In Memoriam, Jill Anne Kowalik (1949–2003)

Summary

ON OCTOBER 30, 2003, JILL ANNE KOWALIK, associate professor of German in the Department of Germanic Languages at UCLA, died at her home of the misdiagnosed metastatic breast cancer she lived with for her last fourteen years. She is survived by her husband, Bill Kowalik, a research geologist. A graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara in philosophy and German, Jill received her Ph.D. in German Studies from Stanford University in 1985. After serving as assistant professor of German at the University of Colorado, Boulder (1985–1986) and at Princeton University (1986–1989), she taught at UCLA since 1989. Though barely able to walk because of a brain tumor in the late spring of 2003, she finished the quarter's classes, graded exams for over one hundred students, and then went to the City of Hope for radiation. She was on research leave when she died. Even though the illness required several lengthy hospitalizations and intensive treatments (two bone marrow transplants and one femur replacement), for which she was given sick leaves, and even though she underwent numerous, debilitating chemotherapy regimens, Jill followed a full teaching schedule of graduate and undergraduate classes. At Jill's memorial, a former graduate student described her effect on undergraduates and graduates with the following words: “If time was one of the resources that Jill was short of, it was also the resource she gave most generously. Regardless of her own commitments, not to mention her health, Jill always devoted her time to her students and the department—to discuss a matter, or solve a problem.