Susan Rishworth received her BA degree in African Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an MLS degree from Indiana University-Bloomington and an MA degree in American Social History with an emphasis on the History of Medicine and Women’s History from the University of Maryland-College Park. She served as the Librarian for African Studies at Michigan State University, then as a Librarian in the African Section of the Library of Congress. After raising three children with her husband Butch, she became Director of the Library at Southeastern University in Washington, DC and began her Archives career at the American College of Ob/Gyns in Washington, DC. She went on to become Director of the American College of Surgeons in Chicago from where she retired with her husband to Florida. She has been a member of various national and regional professional associations, such as the African Studies Association and regional archival associations and brought together
Chicago archivists dealing with the history of medicine to form the Chicago Area Medical Archivists in 2002. She published an article about Verina Morton Jones, MD in the Journal of the National Medical Association in 2012 and is currently a member of the Society of American Archivists, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, the Society of Florida
Archivists, the Community Remembrance Project, and the Advocates for Race Amity in Pinellas County. She has also been active in many other community organizations particularly
dealing with race unity prior to and in her retirement and enjoys helping others interested in their own local Baha’i archives, to make them arranged, accessible and preserved.
2026 Courses
Introduction to Archives, Dec. 7 – Feb. 28, 2027 with Roger Dahl, Ailsa Hedley Leftwich, Damon McGhee, and Jane Cadwalader