In memoriam: Christine Compston

Christine Compston, Western’s Fellowships Advisor, passed away recently at her home after a brief illness.

Chris established Western’s Fellowship Office in 2007 and rapidly expanded the number of Western students who apply for distinguished fellowships. Under her leadership, students won a variety of distinguished fellowships and scholarships. Indicative of her success as an advisor and mentor, Chris’ efforts led Western to be named as one of the nation’s top Fulbright generating universities in 2010.

In addition to her work in the Fellowships Office, Chris was an academic historian and an expert on the history of the Supreme Court. Her publications include "Earl Warren: Justice for All" (Oxford University Press, 2001) and "Holmes and Frankfurter: Their Correspondence, 1912-1934," which she co-edited with Robert M. Mennel (University Press of New England, 1996).

She graduated from Mount Holyoke College and earned both her master’s and doctoral degrees at the University of New Hampshire. Her dissertation examined judicial decision-making in Supreme Court cases involving aid to sectarian schools. She earned distinguished fellowships herself, serving as a Fulbright Scholar in Norway and, later, as a Liberal Arts Fellow at Harvard Law School.

Chris taught constitutional and women’s history at Clark University, the University of Massachusetts – Boston, the University of New Hampshire and in the Honors Program at Western. She served as the founding director of the National History Education Network and as a consultant for Oxford University Press, the National Endowment for the Humanities’ EDSITEment project and the PBS production “Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego.”

For more than 10 years, she was actively involved in state and regional humanities councils as a scholar and program director.

Chris is survived by her husband, Stephen Senge, of Western’s College of Business and Economics.