Penelope Richardson; Adult Education Expert

Penelope L. Richardson, 51, former chairwoman of the USC department of adult and professional education. Considered an expert on courses for non-traditional adult students and career development of women, she currently was studying older women who had re-entered school. She joined the faculty of the USC School of Education department of higher education in 1978 and was chairwoman from 1987 to 1989. Earlier, she had been director of the Lifelong Learning Project for the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare during the Carter Administration and the author of many reports, some of them to the U.S. Congress. After suffering a brain hemorrhage in 1989, she began research on the recovery processes for catastrophic disabilities. That research, conducted with her USC colleague Florence Clark, was recently presented at the annual conference of the American Occupational Therapy Assn. in Seattle. In Los Angeles on Aug. 1 of a brain hemorrhage.