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By Jenna Somers AI data centers seem to be cropping up everywhere, often in rural farming communities, where crops are grown, where livelihoods depend on their yield and where their yield depends on groundwater, the cost of energy and infrastructure, and the health of the environment. Increasingly, these communities, in… Read More

By Jennifer Kiilerich On March 27, more than 100 students, faculty and practitioners celebrated the launch of the Vanderbilt Early Childhood Research Collaborative, established at Vanderbilt Peabody College of education and human development. The new initiative will drive innovation and promote the thriving of young children (birth… Read More

By Jenna Somers Most elementary school-aged children have a surprising cognitive ability: they can detect—nearly as well as adults—when someone treats people from one social group differently than another. The study, “Children’s and adults’ detection of social biases,” published in January in Child Development, demonstrates children’s emerging capacity to recognize… Read More

By Jenna Somers  When a young student writes “F-L-O-T-E” for “float,” teachers at the Roberts Academy and Dyslexia Center at Vanderbilt University see the progress and potential behind her thinking. Samantha Gesel “Her incorrect spelling of ‘float’ is brilliant!” says Samantha Gesel, assistant director of the Roberts Academy… Read More

Vanderbilt Peabody College of education and human development, long a pioneer in early childhood studies, will launch the Vanderbilt Early Childhood Research Collaborative on March 27, uniting more than 40 faculty members across Vanderbilt University to advance early childhood research and translate findings for families, educators and communities.   The ECRC serves as a hub where… Read More

The Academic Senate at the University of California, Berkeley, created the Clark Kerr Award in 1968 to honor extraordinary contributions to the advancement of higher education. Past recipients include former Supreme Court Justice and California Governor Earl Warren, Carnegie Corporation President Vartan Gregorian, former Harvard President Derek Bok, former… Read More

The American Educational Research Association has named Vanderbilt University’s Laurie Cutting, Patricia and Rodes Hart Professor of Neuroscience in the Department of Special Education, a 2026 AERA Fellow, an honor recognizing the nation’s top researchers in education and learning. She and the class… Read More

Vanderbilt Peabody College Professors Chezare Warren and Krista Mehari will lead a new study this fall examining Black youth’s contributions to launching Nashville’s Office of Youth Safety, one of a few city government-initiatives in the United States established to take an evidence-based approach to community safety… Read More

By Jenna Somers In February, Vanderbilt Peabody College of education and human development welcomed two distinguished Japanese scholars as part of Vanderbilt’s Global Scholars in Residence program. Emmanuel Manalo, a professor of educational psychology at Kyoto University, and Yuri Uesaka, an associate professor of psychology at the University of… Read More

By Jenna Somers In February, faculty members from Vanderbilt Peabody College of education and human development participated in the National Conference on Education, presented by AASA, the School Superintendents Association, held in Nashville, Tennessee. This annual conference brings together district leaders from across the country to engage with leading… Read More

By Jennifer Kiilerich In several Tennessee high school classrooms, computer science students are stepping away from their screens. Instead, as part of a learning tool Vanderbilt University researchers are developing, the teens are actively moving around their environments, enacting algorithms and processes, asking questions and collaborating on solutions. It’s not… Read More

Since 2023, graduates of Vanderbilt Peabody College of education and human development have won five consecutive research awards from the Association of Child Life Professionals. The nine award-winning graduates earned their master’s degrees in Child Studies at Vanderbilt and were students in the Children’s Healthcare, Illness,… Read More

Velma McBride Murry (Vanderbilt University) Velma McBride Murry, has been selected to receive the APA Distinguished Scientific Award for the Applications of Psychology from the American Psychological Association. Murry is the Lois Autrey Betts Professor of Education and Human Development and University Distinguished Professor of Human and Organizational Development… Read More

Being able to tell whether an image is real or generated by AI may be something you’re born with: object recognition. “It’s a stable trait that helps people meet new perceptual challenges,” study author Professor Isabel Gauthier said. “We were shocked to see how intelligence or even technology training did not help accurately judge if a face is AI.” Object recognition has been linked to success in a wide range of tasks, such as X-ray analysis and cancer cell categorization.

Vanderbilt University has announced its fall 2025 recipients of the Seeding Success, Scaling Success and Rapid-Advancement MicroGrant Program awards, providing internal funding to help faculty launch new research directions, strengthen proposals and compete for major external grants. Read More

By Jennifer Kiilerich Toddlerhood is a critical window for developmental interventions. But up to 75 percent of children born with cleft lip or palate don’t receive the speech-language support they may need until grade school. This lag puts them at risk of challenges with communication, social… Read More

By Jenna Somers A new study finds that a culturally sustaining treatment can help nearly half of young Spanish-speaking children with early language delays improve their skills significantly—five times more than standard care alone. Led by researchers at Vanderbilt University Peabody College of education and human development, the… Read More

In 2021, Kathleen Seabolt, executive director, Vanderbilt Child & Family Center , founded the Owls kindergarten as a pilot program at The Acorn School, which provides care for young children of Vanderbilt University faculty and staff. Beginning in the fall of 2026, Owls will migrate across campus to join the Susan Gray School, Vanderbilt’s inclusive pre-school that is part of Vanderbilt Peabody College of education and human development. Read More

Tracing policy decisions from early America to today, the reports reveal how long-standing choices continue to shape access and outcomes for families. Press Contact: Sydne Lewis, 615-343-9946, sydne.lewis@vanderbilt.edu The Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center at Vanderbilt University published the ïŹrst installment in a series of reports, Social Policy… Read More