Dignitaries Celebrate Renaming of The Edward Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy

A celebration to mark the renaming of the Yale (Bush) Center in Child Development and Social Policy to the The Edward Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy, will take place Monday, July 25 from 11 a.m. to noon in the Donald J. Cohen Auditorium at the Yale Child Study Center, 230 South Frontage Road.

Guest speakers include Senator Christopher Dodd; U.S. Representative Rosa DeLauro; Representative John Larson; Mayor John DeStefano, Jr.; former U.S. Surgeon General Julius B. Richmond; Connecticut Commissioner of Education Betty Sternberg; and Tim Shriver, Chair of the International Special Olympics.

The Yale (Bush) Center in Child Development and Social Policy is one of the nation’s oldest centers for child and family policy research. The new name honors its founder, Edward Zigler, the Sterling Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Yale.

Zigler is widely regarded as the “father” of Head Start and the nation’s leading researcher of programs and policies for children and families, having planned or implemented such national programs and initiatives as Head Start and Early Head Start, the Family and Medical Leave Act and the innovative Schools of the 21st Century. Zigler founded the Center in 1978 with funding from the Bush Foundation of Minnesota. The Center works to improve the lives of America’s children and families by bringing the results of empirical research on child development into the policy arena.

Walter S. Gilliam, assistant professor at the Yale Child Study Center, has been named director of the Zigler Center. Matia Finn-Stevenson will remain as associate director and Sandra Bishop-Josef, as assistant director. Zigler will serve as director emeritus.

Gilliam has been affiliated with the Zigler Center since 1995 and is best known for his national work regarding state-funded pre-kindergarten systems. “We never have been more in need of objective data regarding how best to use limited state and federal resources to serve children and families,” said Gilliam. “I look forward to continuing the Center’s pioneering work informing those who create and implement child and family policy in this nation and to training future generations of policy scholars.”

The Zigler Center has been part of the Department of Psychology and the Yale Child Study Center, where it served a critical role in training and scholarly research.