Haddonfield Couple Create Fund to Support Doctoral Research

Thanks to the generosity of two renowned scholars, Rutgers–Camden doctoral students in childhood studies have the opportunity to defray some expenses. In an effort to give a good start to the study of children, Haddonfield residents Margaret Marsh and Howard Gillette have created the Marsh-Gillette Endowed Fund for Childhood Studies at Rutgers–Camden.

While both Marsh and Gillette are widely published and highly respected researchers in their respective fields of women’s history and urban history, their $50,000 gift reflects more than a passion for advancing scholarly knowledge.  The spouses share deep roots at Rutgers–Camden, where Marsh served as dean and executive dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences from 1998 to 2011 – interrupted by a tenure as interim chancellor of the Rutgers–Camden Campus during 2007 to 2009 – and Gillette founded the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities.

“Creating interdisciplinary PhD programs, such as childhood studies, was a major goal for me when I became dean,” explains Marsh, herself a Rutgers–Camden graduate. “PhD education is a game-changer for any university. Rutgers–Camden now has three doctoral programs, and all of them are reinforcing our national reputation as a true research university.”

In addition to childhood studies, Rutgers–Camden offers interdisciplinary PhD programs in computation and integrative biology, as well as public affairs with an emphasis on community development.

“Doctoral students are in a highly competitive market,” explains Gillette.  “They need the ability to pursue new knowledge in a fully effective manner.  This fund seeks to support the research conducted by these Rutgers–Camden PhD students.”

“Graduate students have to produce publishable research if they want to succeed in the academic job market,” continues Marsh.  “We want to help our childhood studies PhD students to achieve the top-level scholarship that will allow them to go out and get careers in academia and so many other fields.”

Childhood studies is acknowledged widely as a prominent emerging academic discipline that is transforming research and scholarship on children in the same way that women’s studies and African-American studies transformed the study of race and gender during the late 20th century. 

A widely cited women’s historian with unique expertise in the history of reproductive medicine, Marsh is the co-author (with her sister and fellow Rutgers–Camden graduate Wanda Ronner) of the books The Fertility Doctor:  John Rock and the Reproductive Revolution (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008) and The Empty Cradle:  Infertility in America from Colonial Times to the Present (Johns Hopkins University Press), which was named a 1997 Choice Outstanding Academic Book.  Marsh is also the author of the books Suburban Lives (Rutgers University Press; 1990) and Anarchist Women:  1870-1920 (Temple University Press; 1981).

Gillette is a professor emeritus of history at Rutgers–Camden, where he helped to launch and grow the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities.  An expert in the area of urban history, he is acknowledged as a leading authority on post-industrialism, and is the author of the book Camden After the Fall: Decline and Renewal in a Post-Industrial City (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), which received best book awards from the Urban History Association and the New Jersey Historical Commission.