Joel Ager Jr., Ph.D., a longtime faculty member of the Wayne State University School of Medicine, has died.
Dr. Ager died Nov. 15. He was 87. His family is honoring his request that there be no funeral or services.
At the time of his death, preparations were under way to have him named professor emeritus.
Dr. Ager joined Wayne State University as an assistant professor of Psychology in 1958, rising to the rank of full professor in 1975. After he retired from the Department of Psychology in 1998, he continued working with the university.
Colleagues said he helped launch the Center for Healthcare Effectiveness Research in 1994, and served as its interim director from 1995 to 1997. Dr. Ager became a member of the Department of Family Medicine and Public Health Sciences in 2006 when CHER and Community Medicine were merged. He continued his research as a part-time faculty member until his death.
"Joel was a highly intelligent, knowledgeable and very creative scientist," said Robert Sokol, M.D., recently retired John M. Malone Jr., M.D., Endowed Chair and director of the C.S. Mott Center for Human Growth & Development at the Wayne State University School of Medicine. "Many statisticians can run canned stat programs, and that's not to be sneezed at. Joel was able to understand the problem and create solutions to some very difficult problems. He was a superb practical biomedical/psychological statistician.
"His legacy is not only in the large number of excellent publications in which he participated, but even more importantly in the remarkable number of master's and doctoral prepared statisticians he trained, many here at Wayne, but now dispersed nationally," Dr. Sokol added. "Most had instilled in them the same enthusiasm for research and for getting the right answer, so to speak, that were Joel's hallmark. Great universities depend on 'lifers' like Joel, who contribute year after year, indeed decade after decade, providing outstanding teaching, research and mentoring."
Dr. Ager served as a principal investigator for four National Institutes of Health grants on the topic of family planning services provision and as co-principal investigator for numerous other grants, including a number in the area of the effects of fetal exposure to alcohol and drugs on child development.
"Joel Ager was an unsung hero, an exceptional intellect, who made the academic community at Wayne State University a better place for his capacity to bring relevance to sometimes arcane research, for his commitment to supporting and promoting young faculty and students in their research careers - and personally - for his sage advice and sometimes amusing insights into the intrigues of an inscrutable academic community," said Michael Massanari, M.D., former director of the Center for Healthcare Effectiveness Research. "He will be missed, but his contributions to this and other communities will live on through the lives and careers of those he has influenced."
Many of Dr. Ager's students have gone on to become respected experts in their fields of study, including Norine Johnson, a former president of the American Psychological Association, and James Prochaska, who developed the Transtheoretical Model of Behavior Change.
He is survived by his children, Joel Ager III (Christine); John Ager (Cyndi) and Catherine Ager; his sister, Patricia (Mark) Lewis; and five grandchildren. He was predeceased by his wife, Elizabeth, in1995.