Susan Gensemer, Longtime Economics Professor

While making small talk with economics students, Prof. Jan Ondrich used to occasionally ask, “Who’s your favorite professor in the department?”

“I hoped at least one of them would say me, but they always said Susan Gensemer,” he laughed, adding that they’d often go on to explain how she provided “crystal clear” explanations in addition to always being supportive and accessible.

Ondrich couldn’t deny their insights; having worked with Gensemer through the years, he’d come to highly respect her academic work and the ease with which she interacted with students and colleagues.

And, he added, “she had a really, really good sense of humor.”

Gensemer died on Nov. 10, 2021. She was 68 and had been retired from the Maxwell School for seven years.

Born in Georgia, Gensemer received a Ph.D. from Purdue University in 1984. She joined the Maxwell faculty in 1983, just before Donald Dutkowsky.

“Susan was a very low-profile type of person, very fundamentally grounded,” said Dutkowsky, professor emeritus of economics. “She was very fair, very straightforward. She pulled her load and she expected you and the students to do the same. She was great to work with.”

Gensemer, who retired as an associate professor, taught undergraduate and graduate students. Dutkowsky said she and Jerry Kelly, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, were “the backbone” of the microeconomics sequence for many years, integral in preparing doctoral students for dissertations.

In the 1990s, Gensemer developed a companion interest—gender in economics. Inspired by early feminist economists such as Virginia Perry, she published works related to women’s rights in the workplace, economics and gender, and she developed courses for the University’s Women and Gender Studies program, said Ondrich. “She was very proud of that work,” he said.

Also Greatly Missed

Since our last edition, the following deaths have been reported:

Frederick Ballen ’39 B.A. (PSc)

Russell Parker ’47 B.A. (PSc)/’57 M.P.A.

Lewis Taylor ’47 M.A. (PSc)

Martha Phillips McKeon ’49 B.A. (SSc)

Elmer Alft ’50 M.A. (Soc Studies Ed)

Richard Gersh ’50 B.A. (SSc)

William McIntyre ’50 B.A. (Geog)

William Partridge ’50 M.P.A.

Frederick Wernstedt ’50 M.A. (Geog)

Stuart Arvedon ’51 B.A. (Hist)

Marjory Hauser Bradwick ’51 B.A. (Soc)

Andre Elkon ’51 B.A. (Econ)

Beverly Cotton Goldberg ’51 B.A. (Soc)

Shirley Hodis Kaitz ’51 B.A. (Soc)

Gerald Hoffman ’51 B.A. (PSc)

Jane Coons ’52 B.A. (LAS)

Jerome Miles ’53 M.P.A.

Roberta Messner Block ’55 M.P.A.

Elbert Hinds ’55 M.P.A.

Elizabeth Goddard Ludewig ’55 B.A. (PSc)

Lucille Levine Stein ’55 B.A. (PSc)

John Beierle ’56 M.A. (Anth)

Peter T. Marsh, ‘Gifted Teacher, Accomplished Scholar’

In his 33 years as a Maxwell faculty member, Peter T. Marsh penned several books that reflected his research interests, including church history and 19th- and 20th-century Great Britain. Among them, a biography of British politician and social reformer Joseph Chamberlain.

Researching Joseph Chamberlain, Entrepreneur in Politics (Yale University Press, 1994) led to a deep friendship with the notable family and added to Marsh’s affinity for England, which became his home shortly after he retired from the Maxwell School in 2000.

Marsh, professor emeritus, died at home in Birmingham, England, on Jan. 4, 2022.

“Peter was a remarkable colleague,” says David Bennett, professor emeritus of history. “He was a gifted teacher and a very accomplished scholar, and he had a distinguished career after he left Syracuse.”

Marsh retired in 2000 and soon after relocated to Birmingham, where his book’s namesake, Chamberlain, founded the University of Birmingham and served as secretary of state for the colonies during the Second Boer War. While in England, Marsh researched and wrote further publications connected to Chamberlain: The Chamberlain Litany: letters within a governing family from Empire to Appeasement (Haus Books, London, 2010) and The

House where the Weather was Made: a biography of Chamberlain’s Highbury (with Justine Pick, West Midlands History, 2019).

In addition to his research and writing, Marsh served as chair of governors of a small secondary school, which is attached to a city church in Birmingham.

The move to England brought Marsh full circle, as he’d earned a Ph.D. from Cambridge University’s Emmanuel College in 1962. He joined the Maxwell School as an associate professor of history five years later and served as department chair from 1968-70. In 1978, Marsh was promoted to professor, and two years later he was named a Guggenheim Fellow—one of the first in Maxwell to earn the distinction.

Marsh’s numerous roles included serving as director of the University Honors Program and resident chair of the University’s program in Florence. He was later appointed professor of international relations. He also served as president of the Middle Atlantic States Conference on British Studies and was a Leverhulme Fellow in association with the University of Birmingham, which granted him an honorary professorship. He was named a professor emeritus of history following his retirement from the Maxwell School.

Harold Rubin ’56 M.P.A./’63 Ph.D. (PA)

Edward Bailey ’57 B.A. (Hist)

Robert Brannigan ’58 B.A. (Soc Studies Ed)

Thomas Schilling ’58 B.A. (Econ)

Robert Long ’59 B.A. (Soc)

Howard Applegate ’60 M.A. (Hist)/’66 Ph.D. (Hist)

Beverly Schanzer ’60 B.A. (Hist)

Lee Cary ’62 Ph.D. (SSc)

Gerard Wertkin ’62 B.A. (PSc)

William Conroy ’63 Ph.D. (SSc)

Saul Kobrick ’63 B.A. (Econ)

Paul Bohr ’65 M.C. (PA)

Alfred Cicci ’65 B.A. (Hist)

William Jordan ’65 M.A. (IR)

Laurent Baptiste ’68 B.A. (PSc)

Keven McKenna ’68 M.P.A.

Paul Norton ’68 M.P.A.

Ellen Whelan ’68 M.A. (Hist)/’72 Ph.D. (Hist)

Michael Antonelli ’69 M.A. (Geog)

Susan Cameron ’69 M.P.A.

John Fennessey ’69 M.R.P.

Stephen Hartman ’69 Ph.D. (PSc)

James Present ’69 B.A. (PSc)

John Rizzo ’69 B.A. (PSc)

Peter Dalleo ’70 M.A. (Hist)/’75 Ph.D. (Hist)

Mark Kassop ’70 M.A. (Soc)

Charles Waldauer ’70 Ph.D. (Econ)

Paul Driscoll ’71 B.A. (AmSt)

Donald Eichenhofer ’71 M.A. (Hist)

Donald Kline ’71 Ph.D. (SSc)

Philip Salisbury ’71 M.P.A.

Robert Tisdell ’71 B.A. (PSc)

Anne Emperor ’72 M.A. (Hist)

Edward Thibault ’72 Ph.D. (SSc)

Masahiro Horie ’73 M.P.A.

Llewellyn Howell ’73 Ph.D. (IR)

Elaine White Laube ’73 M.R.P.

Clifford Preminger ’73 B.A. (PSc)

Michael Starego ’73 B.A. (Anth)

Samuel Tan ’73 Ph.D. (SSc)

Catherine Valentine ’73 M.A. (Soc)/’78 Ph.D. (Soc)

George Anderson ’74 B.A. (Econ)

Richard Blume ’74 B.A. (Hist)

Bennett Glaser ’74 B.A. (PSc)

Timothy Grippen ’75 M.P.A.

Michael Hennessey ’75 B.A. (IR)

Francis Hunt ’76 B.A. (IR)

Karl Reinhardt ’76 M.C. (PA)/’77 M.P.A.

Douglas Holbrook ’77 M.R.P.

Charline Reeves ’77 M.C. (PA)

Alan Zlomek ’77 B.A. (AmSt)

Karl Amylon ’78 M.P.A.

Mark Van Bergh ’78 B.A. (PSc)

Thomas Taylor ’79 M.A. (Hist)/’81 Ph.D. (Hist)

R. J. Melville ’82 M.P.A.

Irene Blanchard ’83 M.S.Sc./’85 Ph.D. (SSc)

Harold Vaughn ’84 Ph.D. (SSc)

Richard Barry ’85 B.A. (PSc/PSt)

James Carroll ’86 B.A. (PSc)

Kristi Zimmerman Craig ’86 B.A. (PSt)

Charles Thomas ’88 B.A. (Geog)

Kotta Madhusudhan ’89 M.P.A.

Tiffany Wentz ’89 B.A. (PSc)

Valerie Burrows ’91 B.A. (Econ)

Richard Russell ’95 Ph.D. (SSc)

Galen Antle ’98 B.A. (Econ)

Martine Pyram ’98 B.A. (IR)

Jeffrey Baer ’06 M.A. (PA)

Emily Erickson ’09 B.A. (IR)

Lindsay Roufa ’19 E.M.I.R./E.M.P.A.