Virginia passed peacefully on June 30, 2016, at St. Catherine Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, to the late John and Alyce Curran. With a life-long love of learning, Virginia attended Packer Collegiate Institute, and received degrees from the University of Rochester, Penn State University, and the University of Pittsburgh. After teaching and conducting research at the University of Chicago, she led a landmark longitudinal study of children and their families in the Head Start preschool program as Senior Researcher at the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, New Jersey. In 1986, she moved to Albuquerque to chair the Family Studies program in the University of New Mexico College of Education, retiring in 2015. She received a variety of professional honors (including election to the Sigma Xi scientific honor society), was a founding member of the Evaluation Research Society (now the American Evaluation Association), served as Eastern Educational Research Association President and UNM Faculty Senate President, and created the Virginia Curran Shipman Doctoral Fellowship for especially promising graduate students in the UNM College of Education.
Virginia is survived by her children, Stephanie (Phillip Travers) of Silver Spring, Maryland, and Geoffrey (Colleen Sirwell) of Moorestown, New Jersey, and her grandson, Geoffrey Shipman II. Her marriage to the late William Shipman ended in 1968.
A memorial service will be held at a later date at the UNM Alumni Memorial Chapel. Donations may be made to the Virginia Curran Shipman Doctoral Fellowship through the UNM Foundation.
