D. Merrill Ewert, a faculty member in the Department of Education, has been named director of Cornell Cooperative Extension by the deans of the College of Human Ecology and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. He will assume his new position April 15.

Ewert, an associate professor of education at Cornell since 1991, succeeds William B. Lacy, who stepped down Feb. 1 to resume teaching as a professor in Cornell's Department of Rural Sociology. Carol Anderson, associate director of Cornell Cooperative Extension, is serving as acting director until April 15. Ewert is now on sabbatical, on a Fulbright Scholarship, doing research in the Philippines.

"Merrill's solid experience and his years in education will serve him well in his new position. I am looking forward to working with him," said Francille Firebaugh, dean of the College of Human Ecology at Cornell.

"Merrill is giving us a solid foundation so that Cornell can continue to help sustain production agriculture, food, health, nutrition and environmental programs throughout New York," said Daryl B. Lund, the Ronald P. Lynch Dean of Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. "He'll be a very strong leader."

"As an educator, I've spent my career designing, studying, or teaching about community-based approaches to sustainable development," Ewert said. "Cornell Cooperative Extension is beautifully positioned to help New York communities to address local problems through nonformal education programs. It has an experienced, dedicated and highly respected staff of educators, backed up by a world-class research university. In that context, the opportunity to help focus Cornell Cooperative Extension's vision and shape its strategy as we move into the next millennium is simply irresistible."

The cooperative extension system has its roots in the federal land-grant law, passed under the Morrill Act in 1862, and in the federal Smith-Lever Act of 1914, which directly created the cooperative extension system nationwide. Cornell's mission as a land-grant university is to provide education, research and extension -- that is, to extend to the community the knowledge gained at the university. Cornell Cooperative Extension helps fulfill this mission by disseminating a wide variety of information and programs to rural and urban communities throughout New York state.

Ewert earned a bachelor's degree in 1967 from Tabor College, Hillsboro, Kan. He earned a master's in cultural anthropology in 1971, and a doctorate in adult and continuing education in 1977, both from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Prior to coming to Cornell in 1991, Ewert served as director of extension and continuing education at Wheaton College, Wheaton, Ill., from 1986 to 1990.