The Denison University Psychology Colloquium Series will host Edward Zigler, Sterling Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Yale University, as part of the J.R. Kantor Memorial Lectureship. Zigler will discuss "Looking at our Nation's Head Start Program Today" at 7 p.m. on Wednesday (March 3) in Herrick Hall. He will also give a second lecture, "Head Start Research and Evaluation," at 4 p.m. on Thursday (March 4) in Burton Morgan Lecture Hall. Both of these convocations are free and open to the public.

Zigler is director of the non-partisan Bush Center in Child Development and Social Policy and helped create Head Start, a government-run child development program focused on increasing the school readiness of young children in low-income families.

Zigler served as a member of the National Planning and Steering Committee of both Project Head Start and Project Follow Through and in 1970 was named by former President Nixon as the first director of the office of Child Development (now the Administration on Children, Youth and Families) and chief of the U.S. Children's Bureau. His responsibilities included administering the Head Start program and developing new programs such as Health Start, Home Start, Education for Parenthood, the Child Development Associate Program and the Child and Family Resource Program.

After leaving the government Zigler continued to serve on the President's Committee on Mental Retardation, Vietnamese Children's Resettlement Advisory Group and as chair of the 15th anniversary Head Start Committee, a body charged with plotting the future course of the Head Start program. He has more recently served as a member of the Advisory Committee on Head Start Quality and Expansion and on the planning committee for Early Head Start, a program for families with children between birth and age three.

At Yale, Zigler directed a laboratory engaged in a variety of basic and applied studies of child development and family functioning. His research interests include mental retardation, psychopathology, intervention programs for economically disadvantaged children and the effects of out-of-home care on children of working parents. Zigler also headed a national committee of distinguished Americans that was instrumental in making infant care leaves a reality in the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993.

Zigler is the author or editor of 26 books, has written numerous scholarly articles and is a member of the editorial boards of 10 professional journals. Zigler earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Missouri at Kansas City and a doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Texas at Austin. He has received numerous honors including the Harold W. McGraw, Jr. Prize in Education and awards from the Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. Foundation, American Psychological Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, National Association for Retarded Citizens, American Association on Mental Deficiency, National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, National Head Start Association and American Orthopsychiatric Association, of which he was president in 1993-94.

About Denison:

Denison University, founded in 1831, is an independent, residential liberal arts institution located in Granville, Ohio. A highly selective college enrolling 2,100 full-time undergraduate students from all 50 states and dozens of foreign countries, Denison is a place where innovative faculty and motivated students collaborate in rigorous scholarship, civic engagement and the cultivation of independent thinking.

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