Berk’s lecture, Storytelling as a Teaching Strategy, presented at the National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology (NITOP), will be published next month by the American Psychological Society in Voices of Experience: Memorable Talks from NITOP. A second chapter, “Why Parenting Matters,” is part of Childhood Lost: How American Culture is Failing Our Kids, a volume devoted to child and family policy issues to be released this month by Praeger. She just completed, “Make-Believe Play: Wellspring for Development of Self-Regulation,” a chapter that focuses on her research into young children’s play and that will appear in Play=Learning, to be released in early 2006 by Oxford University Press.

In the coming months, Berk’s calendar includes a June address at Yale University on the topic of children’s play, a presentation with her undergraduate students on the private speech of children with autism at the biennial meeting of the International Society for Cognitive Psychology and Education in Durham, England, and a presentation at the International Vygtosky Society meeting in Seville, Spain. She recently served as keynote speaker at the Australasian Conference on Human Development in Auckland, New Zealand.

Berk continues to mentor the research of doctoral students in school psychology and advanced undergraduate psychology majors. On top of that, she is the author of three internationally acclaimed textbooks: Child Development (in its seventh edition), Infants Children and Adolescents (in its fifth edition), and Development Through the Lifespan (in its third edition). Her texts are now published in four languages—English, Chinese, German, Russian, and Spanish.

In the midst of a thriving academic career, Berk finds time for gourmet cooking with kindred spirits, flower gardening, and trips to Chicago and Pasadena to visit her sons.  Reading biographies gives her grist for her scholarly mill. “Retiring? That is an unfortunate word; it means to lie down.”  She has derision for the stereotyping of older people and knows of models of academic institutions where retirees are respected and involved. She certainly is a role model; for her, retiring is not a synonym for resting and rusting.

Segments of this profile were taken from a story written by Dr. E. Joan Miller, Professor Emerita of Geography-Geology, for Renaissance Retirees, the College's emeritus faculty newsletter.