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Memoir
Lois W. Hoffman
Regents' Proceedings 342
Regents' Proceedings 342
Lois W. Hoffman, professor of psychology in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, will retire from active faculty status on May 31, 1997.
Professor Hoffman received her B.A. degree in 1953 from the State University of New York at Buffalo, her M.A. degree in 1954 from Purdue University, and her Ph.D. degree in 1958 from the University of Michigan. From 1954-60, she worked at the Institute for Social Research, first as an assistant study director and then as a research associate. From 1960-67, she was an independent scholar and co-editor of the Review of Child Development Research. In 1967, she joined the University of Michigan faculty as a lecturer in the Department of Psychology. She was promoted to associate professor in 1971 and professor of psychology in 1975.
Professor Hoffman has had an impact on thousands of students through her teaching and through her landmark textbook, Developmental Psychology Today, which is now in its sixth edition. She has received numerous awards, including the Child Study Association Outstanding Book Award (1966), the J.F. Lewis Award form the American Philosophical Society (1978), an Outstanding Teaching Award from the Department of Psychology (1981), and the LS&A Excellence in Education Award in 1994. She has been a distinguished scholar at Radcliffe College and a scholar in residence at Rockefeller Center in Bellagio, Italy. In 1989, the American Psychological Association included her in its listing of "Eminent Women in Psychology."
Within the University, Professor Hoffman helped to establish the Women's Studies Program and chaired the developmental area in the psychology department. She served as president of two divisions of the American Psychological Association: the Psychological Study of Social Issues Division (1983-84) and the Developmental Psychology Division (1990-91).
Professor Hoffman's current research is an examination of how socioeconomic conditions and work patterns affect family interaction and children's socialization experiences, and how these affect the child's development. Her work has been continuously marked by her concern with socio-cultural variables and the social setting as they affect family interaction and parent-child relationships, and as variables that moderate effects on the child.
The Regents now salute this faculty member by naming Lois W. Hoffman professor emerita of psychology.