Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Virginia and Leonard Marx Professor of Child Development and Education at Teachers College and the College of Physicians and Surgeons, will give the 2012 Bennett Lecture in Prevention Science at 4 p.m. Nov. 15, in the Bennett Pierce Living Center, 110 Henderson Building. The lecture, titled "Disadvantage and Development: Strategies to Reduce Income Gaps in School Readiness," is sponsored by the Prevention Research Center for the Promotion of Human Development at Penn State through the Bennett Endowment to the center. It is free and open to the public. Brooks-Gunn is a developmental psychologist specializing in policy-oriented research that focuses on family and community influences on the development of young children. Her research centers on the design and evaluation of interventions and policies aimed at enhancing the well-being of children living in poverty. She looks at factors that contribute to both positive and negative outcomes (and changes in well-being) across childhood, adolescence and adulthood, with a particular focus on key social and biological transitions -- such as in schooling, family structure and dynamics, parenthood, puberty, sexual onset and pregnancy -- over the life course.