Penny E. Cook Appointed Assistant Vice President, Corporate Secretary

The Rockefeller University has named Penny E. Cook assistant vice president for faculty and community affairs and as corporate secretary.

As assistant vice president, Cook assists the university’s president, Nobel laureate Torsten N. Wiesel, M.D., with issues of faculty governance and community relations. As corporate secretary, she serves as a liaison between the university and its board of trustees.

Prior to her appointment, Cook was the administrative director of the Skirball Institute at New York University. She previously directed the Office of Sponsored Programs at Rockefeller from 1991 to 1995.

Cook earned a bachelor of arts degree in 1969 from Western College in Oxford, Ohio. She received a bachelor of science in nursing from the University of Bridgeport in 1981 and a masters degree in public administration from New York University in 1991.

Cook began her career at Harvard University Medical Center, working in the Channing Laboratory for Infectious Diseases from 1969 to 1972. She then moved to the Department of Perinatal Medicine at the University of Alabama Medical Center. In 1976, Cook joined the Yale-New Haven Medical Center’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

In 1981, Cook became director of planning and the senior healthcare planner at Bellevue Hospital Center, where she oversaw the offices of planning, marketing and environmental design. In 1984, she became associate director of grant administration and sponsored programs at the New York University Medical Center.

Cook is a member of the National Council of Research Administrators and the Society of Research Administrators. She has served as a member of the business consultant staff for the National Institutes of Health and on the Health Services Research Committee of the Greater New York Hospital Association.

A native of Connecticut, Cook resides in West Norwalk.