Distinguishing Purdue Sociology

DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY - J. Jill Suitor

The Purdue University Board of Trustees ratified the appointment Professor J. Jill Suitor as Distinguished Professor of Sociology on December 7, 2018.

As part of the University's commitment to excellence in discovery, learning and engagement, we award distinguished and named professorships to outstandingly original, creative and productive faculty whose achievements in discovery and learning have been internationally recognized or who have made a unique contribution to the University through discovery, learning and/or engagement. These positions may include discretionary allocations for scholarship and teaching, and in some cases salary supplements.

Dr. J. Jill Suitor (Ph.D., SUNY-Stony Brook, 1985) in a Professor of Sociology and a Faculty Associate of the Center on Aging and the Life Course. Her research focuses on interpersonal relations and well-being, particularly relationships between parents and adult children and among adult siblings

Dr. Suitor is especially interested in studying these processes in the context of family caregiving. Her research has been supported by the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the Spencer Foundation, and has resulted in the publication of more than 120 journal articles and book chapters. She is Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Innovation in Aging and Associate Editor of The Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences, both of which are sponsored by the Gerontological Society of America and published by Oxford University Press. She has also served as a member of the National Institutes of Health Study Section on Personality, Social Psychology, and Interpersonal Processes

Dr. Suitor regularly teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on family relationships across the life course with particular emphasis on later-life families. Since 2001, she has led the Within Family Differences Study (WFDS), an NIH-supported panel investigation of the causes and consequences of within-family differences and parental favoritism in more than 550 multigenerational families.