Ellen Cole

Dr. Ellen Cole, Professor of Psychology Emerita from Alaska Pacific University, is currently Professor of Psychology at the Sage Colleges, with campuses in Albany and Troy, NY, where she teaches in the Counseling and Community Psychology graduate program and coordinates their internship program. She is past-president of the Alaska Psychological Association and the Society for the Psychology of Women of the American Psychological Association (APA Division 35) and former chair of APA’s Committee on Women in Psychology.

For 13 years she co-edited the journal Women &Therapy and currently serves as Book Review Editor for Psychology of Women Quarterly. At age 70 she received a Master of Arts degree in Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, and for the past five years she has been working on several fronts to change perceptions of aging and old from one that is medically and negatively driven to one that focuses on quality of life and celebration. To that end she and Jane Giddan have a blog at 70Candles.com and a new book, 70 Candles: Women Thriving in their Eighth Decade (Taos Institute, 2015). Ellen and Dr. Mary Gergen co-edited Retiring but Not Shy: Feminist Psychologists Create Their Post-Careers (Taos Institute, 2012) and Positive Aging: What Feminist Therapists Need to Know (a special issue of the journal Women & Therapy, scheduled for publication in January, 2016). In 2010 Ellen and her husband, Dr. Douglas North, relocated from Anchorage, Alaska to Albany, New York. They are the proud parents of four adult children and ten grandchildren.