Dr. Stephanie M. Curenton is a professor in the Educational Leadership & Policy Studies Department at Boston University Wheelock College of Education & Human Development and the director of the Center on the Ecology of Early Development (CEED). She also is a Senior Fellow at the Harvard University Center on the Developing Child and is a Fellow (nonresident) at the Urban Institute.
She is a developmental and community psychologist who studies the social, cognitive, and language development of racially and linguistically marginalized children within various ecological contexts, such as parent-child interactions, early childhood care and education, professional development interventions for the early childhood workforce, and related state and federal policies designed to promote the positive development and health of young children.
Dr. Curenton has received national policy fellowships from several organizations, including the Society for Research on Child Development (SRCD)/American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and the National Black Child Development Institute. She has worked as a research policy fellow in the US Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Child Care and has served on the Massachusetts Board of Early Education and Care. She previously served on the boards of National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and local Head Start programs. Presently, she serves on the leadership council for the Center on Early Childhood at Stanford University.
Dr. Curenton’s research has been funded by the HHS Office of Program Research and Evaluation (OPRE), the National Academy of Science Ford Predoctoral Fellowship, American Education Research Association-National Science Foundation (AERA-NSF), the Foundation for Child Development, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Imaginable Futures, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. She was an associate editor for Early Education and Development and Early Childhood Research Quarterly, and now serves as an associate editor for Child Development.