Loyola celebrates the life of Phoebe D. Sharkey, Ph.D., professor emerita of operations management
Phoebe D. Sharkey, Ph.D., professor emerita of operations management, passed away on Monday, April 6, 2026. She was 84.
Sharkey joined the Loyola faculty in 1985 as an associate professor of management information systems and decision sciences and was promoted to professor in 1998. She retired in 2017 and was granted the title of professor emerita.
“Dr. Sharkey encouraged all of us to be the best versions of ourselves, and I learned a lot from her,” said Gloria Phillips-Wren, Ph.D., MBA ’98, professor of information systems. “She was recruited to Loyola to help Sellinger achieve AACSB accreditation as the first school in Maryland to do so, and she established a healthcare center in the business school. Her impact was felt in students' lives, in the University, and in the professional community.”
Sharkey’s expertise sat at the intersection of healthcare economics, health services research, and decision support systems, and she was a longtime member of the American Public Health Association. The author of dozens of peer-reviewed papers, she published articles in The New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and the International Journal of Psychiatric Medicine, among others.
Sharkey co-authored a 1990 study showing that hospital mortality data published annually by the federal Health Care Financing Administration was “incomplete because it does not take severity of illness into consideration,” which “may mislead the public about the quality of their community hospitals.” She discussed the findings in a national television interview on CNN.
“Dr. Sharkey was always ready to help students and other faculty, particularly with analysis of healthcare data,” said Phillips-Wren. “She was highly respected as a professional and published in prestigious outlets including the Journal of the American Medical Association. She participated in studies that led to advancements in medical care. Dr. Sharkey was proud of her contribution to the Computerized Severity Index (CSI) that is used today to assess quality of care and evaluate hospitals.”
Throughout her decades-long career in academia, Sharkey was the recipient of numerous grants related to her research in health services, including a pair of $10,000 grants to perform research on the clinical and financial aspects of burn victim hospitalizations. She was a member of the Operations Research Society of America and served as the vice chairman of its Baltimore chapter from 1988 to 1990.
A 1963 graduate of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, Sharkey was among the first women to earn a Master of Science degree—with a concentration in Russian Area Studies—from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., in 1964. Upon receiving her master’s degree, Sharkey worked for the CIA, doing syntactic analysis to facilitate the automation of translating Russian intelligence to English. She earned her Ph.D. in Systems Analysis and Economics from The Johns Hopkins University in 1985.
Prior to joining Loyola, Sharkey served as an assistant professor of computer science at Northern Virginia Community College from 1966 to 1968 and as an associate professor of computer information systems at the Community College of Baltimore from 1968 to 1980. Sharkey also served as a research associate at Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health from 1980 to 1993, working in the Department of Health Policy and Management and the Center for Hospital Finance and Management.
Sharkey is remembered by her colleagues for her dedication to her students, her research, and Loyola.
“Dr. Sharkey was popular with her students because of the interest she took in their work and for the high standards she set,” said A. Kimbrough Sherman, Ph.D., associate professor emeritus of information systems, law, and operations. “She lived near the University until her husband was appointed to a federal judgeship in Washington, D.C., but she made that long commute from Georgetown to campus for several years.”
“Phoebe was a prolific researcher with multiple studies ongoing during each semester,” said Ellen D. Hoadley, Ph.D., professor emerita of information systems. “She made many significant contributions to her field of decision sciences.”
Phoebe married Robert Sharkey in 1963, and they raised four children: Siobhan, who died in 2012, Edward, Catherine, and James. Her survivors include: her siblings, Susan Horn, Ph.D. (Roger) and D. Sophocles Dadakis (Marylu); her daughters-in-law, Jennifer Sharkey, Ina Bort, and Meredith Sharkey; her grandchildren, Anne, Elizabeth, Frederick, Caleb, Phoebe, Keegan, Finley, and Wren; her great-granddaughter Charlotte; and many cousins, nephews, and nieces.
Arrangements
Funeral Service
Saturday, May 9, 2026, 11 a.m.
Annunciation Catholic Church
3810 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20016
Sharkey will be remembered in the intentions at Mass in Loyola’s Alumni Memorial Chapel on Thursday, April 23, 2026, at 12:10 p.m. All are welcome.