When artist Jane Haskell was developing a course on women in art for Duquesne University, she asked her friend Jan Cohn if she could help with a title.

"Right off the top of her head she said 'Mayas, Madonnas and Myths,' " Haskell said yesterday.

Haskell used it.

Mrs. Cohn's quick wit and sense of humor were two of the traits that made her popular with her students of English literature at Carnegie Mellon University, where she taught in the 1970s.

But what won more admiration was the way she involved herself with the students, trying to help each individual reach their full potential.

She stayed in touch with many of them throughout their lives after graduation, including Maureen Rolla, assistant director of the Carnegie Museum of Art, and well-known author Jewel Parker Rhodes.

"She was very tough, very challenging, but also encouraging," Rolla said. "What I remember was her tremendous engagement with her students."

Mrs. Cohn, of Sandisfield, Mass., died Thursday of cancer at Samaritan Hospital, a hospice in Troy, N.Y. She was 70.

Mrs. Cohn was most recently the G. Keith Funston Professor of American Literature and American Studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. Earlier, she served as Trinity's dean of faculty, the first woman to hold that position.

She also was a prolific scholar, with five books and more than 40 articles, book chapters, encyclopedia entries and reviews to her credit. Subjects of her books included Pittsburgh-based mystery novelist Mary Roberts Rinehart, the history of the Saturday Evening Post, and romance in mass market fiction for women.

She also enjoyed tennis, opera, reading (especially mysteries), crossword puzzles, computer bridge, cooking, history, politics and her cats, according to Haskell and Rolla, who both traveled to visit with Mrs. Cohn a few days before her death.

But, Rolla said, her greatest fulfillment outside her husband and two children was in helping her students.

When Mrs. Cohn began teaching literature, she thought the subject matter was most important, Rolla said. As it turned out, it was her students were took precedence.

"She said too many professors made the mistake of thinking it was content, but the focus had to be on [students'] thought process," said Rolla.

"What she was focusing on wasn't the topic of my little paper but the maturation of my thought process. She really helped students see so much more than her small area of the world. She was structuring how they interacted with the world."

Mrs. Cohn was a 1955 graduate of Wellesley College, and she had a master's degree from the University of Toledo and a doctorate from the University of Michigan.

She also taught at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Toledo, and at George Mason University, where she chaired the English Department. She went to Trinity in 1987.

Mrs. Cohn is survived by her husband, William, of Sandisfield; a daughter, Cathy Barrow, of Washington, D.C.; a son, David Solomon, of Albany, N.Y.; a brother, Peter Kadetsky, of Houston, Texas; and two grandchildren.

A funeral service is scheduled for 2 p.m. today at the Sandisfield Cemetery.