Millicent Irene Kushner was born on January 15, 1954 in New York City, the daughter of Herbert Kushner and Eleanor Kyman. After graduating from Seward Park High School, she attended New York University, where she earned a B.A. in Spanish. She received an M.S. in Education at Purdue University in 1978, and a doctorate (Ed.D.) in Applied Psycholinguistics and Bilingual Education from Boston University in 1986.
She served on the faculty of the Department of Special Education at the University of Texas at Austin, where she was also Research Associate in the Handicapped Minorities Research Institute from 1988 to 2002. She then served on the faculty of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Maryland, College Park until 2010 when she relocated to Evanston to join her husband who had taken a position at Northwestern University. She continued to advise students at Maryland and teach on a part-time basis at Texas until her retirement in 2011.
In her research, Dr. Kushner specialized in language acquisition of the bilingual child, and its applications to bilingual special education. She conducted frequent training sessions of teachers and administrators in school systems across the country on advances in teaching children from non-English speaking homes. Throughout her academic career, she touched the lives and careers of numerous students, whom she actively mentored and counseled.
She actively served her professional community as a reviewer and editor of scholarly and professional publications, and organized several conferences and conference tracks. From 2005-2008, she served as President of the Maryland Association of Bilingual Educators (MDABE).
In 1980, she married Hani Sobhi Mahmassani, of Beirut, Lebanon, whom she met while they were both studying at Purdue. Their children Amine Herbert (1984) and Ziad Sobhi (1988) have always played a central role in their lives. Amine is completing a Ph.D. in Economics at the University of California, Irvine; and Ziad, married in 2017 to Cassandra Stephens of Illinois, holds a post-doctoral position in Kinesiology at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, after completing his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
On December 20, 2017, she passed away peacefully at the Journey Care Hospice in Glenview, IL, following a long and courageous struggle with cancer.
In addition to her husband and children, she is survived by her brothers Harry of New Brunswick, NJ, and Benjamin of Los Angeles, CA.
A memorial service will be held on January 3, 2018 at 2:00PM at the Vail Chapel on the campus of Northwestern University (1870 Sheridan Rd. Evanston, IL 60208), immediately followed by a reception with the family at the Guild Lounge in Scott Hall (across the street from Vail Chapel). Campus maps and parking information are available at www.northwestern.edu/campus-life/visiting-campus/index.html .
In lieu of flowers memorials may be made to Doctors without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières www.doctorswithoutborders.org .