Alan Roy Sutherland, who directed the first National Academy of Sciences' study of the health and human service needs of homeless people in the late 1980's,  died on February 12, 2026 from pneumonia. At the time  of his death, Dr. Sutherland was Professor at the University of Maryland University College, where he had served as Director of Interdisciplinary Studies in the Graduate School of Management and Technology prior to his retirement in 2012.

Prior to coming to Washington, DC to direct the study at the Institute of Medicine of the NAS, Dr. Sutherland had served in the management of programs for the mentally ill and mentally retarded for the State of New York in several state facilities in the metropolitan New York City area.  In 1978,  he was appointed Director of the Long Island Developmental Center, a state facility for people with developmental disabilities, where he greatly expanded the program to  develop community-based residential alternatives that ultimately led to the facility's closure in 1992. At the time of his appointment, he was the youngest person to head the 500-acre facility and the first non-physician named as Director.  He left that position to conduct full-time research into the causes of opposition to community residential programs for the developmentally disabled, publishing his doctoral dissertation on the subject in 1984.

The third child of Arthur A. Sutherland Sr and Margaret Schweitzer Sutherland,  Dr. Sutherland was born in the Queens Village section of New York City on January 15, 1944.  Much of his interest in mental retardation was derived from the fact that his older sister, Priscilla, was born with Downs Syndrome; after the death of both his parents, he served as his sister's guardian until her death in 1991.  Educated in the New York City public school system, he received a Bachelor's Degree in Fine Arts from Pratt Institute and Master of Public Administration and Doctor of Philosophy in Public Administration degrees from New York University.  While a sophomore at Pratt Institute, he was elected president of the student government at the age of 18, the youngest college student government president in the United States at that time.

After completing his research in mental retardation, Dr. Sutherland returned to  management as director of the 800-bed shelter for homeless men operated by Volunteers of America for the City of New York.  Following  his work at the Academy of Sciences, he served as Deputy Director of the U.S. Interagency Council on the Homeless when that agency was created by Congress in 1987 as part of the Steward B. McKinney Act and then as the national director of Travelers Aid.  He returned to New York in 1992 to serve as Executive Director of the AIDS Center of his native Queens County and then was appointed Chair of the Department of Management Studies at Southeastern University in Washington,  DC, prior to his appointment to the full-time UMUC faculty in 2000. In 2004, Dr. Sutherland received the Stanley J. Drazek Excellence in Teaching Award,  UMUC's highest faculty honor.

At the time of his  death, Dr. Sutherland was a resident of Oakland Park, FL.  He was a member of Augustana Lutheran Church in Washington, where he served as an usher. He is survived by his brother,  Dr. Arthur A. Sutherland Jr, his niece,  Dr. Laurie A. Sutherland and her husband,  Dr. Theodore Papalimberis, as well as grandnieces  Arielle and Evelyn Papalimberis and Alexandra and Elysabeth Kimball, and their father Jeffrey S. Kimball. He is preceded in death by his parents, his sister, his niece Amy Sutherland Kimball and his sister-in-law Marian Oliver Sutherland.

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