could not ask for a better and more loving friend.”

After his tenure at Iowa, Marshall moved to Athens, Georgia, in 2005, where he worked at the University of Georgia College of Education as associate dean until he retired in 2013.

As conveyed in his obituary, “Jim will be remembered by the future educators that he taught and mentored, by the students he inspired, and by the readers who knew him through his scholarship and academic writing. After a long, successful, and satisfying career, Jim’s experience of retirement was a joy to witness. Jim was a beloved and generous person who held friendship as a high priority throughout his life. He and (his wife) Peg relished the opportunity to spend more time in the company of each other and their dear friends. Traveling together, listening to opera music, watching movies and plays, volunteering, going on walks, taking OLLI classes, engaging with their Unitarian Universalist community, reading, and reveling in the company of their children and grandchildren.

“To know and love Jim was to feel heard. He was a man of words and stories—a reader, a writer, an accomplished speaker. He was curious and asked thoughtful questions. He cared about what others had to say. He will be remembered for the delicious food he prepared for his loved ones, his enthusiastic conversations about books, his attentiveness to the world around him, and the many ways he showed love and caring for others.”

To read Jim Marshall’s full obituary, click here

“I admired Jim for his humanity and calm as a leader and as a colleague. Because of his working-class background, he never took himself too seriously. Jim never became the academic who considered himself superior to his peers, neighbors, and students. He continued to grow as a teacher and administrator because Jim understood there were always more opportunities to learn,” adds Colvin. “He always remained a remarkable teacher and was continuously in pursuit of ways to facilitate students' love of literature, writing, and reading. When asked, he was eager to share the ways he was exploring how to engage with students, to learn from them, and seek to understand how to be a better teacher, himself. A high compliment, indeed, for someone who was a already a role model to so many.”

A Celebration of Life for Jim Marshall was held on December 7, 2024, at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Athens in, Athens, Georgia. A second Celebration of Life for will be held January 18, 2025, from 2-4 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Society in Coralville, Iowa.