Lenard Kaye, D.S.W./Ph.D.

Lenard W. Kaye is Professor of Social Work at the University of Maine School of Social Work. During the 2000-2001 academic year, he was the Visiting Libra Professor in UMaine’s College of Business, Public Policy & Health and in 2014 awarded the University of Maine Trustee Professorship. Previously, he was Professor of Social Work and Social Research and Director of the Ph.D. Program at the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania and Associate Director of the Brookdale Institute on Aging & Adult Human Development at Columbia University.

Research and Scholarly interests

Kaye has been the principal investigator or evaluation director for research addressing a variety  of innovative community services for older adults including projects funded by the National Institute on Aging, the U.S. Administration on Aging and Administration for Community Living, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Maine Department of Public Safety, the Maine Office of Substance Abuse, and the Maine Office of Elder Services, as well as the AARP Andrus Foundation, Pew Foundation, Families USA Foundation, John Hartford Foundation, the Brookdale Foundation, Maine Community Foundation, and Maine Health Access Foundation. He has published 17 books and approximately 150 journal articles and book chapters on specialized topics in aging, health care, and social work practice. His forthcoming book is the Handbook of Rural Aging (Routledge/Taylor and Francis).

Kaye is a former member of the national advisory boards of the Rural Assistance Center of the Center for Rural Health, University of North Dakota and the National Advisory Panel (NAP) of the Social Work Leadership Institute (SWLI) and is a founding board member of the International Institute for Pharmaceutical Safety. He is Past President of both the New York and Maine Gerontological Societies and Past Chair of the National Association of Social Worker’s Section on Aging. He received the Career Achievement Award of the Association for Gerontology Education in Social Work (AGESW) in 2010 and has served as a National Research Mentor for the Hartford Geriatric Social Work Scholars Program and a member of the National Advisory Committee on Health and Human Services of the U.S. DHHS. He sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of Gerontological Social Work and the Aging Life Care Journal and is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America and the Maine Gerontological Society.