Janice Reiff

Biography

Janice L. (“Jan”) Reiff died May 4, 2021, unexpectedly. At the time of her death, she was Special Assistant to the Executive Vice Chancellor/Provost for Online Instruction (a post she had held for six years) as well as Professor of both History and Statistics at UCLA. Jan was an accomplished and dedicated teacher, a researcher interested in presenting the past through a variety of media, and an exemplary university citizen. Her engagement across the university and the historical profession made her widely known and well respected, and she will be deeply missed.

Jan joined the department in 1992. Having grown up in Western Illinois, Jan received her undergraduate degree from Northwestern before earning the Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 1981. She subsequently worked at the Newberry Library, Northwestern University, and Case Western Reserve University. She also held a position as a Fulbright Senior Scholar at Universität Bremen in Germany before joining the UCLA faculty.

Actively engaged in many aspects of undergraduate education and university governance, Jan served in a wide variety of roles over the decades.  Among her most notable positions, in addition to launching the Online Teaching and Learning Initiative (and chairing its 26-member steering committee) in her capacity as of Special Assistant to the Executive Vice Chancellor/Provost, she was Chair of the Academic Senate Chair (2013-14) as well as of UCLA’s Graduate Council (2007-2009) and its Committee on Teaching (2011-2012). At the time of her death, she had recently been appointed a project owner for the campus LMS Transformation which aims to help campus update the learning management system and to provide an improved platform for faculty to offer courses in online and hybrid formats. During the pandemic she was a member of the Covid Response and Recovery Task Force, chairing the subcommittee “Teaching and Learning Work Group” which not only considered remote instruction, but also how best to return to an in-person classroom setting.

Jan Reiff has published Structuring the Past: The Use of Computers in History (American Historical Association, 1991); Digitizing the Past: The Use of Computers and Communications Technologies in History (American Historical Association, 1999); and, with Helen Hornbeck Tanner, The Settling of North America: The Atlas of the Great Migrations into North America from the Ice Age to the Present (Macmillian, 1995), with James R. Grossman and Ann Durkin Keating; the prize-winning The Encyclopedia of Chicago (2004); and Chicago Business and Industry: FROM FUR TRADE TO E-COMMERCE (2013). The online version of the Encyclopedia of Chicago was launched in 2005 as joint project of the Chicago Historical Society, Newberry Library, and Northwestern University. She has also published numerous articles particularly in urban and business history. In a joint effort with her Los Angeles: The Cluster class and the UCLA Library, she was working to create an online textbook for that class, “Seeing Sunset, Learning Los Angeles.” See the work in progress here: https://humtech.ucla.edu/project/seeing-sunset/

At the time of her death, she had a number of other projects underway: “Industrial Towns, Suburban Dreams, Urban Realities: Pullman Communities, 1880-1981,” and “Mapping the New Deal and Post-War Renewal.”

Professor Reiff’s dedication to teaching was such that she won a Distinguished Teaching Award from the university (2009), as well as being given an award for distinguished service to graduate education from the Graduate Student Association. In addition, she held the Waldo W. Nelkirk term chair (2015-18), honoring her commitment to innovation in undergraduate education. Jan taught a variety of courses at UCLA. The coordinator of the “Los Angeles” Freshman Cluster, she was also a member of the teaching staff for the “Sixties” GE cluster. In history, she taught American social history, U.S. since 1960, the U.S. survey, and various undergraduate seminars about cities, including a neighborhood-based course on L.A.’s Historic Filipinotown, and a seminar in digital history/digital humanities. Among graduate seminars she offered Comparative Urbanisms, Popular Culture, U.S. Urban History, U.S. Since 1930, U.S. Social History, and Hypermedia and History.

In the last decade, Jan was an ever-present force on campus, involved in numerous initiatives. At our department meetings, she was always able to explain the big picture on undergraduate educational trends and reforms. She embraced online education and advocated for it with passionate intensity.  She invariably reached out to staff and to new faculty, making them welcome in the university community. Since her unexpected death, many people across campus and beyond have expressed their shock and dismay. We mourn her loss, and send our condolences to her family and her many friends.

UCLA Newsroom story on Jan Reiff

UCLA Faculty Center In-Memoriam for Jan Reiff (Dedication is on page 5 and 6.)

~~ If you would like to offer a tribute to Jan, you can do so here. ~~

~~ To read the tributes contributed by Jan’s friends and colleagues, click here ~~