Hilary Horn Ratner of Detroit has been appointed associate dean of the Graduate School. She joined the faculty in Wayne State's department of psychology in 1981.

Ratner has published widely in the area of young children's memory and learning. In particular, she has studied how young children learn from parents and other adults in everyday activities.

At WSU she has been particularly active in training graduate teaching assistants and expects to continue this involvement as a member of the Graduate School. Ratner received her doctoral degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1979; she completed a National Research Service Award post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Chicago in 1981.

In 1993 she was named to the rank of professor at WSU, where she has received a Career Development Chair (1988), the President's Award for Excellence in Teaching (1996), and the Michigan Association of State Governing Boards' Distinguished Faculty Award (1997). In 1999, she was named a fellow by the American Psychological Association.