In Memoriam: G. Earl Peace Jr., Associate Professor Emeritus of Chemistry and Former Class Dean

G. Earl Peace Jr., associate professor emeritus of chemistry and former class dean, passed away on July 24 after an illness. He was 68.

Peace served the College for a total of 24 years, first as a tenured faculty member in the chemistry department from 1979-92, then after leaving the College to pursue new opportunities in the Midwest, he returned in 2001 to shepherd the classes of 2005 and 2009 as class dean. Peace then served from 2009-11 as visiting associate professor and director of the Natural World cluster for Montserrat, the College’s comprehensive program for all first-year students.

Peace earned his bachelor’s degree at Lafayette College, and both his master’s degree and Ph.D. in analytical chemistry from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He was a tenured member of the faculty at Lafayette until he joined the faculty at Holy Cross in 1979.

For the next 13 years, Peace served in a number of roles, including minority student advisor, and was elected to a number of important committees, including the Committee on Tenure and Promotion, the Academic Standing Committee and the Admissions Committee.

In 1990, Peace received an ACE Fellowship and spent a year working on institutional research and planning. Shortly thereafter, he left Holy Cross in 1992 to join the University of Wisconsin-Madison as the academic planner for the UW System. He subsequently served as the associate director of the “New Traditions” Curricular Reform Project and the director of the “Multi-Initiative Dissemination Project.”

Before Peace's retirement in 2011, Timothy R. Austin, then-vice president for academic affairs and dean of the College, acknowledged his many years of service to Holy Cross before members of the faculty.

"If there exists a standard model for a faculty career at Holy Cross, then Earl Peace has undoubtedly challenged that model in several respects, while still finding his own unique way to serve the College as a teacher of chemistry, a class dean, and most recently a cluster director in Montserrat," he said.

A memorial service is being planned for Peace in September.

A complete obituary will appear in the fall issue of Holy Cross Magazine. If you have a special memory or story about Dean Peace, you are welcome to share it by leaving a comment below or emailing hcmag@holycross.edu. Remembrances may appear in the magazine or in an online tribute.