1985-1987 - Population Studies Center - University of Michigan

DIRECTOR'SSTFrrEITIEnTJuly 1,1987 marked the end of the decade AlbertHermalin was Director of the Population StudiesCenter. As a Center associate I knew he was doing anexcellent job; as his successor, I know Al was superb.As director, Al was a dynamic and energetic leaderwith vision who also had an unusual ability to elicit theideas and contributions of his colleagues. He wascompassionate, sensitive, always willing to listen, andunfailingly helpful. It is the Center's good fortune thatall of these qualities remain in abundance, as Al applieshis energies arid creativity in new directions.Al's organizational accomplishments span the entirerange of Center functioning. During his tenure asdirector, he was responsible for two successful roundsof renewal of the Center's NICHD grant for the supportof core services. With each renewal, the supportprovided by NICHD increased, not just monetarily butalso in the scope of the functions supported. Alsoduring this same period, the Center successfullyrenewed its NICHD training grant several times. In itsmost recent form, the training grant combines thesociology and economics programs into a single, moreintegrated program — an innovation that shouldenhance the intellectual opportunities for all of usassociated with the Center.Although these grants are critical to the existence ofthe Population Studies Center, they by no meansprovide all of the support necessary for the Center tofunction. It is therefore noteworthy that during Al'sdirectorship the University of Michigan generouslyagreed to increase its support of our activities — thussupplementing the NICHD center grant. In addition,under Al's directorship, the Center was awarded aHewlett Foundation grant that has been the Center'sprincipal means of supporting the training of foreignstudents. In the late 1970s, Al was successful inobtaining a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundationto facilitate the launching of professional careers ofoutstanding young PhDs. Not only has this grantachieved its stated goals for the individual recipients, italso has had a major effect on the Center's intellectuallife, coming as it did during a period of stability in thenumber of faculty. Still another accomplishment thatdepended on Al's vision has been the recent approvalof a National Institute on Aging training grant thatbegan supporting pre- and post-doctoral fellows as of1987-1988, and will enhance the Center's research andtraining in the demography of aging. An Alfred P.Sloan Foundation grant to the Center, awarded inresponse to Al's interest in developing cross-disciplinarydialogue on population-related topics, has beenhighly successful and, indeed, will culminate in 1988with a multidisciplinary conference organized in largepart by the Center.Any recitation of these ventures in organizational cntrepreneurship(and still others not mentioned) wouldbe incomplete without characterization of the intellectualvision that fostered them. Al's is an activelypursued vision of coherent breadth, spanning all of thesocial sciences and reaching well into the biologicalsciences. Thus, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundationgrant has been shared with the Program in ReproductiveEndocrinology, and has had some notably successfulcross-disciplinary interactions. The Alfred P.SloanFoundation grant has been explicitly cross-disciplinary,and involves participants in biology and statistics. Thesame can be said of Al's organizational leadership inthe demography of aging, which has led to increasinginteraction with members of the Institute of Gerontology.In an era and environment in which the prevail-Director's Statementl