CCIDS Honors Retiring Director and Founder Lu Zeph

On June 18, 2015, the University of Maine Center for Community Inclusion and Disability Studies (CCIDS) held a retirement tribute to honor founding Director, Lu Zeph, in conjunction with the Center’s 2015 Daring to Dream Awards. Spoken, written and video tributes were shared from friends, families, university colleagues, community, state and federal partners, legislators and policymakers. Photos from the tribute and celebration are available in a photo album on the Center’s Facebook page. (Photo caption: Charles Zeph, Lu Zeph, and son JJ Zeph.)

For the past 23 years, Lu has served as the founding Director of CCIDS, Maine’s University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities. She joined the faculty of the University of Maine College of Education and Human Development in 1979 where she established and coordinated graduate education in the area of severe disabilities until 1992. As a Kennedy Public Policy Fellow in 1999, Lu served as an advisor to the late James M. Jeffords, Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. From 2000-2001, she served as Executive Director of the Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. Foundation while on leave from the University of Maine.

Lu has received the University of Maine President’s Award for Public Service (1992) and lifetime achievement awards from the Association of University Centers on Disabilities (2009) and TASH New England (2010). Under her leadership, the Center for Community Inclusion and Disability Studies was recognized in 2013 by the University of Maine and the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities (APLU) for two decades of exemplary work in community engagement. Lu will be retiring on June 30, 2015 after 35 years of service to the University of Maine.