The UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute is excited to welcome its fifth cohort of Marvin H. McKinney Scholars. The Marvin H. McKinney Scholars Program in Research, Practice, and Policy was established to offer hands-on research experience in child development to undergraduate students attending North Carolina's historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs).

In April, FPG's Award Selection Committee named Jani Kozlowski, as this year’s recipient of the Richard M. Clifford Fund for International Collaboration on Early Learning Environments award. Kozlowski, a technical assistance specialist with the Trohanis Technical Assistance Projects at FPG, was chosen because her work reflects Clifford’s passion for fostering international collaborations among researchers to further understanding of quality in early learning environments.

Mia Alto, a UNC student majoring in psychology and management and society with a minor in Spanish, has been involved in many service opportunities in the community. For the past year, she's been working with FPG's autism team and is this year's recipient of the Barbara Davis Goldman Award.

PBS NC will hold its fourth annual Impact Early Childhood Education Summit Saturday, June 7. This full-day conference aims to empower educators, childcare providers, parents and caregivers to lay a strong foundation for young learners. FPG is partnering with PBS for the event to host sessions focused on North Carolina pre-K.

FPG's Wendy Morgan provides strategic and scalable infrastructure for the ITTI Care Project. Funded by the NCDCDEE and housed at Duke University, the project offers professional development for the infant/toddler child care workforce across the state of North Carolina to support the provision of trauma-informed child care.

For the past 10 years, members of the autism team, including Ann Sam, Victoria Waters, and Sam Odom, at the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute have provided Autism Focused Intervention Resources & Modules, offering evidence-based practices to support learners on the spectrum from birth to 22 years of age. To celebrate this decade milestone and April’s Autism Acceptance Month, the AFIRM team launched its new website this week.

Developmental psychologist Clare Harrop, PhD, orients her research within this quote from the late renowned developmental psychologist Annette Karmiloff-Smith, “Development itself is the key to understanding developmental disorders.” This has led Harrop, a faculty fellow at the FPG and an associate professor in Carolina’s Department of Health Sciences, to study autism as a condition that evolves and changes with development and across key developmental periods.

Victoria Waters, MEd, is an educational consultant at the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG). As part of our FPG profile series, we recently spoke with Waters to learn more about her work at FPG. See what she had to say.