NEWS RELEASE

August 14, 1998

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR ELECTED PRESIDENT OF GERONTOLOGICAL SOCIETY

Fay Lomax Cook, director of the Institute for Policy Research and professor of human development and social policy at Northwestern University, has been elected president of The Gerontological Society of America (GSA), the national organization of professions in the field of aging. She will take office in November 1999 and serve as president during the year 2000.

Founded in 1945, the Society is the nation's oldest multidisciplinary professional organization on research in aging. It represents more than 5,500 researchers, scientists, educators, and policymakers in the field of aging. The Society publishes five refereed journals and every November holds the nation's largest interdisciplinary scientific meeting on aging research.

Cook brings to her new role a distinguished career of scholarship and leadership. Her research focuses on the dynamics of public support for older Americans, the interrelationships between public opinion and public policy, and the politics of public policy. She is the author or co-author of numerous scholarly articles and book chapters and three books. Her most recent book isSupport for the American Welfare State: The Views of Congress and the Public (Columbia University Press, 1992). Currently, she is writing a book entitled The New Politics of Social Security and is evaluating the project "Americans Discuss Social Security" with a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts.

As director of Northwestern's Institute for Policy Research, Cook leads an interdisciplinary faculty of social scientists from 16 academic departments at the university, who conduct research on significant public policy issues. She has also served as chair of the University’s graduate program in human development and social policy.

Cook recently returned from a year’s fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford, California. She is a fellow of the Gerontological Society and a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance. She has been a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation, a member of the Ford Foundation's research advisory committee on Social Welfare Policy and the American Future, a scientific consultant to the National Institute on Aging, and a member of the North American Program Committee for the International Congress on Gerontology held in Budapest, Hungary.

Anticipating her role as GSA president in the year 2000, Cook said, "The meetings that year will be a good time to take stock of where we are as a society of researchers, educators, policymakers, and practitioners and where we want to go. This will be an opportunity to look back on the vast research, policy, and practice accomplishments of the 20th century and to spend time mapping the challenges of the 21st century and how we can best respond in our research, policy, and practice." One of her primary goals is for the Gerontological Society to play a stronger role in bringing the research findings of Society members to national attention through media coverage, press conferences, and congressional and agency briefings.

The National Academy on an Aging Society, a non-partisan policy institute, is a unit of GSA. In January 1999 the Association for Gerontology in Higher Education, a consortium of educational institutions to advance study and scholarship in gerontology, will become a second unit of the Society.