Stanford GSE mourns Eliza Evans, a doctoral candidate in Sociology of Education
Editor's note: The family has released plans for a memorial service. The service will be held Sunday, Oct. 9, 10 a.m.-12 p.m., at Mitchell Park Community Center in Palo Alto.
Eliza Evans, a doctoral candidate at Stanford Graduate School of Education who studied the sociology of education and was recently awarded the university's Gerald J. Lieberman Fellowship for outstanding contributions to research, teaching and service, died Aug. 9.
Her husband, Eric Taylor, PhD '15, said the cause was metastatic breast cancer.
"We extend our deepest condolences to Eliza's family," said GSE Dean Daniel Schwartz. "Eliza was a passionate student and teacher. Our thoughts are with the entire community as we grieve this profound loss."
A deeply intellectual person, Evans impressed friends and colleagues with her ability to balance ambitious research projects with a number of extracurricular activities -- from soccer, swimming and golf to volunteering with Habitat For Humanity.
"Eliza was a bright, shining star and a humble, grounded human being: incredibly talented, driven and warm," recalled her friend and colleague Charlie Gomez, PhD '16. "She really was such an inspiration to me, but more importantly, she was my friend."
In her nearly-completed dissertation, Evans studied faculty who engage in interdisciplinary research and how that interdisciplinary work affects their careers, especially tenure and reappointment decisions. Her research combined in-depth interviews with scholars and natural language processing of their written texts. Evans’ contributions were both substantive and methodological.
“Eliza developed innovative measures,” said her advisor Professor Dan McFarland, “measures for intellectual interdisciplinarity as well as for when research vocabularies reflect paradigmatic qualities of a developed intellectual field (i.e., high reproduction of core vocabulary but rapid turnover of peripheral terms). While prior work coined these terms in an effort to describe the social structure of science and scientific epistemologies, Eliza fleshed them out and gave them empirical grounding that was heretofore lacking.”
Those measures were described in two peer-reviewed publications earlier this year.
Evans' contributions to the GSE community extended well beyond her research. She loved teaching, both formally as a teaching assistant and informally when providing assistance to other students learning statistics and statistical software. She also enjoyed making new friends around campus and encouraged others to do the same.
"She was caring and compassionate, as well as being an excellent teacher of challenging concepts," remembered Ann Porteus, a senior lecturer at GSE. "She gave thoughtful and thorough feedback on student projects. The students who worked with her loved her, as did I."
Eliza Dalton Evans was born in Lynchburg, VA. She graduated from the University of Virginia in 2007, with a bachelor's degree in English.
While at Stanford, she was the recipient of many awards and grants, including a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship in Sociology and the Lieberman fellowship from the Stanford Office of the Vice Provost for Graduate Education, which recognizes outstanding accomplishments, as well as the potential for leadership roles within the academic community.
McFarland recalled her thoughtful contributions and intellectual endeavors, describing Evans as "an exceptional student, advisee, collaborator and teacher."
Friends also remarked on her compassionate spirit.
"She was brilliant, kind, and went out of her way to make those around her feel special and cared for," recalled Cristina Lash, PhD '17. "Her bright smile, cheerfulness and patience in explaining statistics concepts without the least condescension will be sorely missed."
A memorial service will be held Oct. 9 from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. at Mitchell Park Community Center in Palo Alto. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to Habitat for Humanity.
We invite you to express condolences below.
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Kate McKinney and Shu-Ling Chen contributed to this report.
