Sr. Joan Sheil

Sister Joan Sheil, CHM, 90, died December 24, 2024, at Bishop Drumm Retirement Center in Johnston, Iowa. Services at Bishop Drumm Our Lady of Peace Chapel will be on Saturday, December 28, 2:30-3:30 pm, Visitation and 3:30 pm, Memorial Service. Services at Humility of Mary Center, Davenport, Iowa, are on Monday, December 30, 4 pm, Rosary and 7 pm, Vigil Service. Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated on Tuesday, December 31, 11 am. followed by burial in Mount Calvary Cemetery, Davenport.

Margaret Joan Sheil was born July 28, 1934, in Des Moines, Iowa, to John Clement and Bernice (Moore) Sheil but grew up in Mount Ayr, Iowa. She entered the Congregation of the Humility of Mary (CHM) in 1955 and professed vows in 1958 as Sister Michael Maureen. 

Sister was a lifelong learner dedicated to libraries and scholarship. She completed a BA degree in Library Science with a minor in English from Marycrest College, Davenport, in 1956, followed by her Master’s in Library Science from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1965. In addition to her formal degrees, she completed continuing education studies on Instructional Media and System Design from the Michigan State University Advanced Media Institute in 1967 and throughout the 1980s completed workshops through the University of Iowa in Online Literature Searching (1980), Microcomputers in Libraries (1981), Networks & Networking (1982), Microcomputers (1983), Legal Research (1985), and Copyright in the Age of Technology (1993).

Sr. Joan served Marycrest College/Marycrest-Teikyo University/Marycrest International University for 43 years, beginning in 1956 as a library student worker, then in 1958 as assistant librarian and cataloger. Her career at Marycrest included being Director of the Media Center and Closed Circuit Television (1965-1972), Vice President of Student Affairs (1968-1970), Chair of the Department of Education, Library Science, and Psychology (1982-1985), Faculty Athletic Representative starting in 1980, and as Director of Library Services (1972-1999). Between 1991 and 1998, she had 19 committee appointments. During her years there, she taught courses in Audiovisual Education, Utilization of Media, Multimedia in Education, Literature, Basic and Color Photography, and Cataloging. After retiring from Marycrest, she served as a Staff Assistant at the Humility of Mary Center in Davenport for two years, and from 2001-2017 served as Archivist for the same location. Since 2017, she exercised a Ministry of Prayer and Witness at the Bishop Drumm Retirement Center.

Unafraid of change, Sr. Joan was an advocate for embracing new technology, encouraging early adoption of computers in the Marycrest library and working among the first librarians to link their collections online in the Quad Cities area. She served as chairperson of the Bi-State Academic Libraries agency starting in 1975, was the Chair of IPAL, the Iowa Private Academic Libraries, from 1978-1979, worked for the Quad-Cities Libraries in Cooperation (QuadLINC) starting in 1980, served on the Long Range Planning Committee for the State of Iowa from 1983-1987, was a delegate to the Iowa Pre-White House Conference on Libraries in 1991, and a member of the Catholic Library Association, for which she was a convention speaker in 1968.

Other memberships included the Association for College and Research Libraries, the Iowa Library Association, the Association of Education Communications and Technology, the Iowa Association for Educational Communications and Technology, and Beta Phi Mu, the International Library Science Honor Society. 

She published on the topics of incorporating media into higher education and research, provided in-service workshops on topics of libraries and media, served as a panelist for regional and national library and audiovisual meetings, and was an evaluator for high school libraries through the North Central Association evaluation team and for the BOOKLIST publication of the American Library Association.

Her service also included the CHM community, for which she served on multiple committees concerning governance and development, and in 2000 she chaired the Stewardship Committee.

 In her spare time, Sister Joan pitched softball for various organizations in the Quad Cities. She was her cousin Mike’s “fishing buddy” in his younger years.

Sister Joan is preceded in death by her parents. She is survived by her cousins Michael (Diane) Sheil, Sandy Sheil, Denise (Paul) Cameron, Donna Sheil, Janice Sheil and the religious community she shared life with for sixty-nine years. 

Memorials may be made to the Congregation of the Humility of Mary.