Faculty

Below you will find a listing of faculty within the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences. These faculty have primary responsibility for the coursework required for the Child Development/Early Childhood Education career path.

Susan Churchill, Ph.D., Associate Professor. Research Interests: Child development; Head Start families; Transition to public school; Influence of temperament

Carolyn P. Edwards, Ph.D., Professor, Psychology and Family and Consumer Sciences. Research Interests: Child development and early childhood education; Child care quality; Cultural contexts of child development; International early childhood programs (Italy, China, Korea, Norway); Parental cultural beliefs about children's development.

Mary Gabriel, Lecturer, Child Development Lab. International study of children, families, schools, and communities; Family strengths and resiliency.

Julie Jones-Branch, Lecturer, Child Development Lab

Jennifer Leeper Miller , Lecturer, Child Development Lab

Helen H. Raikes, Ph.D., Professor. Intervention programs for vulnerable children, 0-5; Antecedents to language and literacy development; Parent-child and teacher-child relationships and their relations to outcomes; Optimizing parenting practices; Assessment and provision of quality interventions in child care programs.

Michelle Rupiper, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer and Director of the Child Development Lab. Research Interests: Developmental changes in verbal and imaginal mnemonic techniques for serial recall; Assessment of preschool children; Quality, compensation and job satisfaction of early educators.

Julia Torquati, Ph.D., Associate Professor. Research Interests: Human development infancy to young adulthood, specifically on process of risk, resilience, and adaptation; Poverty and homelessness; Environmental education.

Pauline Zeece, Ph.D., Professor. Research Interests: Child development; Early Childhood Education; Head Start program evaluation and outcomes.