Molly C(hernow) Gorelick (1920-2003) Biography

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for SATA sketch: Born September 19, 1920, in New York, NY; died December 17, 2003, in Los Angeles, CA. Psychologist, educator, and author. Gorelick was a noted psychologist, professor, and researcher who specialized primarily in the educational and developmental needs of children ranging from those with special needs to those who were considered gifted. She attended both undergraduate and graduate courses at the University of California at Los Angeles, where she completed her Ed.D. in 1962. Gorelick began her career as a Los Angeles teacher from 1948 to 1962, also working as a counselor from 1957 to 1958. Conducting research at UCLA, she joined the faculty there as an instructor in psychology and education in 1957, and also worked as a research assistant and supervisor of the psychology clinic at the university during the early 1960s. During the late 1960s, she was chief of guidance services at the Exceptional Children's Foundation in Los Angeles and an assistant professor at the University of Southern California's School of Education. The last twenty-one years of her career were spent as a professor at California State University at Northridge, where she retired in 1991. During her career, Gorelick continuously demonstrated her concern for the mental and physical well-being of children, performing such tasks as researching children's nutritional needs and training Los Angeles area teachers on how to handle the many different challenges of that city's multi-ethnic student population. She was also the author of books for children and adults. Her children's books, written with Jean Boreman, include such titles as Fire on Sun Mountain (1967) and Snow Storm at Green Valley (1968); her nonfiction works were designed for educators and include Careers in Integrated Early Childhood Settings (1975) and Recipes for Teaching (1975). Gorelick's interest in children also led her to cowrite the documentary A Child Is a Child (1981) with Al Levitt, a film that won third place at the Montevideo, Uruguay, film festival.