About
The ECRC is a community of practitioners and scholars dedicated to the study of contemporary issues that relate to young children, their families, their communities, and their education.
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The ECRC is a community of practitioners and scholars dedicated to the study of contemporary issues that relate to young children, their families, their communities, and their education. Practitioners and researchers who work together through the ECRC embrace a range of innovative evidence-based practice and research methods to increase understanding about children's development and learning within diverse sociocultural contexts.
For over 20 years, the Early Childhood Research Center has brought together interdisciplinary scholars dedicated to leading research initiatives to better understand the lives of young children and their families, educators, and communities.
As you peruse our website, be certain to check out the overview of our current research, upcoming research, and previous research efforts spanning two decades!
We hope you will bookmark our site and follow us on Facebook and Instagram as we work to offer new resources that will make research, theory, and practice accessible to families, teachers, and the community. Watch for our Faculty and Staff Spotlights, Research Highlights, and Community Features
As the University of Louisville moves through a process of developing a 2023-2025 strategic plan, it is our goal to align our work with University of Louisville’s as a great place to learn, work, discover, connect, and honor diversity, equity, and inclusion throughout all that we do: teaching, research, and service.
With that end in mind, we need your help! If you have ideas how the ECRC can support you, please let me know. You can reach me by email at jon.lee@louisville.edu.
Thank you for visiting our page. We look forward to continuing to develop this website so you will return again and again to learn about current research related to how young children learn and how we can all work to support their opportunities to learn, grow, develop, and thrive.
-Dr. Jon Lee
The Interdisciplinary Early Childhood Research Center (ECRC) was established in 1999 by the College of Education and Human Development to conduct and disseminate research about the development and education of young children. It was originally named, "Interdisciplinary Center for Research on Early Childhood Initiatives and Innovations"; however, over the years, it has simply become known as the U of L ECRC.
From the beginning, the ECRC was designed to be a gathering space for a group of interdisciplinary researchers to explore challenges and solutions in the education of young children as well as an ongoing effort to engage in original and collaborative research endeavors to better understand the lives of children..
The ECRC has benefitted from the leadership and guidance from many prolific scholars in the field of early childhood education and development. The ECRC was under the direction of the Ashland-Nystrand Endowed Chair, Dr. Victoria Molfese (1999-2011), followed by Dr. Kathryn Whitmore Barten (2012-2017), then Dr. Lori Norton-Meier (2018-2020), and Dr. Ginevra Courtade (2017-2020). To explore the two decades of work in the ECRC, follow the Research section of our webpage. To receive updates on our current studies, follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
We work closely with the Early Learning Campus (ELC) to create a state of the art research and teaching and teacher learning facility where children, parents, teachers, and researchers contribute to the research process and dissemination of research findings.
Our mission statement from the conception of the ECRC is this:
The Center's mission is to encourage research activities by faculty within the CEHD and in departments from across the university and the nation with complementary research strengths in areas such as early and middle childhood education, family therapy, music, pediatrics, psychiatry, psychology, public policy, speech pathology, social work, and teacher preparation.
Our work takes place on campus as well as in the community. Our primary location on campus is located in Room 120 of the Porter Education Building.
The refurbished space for the Early Learning Childhood Center is a multi-purpose learning environment for adults working to understand how to best support the learning of children. This space serves as a physical location for researchers to come together and conceptualize, implement, analyze, interpret, and disseminate their work.
Meet Our Team
With 36 years of experience, Jon (he/him/his) is a long time Early Childhood Special Educator and public-school administrator for early childhood programs; including special education, child find services, and family literacy programs. Jon and the family moved to Louisville Kentucky in 2000 where he held appointments with the National Center for Family Literacy, Bellarmine University, and the University of Louisville. Jon earned promotion and tenure (May 2018) during his six-year appointment with the University of Cincinnati, and again as an Associate Professor of Education at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. As of 2023, Jon has returned to the University of Louisville as director of the ECRC.
Jon’s research and teaching focuses on issues relating to family impact on very young children’s emergent literacy development; factors pertaining to children’s social, emotional, and behavioral adjustment to schooling; and applications of Motivational Interviewing (MI) in educational contexts. Jon is a member of the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers and is trained in the use of the Motivational Interviewing Treatment Integrity (MITI) code. Jon works with a highly successful research consortium, whose current research is funded by Institute of Educational Sciences and includes adaptations of the First Step Next early intervention program for preschool-aged children (R324A150221) and children with tertiary behavior challenges in primary classrooms (R324A090237 and R324A150179), as well as the development of educational interventions utilizing MI in various contexts (R324A190173).
Dr. Jill Jacobi-Vessels (she/her/hers) (PhD, University of Louisville, 2008) has seventeen years of experience in administering children’s programs, including five years working with U.S. Army Child Development Services and two years as the Director of the University’s Early Learning Campus. She helped to conduct a large-scale longitudinal Reading and Math study, a longitudinal Scale Up Mathematics Intervention study, and assessed brain responses to auditory and visual stimuli using event related potentials to measure latency and amplitude. Her research interests include kindergarten readiness through play-based learning and drama, pre-and in- service teacher development, preschool learning trajectories in mathematics, and classroom quality and the effects on children’s achievement.
Michele Hemenway Pullen (she/her/hers) is an educator with a background in Psychology and Counseling, Waldorf Education and Learning and Behavior Disorders in addition to Early Childhood. She has taught and trained teachers in Early Childhood and Elementary/Middle School education for over thirty years. Her background in Waldorf Education has led her to implement courses for teachers in how to embed the Arts for improved learning and development in children. She is a Campaign for Black Male Achievement Beloved Community Fellow which is active in the Louisville community and nationally and has written social justice curriculum for 18 years. She formerly coordinated the Early Childhood Department at Ivy Tech Community College which is where she came to appreciate the Child Development Associate process that she currently works with at the Early Childhood Research Center.
Erica Ranade (she/her/hers) is a doctoral student in the Department of Early Childhood and Elementary Education, Middle and Secondary Education, and Special Education in Curriculum and Instruction. She completed her MS (Psychology) and SSP (School Psychology) at Illinois State University. Erica is currently a Graduate Research Assistant for The Early Childhood Research Center. She spent the past nine years working as a school psychologist, behavior analyst, and psychological practitioner in schools, clinics, and private practices specializing in the evaluation and treatment of individuals with neurodevelopmental disabilities. Erica is passionate about working to address systemic barriers to early intervention and medical diagnosis. Erica is a Licensed Psychological Practitioner in Kentucky. In her spare time, Erica enjoys going to concerts, playing guitar, and plant-based cooking.
Jennifer Lee is a unit business manager at the Early Childhood Research Center and Department coordinator of the Special Education, Early Childhood & Prevention Science at the College of Education and Human Development
Katherine Jordan is a Clinical Assistant Professor at the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Louisville and staff member of the ECRC team.
Betty Doyle (she/her/hers) grew up in Bardstown, KY and moved to Louisville to attend the University of Louisville for both my undergraduate and graduate degrees. She obtained a B.S. in Elementary Education, and Special Education with a concentration in Learning and Behavior Disorders. She received her M.Ed. in Early Childhood Education. Since a M.Ed. is her highest level of education, she's plain old "Betty," not Dr. Doyle, and all of her students (and many others) refer to her as “Ms. Betty” in the spirit of early childhood education. Before coming to U of L as an employee, she was a first grade teacher in Meade County. She started at U of L as a research assistant in 1993, working on the grant that eventually lead to the B-5 teacher certification in Kentucky. She worked as a research assistant on various grants for several years, before becoming a full-time faculty member in 2003.
Dianna Zink (she/her/hers) is a trainer and curriculum specialist for Child Development Associate degree trainings through the University of Louisville/Ohio Valley Education Consortium (OVEC) Partnership grant. She has developed 120 hours of curriculum and instructed Child Development Associate candidates in all areas of competency for certification through the National Association of Education of Young Children. Dianna provides support throughout the process, developing the professional portfolio, observing candidates as part of their final assessment and providing support for their final written exam.
Dianna has worked multiple roles within early childhood, including the director of the Early Learning Campus and other early childhood centers, as well doing some consulting work as well.