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2004 News Archives

Elizabeth Zelinski Named Interim Dean
06/21/04

The professor of psychology and gerontology will helm USC’s Andrus Gerontology Center and Leonard Davis School of Gerontology starting July 1. A search committee will form to find a permanent dean.

By Steve Arbuckle

Zelinski is currently associate dean for academic affairs and holds the Rita and Edward Polusky Chair in Education and Aging.

Elizabeth M. Zelinski, a professor of gerontology and psychology, has been appointed interim dean and executive director of USC’s Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center and the Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, effective July 1.
Zelinski succeeds Edward L. Schneider, who will enjoy a two-year sabbatical before returning to USC as dean emeritus and a faculty member in the schools of gerontology and medicine.

“We are, indeed, fortunate to have an individual of Professor Zelinski’s stature to take on this duty, and I am very pleased that she has agreed to do so,” said Lloyd Armstrong, Jr., USC’s provost.

Zelinski is currently associate dean for academic affairs and holds the Rita and Edward Polusky Chair in Education and Aging. The Office of the Provost will soon form a search committee to find a permanent dean.

“It’s a tremendous opportunity for me to serve as dean of the nation’s first and foremost center in the field of aging - a center that continues to build on its incredible accomplishments in research, community service and education,” Zelinski said.

“Our faculty looks forward to identifying the best person to lead the center in its multidisciplinary efforts toward understanding the processes of aging in a scientific and humanistic context,” she said. “The work ahead as interim dean will no doubt be challenging and rewarding.”


Zelinski has joint appointments in gerontology, psychology and gender studies, and is the principal investigator of the Long Beach Longitudinal Study on Cognition. This study evaluates cognition, memory and language comprehension in older adults as well as the relationship between peoples’ perceptions of their memory ability and their actual performance, and how these change as people grow old.

She is an editor for Psychology and Aging; member of the Reviewer’s Reserve for the National Institutes of Health; grant reviewer for the National Science Foundation; and a fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Gerontological Society of America. USC Mortar Board has honored her as a USC Faculty Member of the Month.

Before joining USC in 1981, Zelinski was a postdoctoral fellow in psychology at Pitzer College. She earned her doctorate and master’s degree in psychology at USC, and her B.A. in psychology summa cum laude from Pace University.

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