Ken Ferraro
Please join me in congratulating Ken Ferraro, distinguished professor and interim head of the Department of Sociology, for delivering the 2015 Matilda White Riley Distinguished Scholar Award Lecture at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association’s Section on Aging and the Life Course (SALC) in Chicago. As the 2014 winner of the Matilda White Riley Distinguished Scholar Award, Ken was invited to address his colleagues at their annual gathering, speaking on “A Life Course Lens for Studying Health Inequality.”
The Matilda White Riley Distinguished Scholar Award honors a scholar in the field of aging and the life course who has shown exceptional achievement in research, theory, and policy analysis or who has otherwise advanced knowledge of aging and the life course. A longtime member of the faculty of the College, Ken is not only a distinguished researcher but is also the founding director of Purdue’s Center on Aging and the Life Course, which offers a dual-title PhD program enabling students to integrate gerontology into one of 10 disciplines.
In addition, Ken recently published a paper in the American Sociological Review on the long-term health consequences of growing up in poverty or being abused by parents. Contributing to the research are Ken’s former PhD students, Markus H. Schafer, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Toronto, and Lindsay R. Wilkinson, an assistant professor of sociology at Baylor University. The study was funded by the National Institute on Aging, and found that childhood poverty and frequent abuse were related to the onset of health problems like cancer and heart disease later in life, even after adjusting for other risk factors such as socioeconomic status and health behaviors.
Congratulations, Professor Ferraro!
David A. Reingold
Justin S. Morrill Dean
College of Liberal Arts