About Rick Settersten

Richard (Rick) A. Settersten, Jr., PhD, is University Distinguished Professor of Life Course and Human Development and Interim Dean of the College of Health at Oregon State University. He has served as Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs at OSU, Head of the School of Social and Behavioral Health Sciences in OSU’s College of Health, and is the founding Director of the Hallie E. Ford Center for Healthy Children and Families. Before moving to OSU, Settersten was Professor of Sociology at Case Western Reserve University. He was a member of the decade-long MacArthur Research Network on Transitions to Adulthood and Public Policy, and has served as Chair of the Section on Aging and the Life Course of the American Sociological Association.

Settersten is a specialist in life-course studies, with expertise spanning adolescence, adulthood, and aging and a strong record of experience conducting research and collaborating across disciplines and life periods. His research has often focused on the first and last few decades of adulthood, always with an eye toward understanding the whole of human life.

A graduate of Northwestern University, Settersten has held fellowships in Sociology and Social Policy at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Education in Berlin, Germany, the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern, and the Spencer Foundation in Chicago.  He is author or editor of the books Doing Transitions in the Life Course, Living on the Edge, Aging, Society, and the Life Course (6th edition), Precarity and Ageing, Long-Term Outcomes of Military Service, Handbook of Theories of Aging (3rd edition), Not Quite Adults, Handbook of Sociology of Aging, and On the Frontier of Adulthood, among others, as well as issues of Advances in Life Course Research, Public Policy and Aging Report, Research on Aging, and Research in Human Development.

Besides MacArthur, his research has been supported by divisions of the National Institutes of Health—including projects on the long-term effects of military service on health and well-being in later life (National Institute on Aging), scientific and medical efforts to control human aging (National Institute on Aging), and personalized genomic medicine (National Human Genome Research Institute).

Settersten has participated in National Academy of Science/Institute on Medicine panel discussions on the health, safety, and well-being of young adults, and the social demography, epidemiology, and sociology of aging. He is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America, has served on review committees of the National Institutes of Health, and was co-editor of the journal Research in Human Development.

Between 2015 and 2021, Settersten co-led the Oregon Family Impact Seminars, a series of nonpartisan workshops designed to bring the best possible scientific evidence to state legislators, agency heads, and other leaders to guide policy decisions that affect children, youth, and families. These seminars played an important role in informing legislative actions, including two ‘firsts’ in the nation: In 2016, Oregon became the first state to allocate a greater percentage of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) to young families; in 2017, the reinforcement of HB 3141 required K-8 students to receive at least 150 minutes of physical education each week; and in 2019, Oregon signed into law the first statewide rent control bill (SB 608).

Settersten’s research has been covered in many media outlets, including the Economist, The Atlantic, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the New Yorker, Christian Science Monitor, NPR, BBC, and U.S. News and World Report.

He has been recognized with the Matilda White Riley Distinguished Scholar Award of the American Sociological Association and the Distinguished Lifetime Career Award of the Society for the Study of Human Development. His work has also twice been recognized with the Richard Kalish Innovative Publication Award of the Gerontological Society of America and the Outstanding Publication Award of the Section on Aging and the Life Course of the American Sociological Association. At OSU, he has received the university’s Impact Award for Outstanding Scholarship, as well as the Faculty Excellence Award and the Excellence in Teaching and Mentoring Award of the College of Public Health and Human Sciences. In 2022, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland.

For the 2024-2025 academic year, Settersten is participating as a fellow in the project Education and Learning for Longer Lives sponsored by the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and the Center on Longevity at Stanford University. The group – composed of academics, innovators, venture capitalists, and philanthropists – is building a national vision for human capital development and shared prosperity.