Jane Powers, in the Cornell Human Ecology courtyard, retires from Cornell after 38 years. (Credit: Juan Vazquez-Leddon/BCTR)
Jane Powers Ph.D. ‘85, director of ACT for Youth, retired this summer after 38 years with the College of Human Ecology.
Powers worked on a variety of research projects in the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research (BCTR) throughout her tenure at Cornell, including the National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect, the Nurse Family Partnership, and Military Projects. In 2000, she became the director of evaluation for ACT for Youth, which was created to promote positive outcomes and reduce risky behavior among adolescents throughout New York state; she assumed the role of program director in 2003.
Working in partnership with the New York State Department of Health, ACT for Youth connects the latest youth development research to practice. Through training, technical assistance, evaluation, and research, ACT for Youth translates research for policymakers and practitioners who work directly with youth, especially communities across New York state that are most in need.
”Jane’s unwavering commitment to positive youth development has guided ACT for Youth to be an essential resource for young people as they prepare for adulthood,” says BCTR director Anthony Burrow. “Jane is an enduring fixture in the BCTR and the center has benefited from her wisdom and contributions.”
Relationship builder
After earning a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan’s Residential College in 1977, Powers arrived in Ithaca a year later as a graduate student in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS).
“I didn’t know a soul, and I was very lonely,” she says. “Ithaca was just going to be a steppingstone to the wider world, but then I met my husband and Ithaca became my home.” (David Powers is a professor in the Department of Near Eastern Studies in Cornell’s College of Arts and Sciences.)
Powers developed an interest in adolescent development that continued to grow throughout her career. She earned her Ph.D. under the guidance of Steve Hamilton studying the transition from school to work for non-college-bound female adolescents.
Powers spent a brief period working in admissions at Ithaca College before returning to Cornell in 1985 as a research assistant to John Eckenrode, a newly hired professor in HDFS, to work on a project that examined how reports of child abuse and neglect are substantiated. She later worked with him on the Nurse Family Partnership project, overseeing the data collection for the 15-year and 19-year follow-up studies of the original Elmira trial, a randomized controlled study that evaluated the benefits of nurse home visits for low-income, first-time mothers living in Elmira, New York.
Powers joined ACT for Youth when it was founded in 2000 and became director in 2003.
Powers had the unique ability to develop relationships among colleagues and partners, said Eckenrode, professor emeritus and former director of the BCTR.
Jane Powers has been in the BCTR since its inception in 2011 and also with its previous iteration, the Family Life Development Center. (Credit: Juan Vazquez-Leddon/BCTR)
“Jane brought incredible energy, intelligence, and wit to the Family Life Development Center (a precursor to the BCTR) and the BCTR,” he says. “She made incredible contributions to building and sustaining ACT for Youth by assembling a loyal and talented team, building a successful vision, and promoting partnerships. The lives of youth in New York State and beyond are better because of her efforts.”
Powers said she found it gratifying to collaborate so closely with a government agency charged with promoting the health and well-being of adolescents.
“Findings from our work have been used to inform the development of new strategies and initiatives, influence statewide policies, and strengthen practice and programming in the field,” she says.
Including youth voices in evaluation projects has been an important component of Powers’ work; she recalls a particular meeting with a partner organization in Syracuse during the early days of ACT for Youth when she first realized the importance of including young people in developing program evaluations.
“All of these adults were sitting around the table trying to create an evaluation and figure out what questions we should ask, how to ask them, whom we should ask, and when we should ask them,” she says. “That’s when it hit me that we really needed to have young people at the table. I began to see youth not as research subjects and respondents, but as potential research partners and resources. It began a whole trajectory of my career engaging youth in the evaluation and research process.”
Powers is also proud of her work with homeless teens throughout her career. One of her early projects at the Family Life Development Center involved coordinating and improving services for maltreated, homeless, and runaway youth. Her work led to a book, co-authored with Barbara Jaklitsch, “Understanding Survivors of Abuse: Stories of Homeless and Runaway Youth,” which documented the lives of maltreated homeless youth who overcame adversity and developed a positive direction for their lives.
In 2003, an Ithaca youth organization called The Learning Web asked Powers for help in studying youth homelessness in Tompkins County. Using a unique approach, Powers and the engaged formerly homeless youth as research partners to design research tools, recruit subjects, collect data, interpret findings, and present results to key community stakeholders. It’s a shining example of Powers’ work to engage youth in research. The data collected from these studies proved to be so useful that four additional follow-up studies were conducted. The findings yielded significant benefits for homeless youth in the Ithaca area including increased community awareness, expanded services, and additional housing options.
“In many cases, this project transformed the lives of the youth who participated as research assistants,” Powers says. “It brought incredible awareness to youth homelessness in Tompkins County, and it really represented the arc of my career at Cornell.”
What’s next?
In retirement, Powers is swimming, playing golf, spending time with her grandchildren, and giving back to the community as board president for Hospicare & Palliative Care Services, a non-profit that provides hospice care for people with any terminal diagnosis in Tompkins and Cortland counties.
“I have nothing but intense gratitude for my experience working at Cornell,” Powers says. “The sense of contributing, making a difference, and having a sense of purpose was really important to me.”
