Students, Education and Leadership Development

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The Center’s Education and Leadership Development (ELD) agenda is a full suite of formal and informal opportunities committed to enhancing the growth of the next generation during the critical early stages of their intellectual development. We are also focused on building the capacity of career professionals to translate research into policy and action. As such, we engage both current and future leaders in constructive dialogue to expose them to new paradigms and theories in order to guide their understanding of how to leverage this new knowledge on behalf of vulnerable children and their families.

We know more now than ever before about how the continuous interaction between genetics and experience influences the construction of brain architecture and the development of human capacities. Scientific advances are deepening our knowledge about how and why growing up in a highly disadvantaged environment can produce adverse physiological effects on the brain, the cardiovascular system, and the immune system that can have lifelong impacts on both learning and health. Stated simply, we have an unprecedented opportunity to launch a new, science-driven era to promote the healthy development of all children, particularly those whose life prospects are compromised by significant adversity.

Given the alignment of the Center’s mission with Harvard President Drew Faust’s mandate to promote a supportive climate for student inquiry, we are well poised to create exciting activities and programs that will prepare young leaders to succeed, both in and outside the classroom. Moreover, our commitment to public engagement bolsters our interest in bringing the integrated science of child development to the real world in a variety of ways, educating current decision-makers in the public and private sectors as they work to improve the lives of children and families around the world.

Activities

Given the Center’s clear Education and Leadership Development (ELD) mandate, it is presented with a wonderful opportunity to tap into its own programmatic and faculty resources together with those from across the University in pursuit of three specific goals:

Educate future leaders at Harvard University through formal and informal vehicles about the underlying science of learning, health, and behavior and the lifelong impacts of the earliest years of life.
Support innovative and multidisciplinary research of the next generation of scholars that will build the knowledge base for application to policy and practice.
Provide professional development opportunities for current leaders in the field in order to enhance their capacity to develop and move innovative, science-based policy and practice agendas.

Our ELD activities are designed to introduce undergraduates, graduate students, and professionals to new paradigms of thought and to enhance their work—whether that be at the University or in the real world—and to draw a link to how scientific discovery can be translated into policy and action.

Student Opportunity

Student Seminar Series Leader

The Center currently has one opening for a Harvard graduate student to lead a Student Seminar Series designed to foster interdisciplinary conversations within the graduate and undergraduate student community. This is a paid position. Students will be expected to work with the Center’s Education and Leadership Development Senior Program Manager to design this seminar series. The Center is looking for someone to work 5 hours per month for the academic year. The seminars will be two hours long and will be held once a month from September 2012 through April 2013 from 5:30-7:30pm.

Student Opportunity

Internship Opportunity: Zambia Internship 2012

Innovations for Poverty Action-Zambia & the Zambian Early Childhood Development Project are looking for students with an interest in global health, development economics, education and/or early childhood development (ECD) to support ongoing research in Zambia. Interns are expected to spend at least two months in Zambia this summer (starting in May or June 2012), and to support all aspects of a research project, including data collection, data processing and analysis.

Student Opportunity

Volunteer Note Takers, Frontiers of Innovation

The Center on the Developing Child is seeking volunteer note takers for our Frontiers of Innovation working meeting May 16 and 17, 2012. This is a terrific opportunity for students to be a part of a highly-interactive meeting of the leading researchers, practitioners, policymakers and philanthropists interested in significantly improving outcomes for young children and families. Applications are due by Monday, April 30, 2012.

Executive Leadership Program

The mood was buoyant and collegial, but the stakes were high—planning a better future for children in a country experiencing rapid economic growth and wide societal disparities. This group of nearly 50 Brazilian politicians, policymakers, public managers and civil-society leaders had come together for the first time just five days earlier. What united them—both physically and philosophically—was an executive leadership course on early childhood development (ECD), which was hosted by the Center on the Developing Child.

Courses

Whether you are an undergraduate or a graduate student, Harvard offers a wealth of courses in a variety of scientific disciplines and policy areas that cover learning, behavior, and health from both domestic and international perspectives.

Three Harvard Graduate Students Receive 2012-13 Julius B. Richmond Fellowships

Three Harvard graduate students have been named recipients of Julius B. Richmond Fellowships from the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. The doctoral students will each receive a dissertation grant totaling $10,000 from the Center to fund independent research during the 2012-13 academic year.

In awarding the one-year Fellowships, the Center selects candidates with excellent academic records and defined research interests in child health and development. Priority is given to applicants whose work aligns with the mission of the Center, crosses disciplinary boundaries, and has implications for social policy.

Major support for the Center to provide learning opportunities has been provided by:
Harvard University and Blaise Pasztory

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Center on the Developing Child
at Harvard University
50 Church Street, 4th Floor
Cambridge, MA 02138

(617) 496-0578
developingchild@harvard.edu