What do the New York state apparel industry, the Czech Republic, Vermont home knitters and Cornell have in common? Answer: Suzanne Loker, professor of textiles and apparel. After years as an administrator, most recently as professor and director of the School of Family and Consumer Sciences at the University of Idaho, Loker came to Cornell this January with a strong desire to return to the trenches of teaching, research and extension.

"Although I drew great satisfaction from facilitating others to teaching and research excellence, I am looking forward to working directly with students and industry and spending more time on scholarship," she said. In her new appointment, she will focus on the needs of New York state apparel manufacturers. Although the apparel industry has faltered in the past two decades, New York still employs more than 100,000 workers in 5,000 shops, making it the second-largest apparel manufacturing state in the country.

Using the results of a Cornell Cooperative Extension survey of New York state apparel manufacturers, Loker plans to identify specific educational and research needs of the surveyed firms, develop a networking association of alliances among the firms and help the industry adopt state-of-the-art computer-aided design and information technology.

Loker knows the apparel industry well, having worked with various companies on student projects and research. She has consulted with the Geiger Apparel Manufacturing Co. of Austria and Vermont on international apparel marketing; with IBM (collaborating with Cornell's Susan Watkins, professor of textiles and apparel) on developing a "clean room" garment for semi-conductor manufacturing; and with Black Diamond, Jog Bra and other companies.

Loker comes to Cornell after five years at the University of Idaho, where she supervised 18 faculty members, and 10 years as chair of the Department of Merchandising, Consumer Studies and Design at the University of Vermont, where she supervised 10 faculty members. She also has taught and conducted research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Kansas State University, Washington State University and Queens College of CUNY.

"Over these past 25 years, apparel has dramatically changed as an academic field," said Loker. "In our teaching program, the focus has shifted from personal sewing to an industrial perspective of design, production and marketing apparel. Our scholarship has matured as interdisciplinary connections were strengthened with the natural sciences and women's studies, art history, anthropology and business."

In fact, much of Loker's research looks at these interdisciplinary perspectives, particularly on how gender affects the choice of home-based workers, what kinds of people choose specific types of home-based work, and how home-based workers manage family responsibilities. With two colleagues, she is editing a volume of papers on gender and home-based work that probably will be published early next year. She also has published several academic articles on the privatization and market development for apparel in the Czech Republic and on K-Mart's experience in Eastern Europe.

Although Loker chose apparel because it was one of the few areas open to women in the late 1960s when she earned her bachelor's degree at the University of Wisconsin, it has been a good and lasting fit. After a year as a visiting student at the Fashion Institute of Technology, she decided to avoid the "cutthroat" designer business and focus on apparel manufacturing in academia. She went on to earn a master's degree at Syracuse University (1973) and a doctorate at Kansas State University (1981).

At Cornell, in addition to outreach with the New York state apparel manufacturers, Loker will teach a course that looks at the technical and economic aspects of textile and apparel production by analyzing issues such as efficient manufacturing methods, the global economy, labor, environmental impacts and safety.

"The breadth and depth of the textiles and apparel department in the College of Human Ecology is incredibly stimulating," Loker said recently. "It's invigorating to be working in an environment with so many apparel and textile colleagues who have such a range of perspectives."