‘Blown Away by Her Kindness’: HGSE Lecturer Jacqueline Zeller Remembered for Her Warmth

Updated October 10, 2025, at 4:53 a.m.

When Wilson Cardwell walked into his 8 a.m. class at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, he was exhausted — midterms loomed, practicum hours were piling up, and the long commute home still waited.

But his professor, Jacqueline Zeller, had other plans.

She paused the class, queued a YouTube video of the “Happy Birthday” song, and surprised him with a celebration.

“She made us feel special at a time where we were very taxed, stressed, and unsure of our place at Harvard and in our respected field,” Cardwell, who graduated from HGSE in 2018, wrote in a statement. “It was one of the kindest things an educator has ever done for me.”

That kind of warmth — spontaneous and genuine — captured what Zeller’s friends and colleagues said defined her teaching and life. A longtime lecturer at the Graduate School of Education and a licensed clinical psychologist, Zeller died on July 24 at 47.

Zeller joined HGSE in 2005 after earning her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Virginia, where she studied child and family development. At HGSE, she trained generations of counselors and educators in courses on individual counseling, consultations, self-care, and child advocacy.

Peter Shapiro, her husband and fellow HGSE faculty member, said kindness defined everything she did.

“As soon as you meet her, you were just blown away by her kindness and just sweetness and how engaged she was with you,” Shapiro said. “You just instantly felt her positivity.”

That same empathy also extended to home in Zeller’s case. Richard J. Weissbourd, a senior lecturer at HGSE, recalled her often sharing fond memories of her family in conversations with him.

“We were talking on the street one day, and she said to me, ‘I just love my husband so much. I just can't believe how much I love him. And I love my daughter so much,’” he said.

Former students said Zeller’s classroom combined rigor with warmth. Peju Bobbett, who graduated from HGSE in May, remembered how Zeller guided her through her first research project, urging her to learn the Institutional Review Board process and reminding her of “the power of asking for help.”

“She cared for me as both a counselor and an academic, training my understanding of how policy, rules and ethics are woven into the decisions we make daily,” she wrote in a statement.

Eve D. Rybnick, another former student, recalled that Zeller had a “warmth to her that you felt immediately” and was an “eternal optimist despite the very real challenges we are facing in education.” She greeted every student by name, printed slides for handwritten notes, and returned feedback in pen, Rybnick wrote in a statement.

“Technology was not exactly her friend,” Rybnick wrote. “Rather than looking out at a sea of laptops, she wanted to see faces.”

Her ethos in the classroom was, in part, a reflection of the findings from her scholarship. Zeller’s research focused on how strong student-teacher relationships and teacher well-being shape learning. She also worked with individual schools, helping build more robust mental health services and positive classroom communities.

In her final year, Zeller continued teaching while managing serious health challenges — a choice colleagues said reflected her devotion to her students.

“It must have been utterly exhausting for Jackie this past year, choosing to maintain a full teaching load while battling health challenges, but she wouldn’t have had it any other way,” wrote Josephine M. Kim, a fellow lecturer, in a message to HGSE affiliates that she shared with The Crimson. “She never failed to show up with a smile and a laugh.”

Shapiro said that spirit defined her legacy — and urged others to carry it on.

“After losing her shine and her brightness and her light, we just need to be a little more of that in ourselves,” he said.

—Staff writer Bryce C. Freeman can be reached at bryce.freeman@thecrimson.com.

—Staff writer Ava Pakravan can be reached at ava.pakravan@thecrimson.com.