Sheila Chase

August 30, 1935 - January 1, 2026

Dr. Sheila Chase passed away in her home at the age of 90, after a life full of adventure and accomplishments. She was fiercely independent from beginning to end. A child of immigrants, Sheila was raised in the Bronx to value higher education. She attended City College of New York where she received a BS and PhD in Psychology. While in graduate school, she met Dr. Eric Heinemann. They became lifelong colleagues and partners, traveling around the world together to advance their research while enjoying skiing and scuba diving adventures.

Sheila joined the faculty at Hunter College in 1970 and remained committed to her research and students throughout her life, serving as emerita professor in the Department of Psychology well into her 80s. She regularly taught Experimental Psychology to Hunter undergraduates. The course is an intensive one in which students learn to design, carry out, critically evaluate, and communicate their research. Sheila tirelessly spent time meeting with students well beyond her regular office hours, providing them with guidance and feedback on their work and advice about their academic careers. Over the years, she mentored many graduate students as well, at both the MA and PhD levels.

In collaboration with Eric, Sheila made important contributions to psychological research. Together, they developed the Natural Intelligence Model (NIM), an exemplar-based probabilistic model which integrates perception and long-term memory retrieval. Using NIM, Sheila and Eric were able to make extremely accurate predictions of the rate of perceptual learning in pigeons and other species. In the late 1970s, decades before similar developments in other fields, they implemented NIM in a computer program, producing a psychologically-informed type of machine learning.

Sheila founded the Hunter College Animal Behavior and Conservation (ABC) Program and served as its director for many years. In 2015, she received the Hunter College Presidential Award for Service and Citizenship. An animal lover and conservation advocate, Sheila’s passion for animal welfare was equaled by her commitment to her students and research.

Sheila is survived by her brother, David, and her nieces and nephew, Debbie, Lisa and Dan. Her memorial service and interment will be held on Sunday, January 4 at the New Montefiore Cemetery at 11 a.m. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the ABC Program through the Hunter College Foundation (visit www.hunter.cuny.edu/hunter-college-foundation/ and specify the “Animal Behavior and Conservation Program”).