About the Mary E. Walsh Center for Thriving Children
All children rely on relationships and systems of support to develop, learn, and thrive. The Mary E. Walsh Center for Thriving Children (CTC) uses research and data to identify and evaluate strategies that successfully transform schools and communities into systems of opportunity for all students. By engaging in research and convening educators, policy makers, and community leaders, the Center is a catalyst for developing and implementing programs that are effective, systemic, and scalable. We conduct interdisciplinary research that builds on the strengths of both science and practice to understand what it takes to produce true opportunity for all, as well as consider the root causes of the achievement gap and a wide array of programs and practices that promote healthy child development. Our research helps to identify solutions that are sustainable and scalable. We share the results of our work, including best practices, with a broad spectrum of education leaders, policy makers, and community organizations to inform and improve programs, practice, and policy, and inspire decision makers to reconsider what is possible for all students.
Under the Center鈥檚 umbrella,听City Connects听puts research into practice by providing a network of care and supports around each individual student to ensure that they are ready to learn and engage in school. The intervention provides customized, comprehensive, coordinated and continuous student support in ways that are quantifiably impactful and cost-efficient.
What We Do
Our mission is to study and share the most effective ways to address the out-of-school factors impacting student learning and thriving in schools, and to support practitioners in implementing evidence-driven integration of school and community resources.
The Center serves as a national center for researchers, programs, and practitioners. We reach across multiple disciplines and approaches to share knowledge, promote best practices, test out innovations in the field via听City Connects鈥櫶齬esearch & development platform, research impacts on student outcomes, and provide professional development, technical assistance, and resources to support effective integration of school and community resources at scale.
People
The听Mary E. Walsh Center for Thriving Children uses research and data to identify and evaluate strategies that successfully transform schools and communities into systems of opportunity for all students.
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Eric Dearing
Executive Director and Professor
Eric Dearing, Ph.D. is the Executive Director of the Mary E. Walsh Center for Thriving Children and is a Professor of Applied Developmental Psychology in the Lynch School of Education and Human Development at 艾可直播 College. He also has a Visiting Professor position in the Department of Education Sciences at the University of Oslo, Norway. Prior to moving into the Executive Director position, Eric worked as a 艾可直播consultant to the City Connects evaluation team for over 15 years. He has over 100 publications on the ways that families, educators, and communities can promote the achievement and well-being of children. He also co-edited the Wiley Handbook of Early Childhood Programs, Practices, and Policies, and co-authored the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine report Parenting Matters: Supporting Parents of Children 0-8.
Claire Foley
Associate Director of the Center and Research Professor
Claire Foley, Ph.D., serves as the Associate Director of City Connects, housed in the听Mary E. Walsh Center for Thriving Children at 艾可直播 College. During her tenure, Claire has collaborated to advance the implementation and evaluation of City Connects, a model of comprehensive, integrated student support that is grounded in the developmental sciences. Claire serves as a liaison across research and practice teams and contributes to reporting and publication of project findings. Claire also contributes to cross-project efforts on measuring fidelity of implementation and on maintaining and developing a proprietary software system that enables comprehensive student support in schools. Claire鈥檚 academic background is in linguistics, with a focus on syntactic theory and language acquisition. At 艾可直播 College and in prior positions, Claire has published and taught in linguistics and led experimental research groups.
Mary Walsh
Executive Director of City Connects, Senior Fellow of the Center, and Professor Emerita
Mary Walsh, Ph.D is the Founding Director and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Thriving Children and remains the Executive Director of City Connects. She is the Daniel E. Kearns Chair of Urban Education and Innovative Leadership Emerita, and currently Research Professor at the Lynch School of Education and Human Development at 艾可直播 College. Over the past 20 years, Mary has led the design, implementation, and innovations of the City Connects research-practice partnership.听
Judith Alexander
Senior Manager of Learning & Development
Julia Blessing
Administrative Officer
Jen Bouckaert
Senior Manager of Coaching & Networks
Tina Chen-Xu
Director of Expansion and Operations
Tina Chen-Xu, M.B.A., serves as the Center's Director of Expansion and Operations. Tina leads efforts to build and execute our Center's strategic roadmap for growth. In her role, Tina seeks to build effective practices for scaling the Center's service offerings through partnership development, project management of pilot initiatives, and resource management. Tina鈥檚 work includes project management leadership for the recent modernization of the City Connects proprietary data system, City Connects' first international expansion to Dublin, Ireland as well as the Midwest Technical Assistance Center. Tina contributes to the assessment and planning of the organization-wide business operations to implement capacity building efforts and models for sharing and delivering best practices in integrated student support. As a prior management consultant with Public Consulting Group, Tina brings experience working with state and local government and community agencies nationally to support the effective delivery of family assistance, health, and educational services to children and families.
David Coleman
Communications Manager
Jennifer Coyle
Assistant Director for Reporting, Stewardship, and Administration
Kathleen Trong Drucker
Senior Evaluation Researcher
Danielle Garten
Research Associate
Haibin Jiang
Researcher
Jordan Lawson
Researcher
Yan Leigh
Director of Research and Evaluation
Yan Leigh, Ph.D., serves as the Director of Research and Evaluation at the听Mary E. Walsh Center for Thriving Children at 艾可直播 College's Lynch School of Education and Human Development. Prior to joining 艾可直播 College, Yan served as the Director of the Office of Research and Development at the Mississippi Department of Education, where she developed a dynamic research framework and agenda, led the Department's research team, and produced research to inform evidence-based decision-making for the Department's leadership. Yan is a Next Generation Leaders Awardee with the Consortium for School Networking, and a State Education Fellow with Results for America. Yan is a member of the Diverse and Learner-Ready Teachers Initiative at the Council of Chief State School Officers, and a member of the National Center for Education Statistics Expert Panel on Educational Technology Equity Initiatives in the U.S. Department of Education. Yan also serves on the Policy Council with the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research. With doctoral training in Economics, Yan is also experienced in project management and portfolio management, large-scale grant management as the Principal Investigator, and data privacy and governance.
Kevin Lopez Mader
Manager of Software Systems and Development
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Jillian O'Neil
Senior Manager of Coaching and School Partnerships
Illia Polovnikov
Researcher
Cynthia Scheller
Director of Student Support Programs and Practice
Cynthia A. Scheller, Ed. D, serves as the Director of Student Support Programs and Practice at the Mary E. Walsh Center for Thriving Children. Previously, Cindy spent 23 years in public K-12 education, including nearly 10 years as a public elementary school principal in Providence and North Kingstown, Rhode Island. During her time as a principal, Cindy led school reform efforts at the building level, using data to inform decision-making, resulting in significant gains in student achievement. Her work focused on the importance of building teacher leadership capacity through a distributive leadership model as well as creating enriching learning opportunities for all students.听听Prior to her time as a principal, Cindy worked at both the district and state levels in Rhode Island. As Supervisor of Secondary Reform Initiatives, and later Director of Professional Learning in the Providence Public Schools, Cindy led professional development, focusing on increasing teacher effectiveness and improving academic achievement via high-quality curriculum and differentiated instruction. She also established collaborative relationships with other key stakeholders, such as labor unions, neighboring district leaders and the RI Department of Education to support teacher induction and professional development. In these and other experiences, she applied learnings from her doctoral work at Johnson & Wales University, where she earned an Ed.D. in educational leadership. Cindy鈥檚 career began in the classroom. She followed her passion for music and taught junior high school music education for eight years.听
Daniel Triana Alvarado
Program Systems Coordinator
Joan Wasser Gish
Director of Systemic Impact
Joan Wasser Gish, J.D., M.A., serves as the Director of Systemic Impact at the Mary E. Walsh Center for Thriving Children. Joan works to embed what we are learning about effective and cost-efficient approaches to integrating comprehensive supports for children, youth, and families, into policy and practice at scale. Joan works with policymakers at the federal and state levels, and with numerous national and state-level coalitions and advisory boards, to translate lessons from research and implementation into a roadmap for action. Joan also catalyzes and supports strategic partnerships for the Center. Twice appointed by the Governor to the Massachusetts Board of Early Education and Care, during her eleven year tenure, Joan helped to build systems that improved implementation quality and benefited children. Joan has worked on education, social services, and equity issues as an attorney, in a Presidential campaign, in the United States Senate, and in a community-based non profit. Joan has been published by the Washington Post, Brookings Institute, Education Week, 艾可直播 Herald, and Commonwealth Magazine, and frequently lectures at Harvard University and 艾可直播 College.
Nan Yang
Survey Researcher
Jee Hun "Mike" Yoo
Researcher
Contact Us
For inquiries regarding the Mary E. Walsh Center for Thriving Children, please contact:
Julia Blessing
Administrative Officer
Lynch School of Education and Human Development
艾可直播 College
Campion Hall, Room 305D
140 Commonwealth Ave.
Chestnut Hill, MA 02467
617-552-4231
cityconnects@bc.edu
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