Sherrod, Lonnie R.

Since his undergraduate days, Lonnie Sherrod has been interested in the role of context in development. And throughout his career, he has been steadfast in his commitment to the interface of research and policy. The origins of his interest in children grew out of undergraduate studies with animal behaviorists at the University of Rochester. From song learning and imprinting in birds, he migrated first to the Psychology Department at Rochester, where he was mentored by Arnold Sameroff, and then to graduate work at Yale University, where he studied affiliation processes in human infants with William Kessen.

In the late 1970s, Sherrod's professional career began at the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), where his interests in biology and psychology helped to frame a committee that considered social problems such as child abuse and teen pregnancy from a biosocial science perspective. At the SSRC, he also worked with Paul Baltes on a committee on life span development.

Sherrod's work at the SSRC was an early introduction to the world of philanthropy and the role that foundations can play in charting new directions in the social and behavioral sciences. In the mid-1980s, Dr. Robert Haggerty, then president of the William T. Grant Foundation, recruited Sherrod as a senior program associate for the Grant Foundation. For the next 15 years, he helped to define gaps in the knowledge base of the social sciences and ways in which the Grant Foundation could motivate research to fill those gaps. Stress and coping in school-aged children, longitudinal studies of adolescence and the transition to adulthood, and the methodological implications of conducting longitudinal research are three examples of directions in research encouraged by Sherrod in his [Page 995]position at the foundation during those years. In addition, the Faculty Scholars Program, a signature program of the Grant Foundation, expanded during these years to include a more multidisciplinary group of scholars, and the foundation itself reached out to network with other foundations.

During his tenure at the foundation, Sherrod moved from senior program associate, to vice president for programs, to executive vice president of the W. T. Grant Foundation. In all, he worked with three presidents of the Grant Foundation, including Dr. Betty Hamburg and Dr. Karen Hein, following in succession after Dr. Haggerty.

It was during his tenure at the Grant Foundation that Sherrod became increasingly active in the Society for Research in Child Development's (SRCD) Committee on Policy and Dissemination. Many who are familiar with his work on the committee would claim that the great strides made by the committee in the past 15 years were due in large measure to his steadfast efforts. But Sherrod himself feels that the SRCD and its members have become aware that the best way to defend science to policymakers is to note its relevance and applicability to the welfare of children and families. Regardless, three major accomplishments of the Policy and Dissemination Committee occurred during the years that Sherrod chaired the committee: the SRCD Congressional and Executive Branch Fellows program was reinvigorated; SRCDs Governing Council allocated funding for an office in Washington, D.C.; and media coverage of the biennial meetings of the organization was institutionalized.

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