Mary M. Kennedy

Mary lived a life of achievement. Born to Doris and Richard Kennedy in a small town in central Michigan in 1943, she went on to establish a career in government and academia.

She graduated from St. Louis High School and attended Michigan State University, graduating in 1973 with a PhD in Education Psychology.

She worked in the Follow-Through program in Washington D.C. as well as performing an evaluation of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 and submitted the first two reports to Congress.

in 1979 she took a leave from government to assume a position as Senior Research Associate at the Huron Institute in Cambridge, MA.

Later she worked as the Director of Planning, Research, Evaluation and Dissemination in the Pennsylvania Department of Education.

in 1982 she was called back to Washington to become the Senior Research Associate at the National Institute of Education where she served as the Director of the National Assessment of "Chapter 1", a program to improve the education of disadvantaged children.

1986 saw her move to East Lansing, Michigan to take on a full professorship as the Director of the National Center for Research on Teacher Learning with an annual budget of 1.5 million dollars.

Mary published many scholarly papers and traveled worldwide as part of her work, visiting Australia, Taiwan, Finland, Norway, Monaco and Lisbon. She also traveled extensively within the United States doing data collection, giving talks and attending conferences. She retired from MSU in 2014.

Mary is survived by her husband, Thomas Bunn, her son, Michael, and his wife Bridgette Roberts, and their son, Sawyer, as well as two brothers, Daniel and Richard and a sister, Patricia.

Mary will be terribly missed. She was a strength of her family and loved beyond measure.