Chih-Ing Lim, PhD, and Megan Vinh, PhD, senior technical assistance specialists at UNC’s Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG), have been named as the recipients of the 2025 Thelma Harms Early Childhood Education Award. The award—awarded to FPG employees or international practitioners working with an FPG employee on an early childhood project—is designed to further the understanding and improvement of early childhood program quality internationally.
 
Each year, the award selection committee chooses one or two individuals to receive financial support for an activity that most closely matches the career interests of Thelma Harms, PhD, FPG director of curriculum development emerita. As lead author of the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS), Harms was a leader in comprehensive quality assessment, particularly through the development and use of the family of Environment Rating Scale (ERS) instruments. Funds from the Harms award generally support travel so that award recipients can attend an international conference on early childhood programs, or consult, teach, or work collaboratively with a scholar from another country on issues impacting early childhood development.
 
Vinh and Lim will use the funds to build on the partnership they have developed with the National Institute of Education at the Nanyang Technological University (NIE-NTU) in Singapore. This project, which began after the pair received funding from the UNC Global Partnership in 2022, promotes and supports the implementation of inclusive practices in early care and education environments in Singapore.
 
The collaboration continues to enhance and co-create knowledge to build the capacity of leaders in early childhood inclusive environments, helping to bridge arbitrary gaps between designing high quality environments for young children with disabilities and those without disabilities. Lim and Vinh plan to expand the partnership at both NIE-NTU and FPG to grow a global network of students, faculty, and researchers dedicated to quality early childhood disability inclusive environments.
 
With the funding from the Harms Award, they will:

• Develop and implement a disability inclusion symposium for Singapore leaders, students, faculty, and early childhood professionals.
• Conduct a two-day face-to-face collaborative planning meeting of an inclusive coalition. The aim of the meeting will be to identify concrete, fundable, and innovative ideas for future research and collaboration between FPG and NIE-NTU aimed at transforming inclusive systems in Singapore.
• Share and disseminate the results of the collaboration through a joint special journal issue on global early childhood inclusion and presentations at international inclusion conferences.

The symposium and inclusive coalition collaborative planning meeting will take place in Singapore in summer 2025. The award recipients expect that the impact will last beyond that as they and their colleagues develop actionable ideas and submit them to funders.  
 
Vinh and Lim expect this project to increase the knowledge of faculty and staff at FPG and NIE-NTU on global issues such as disability inclusion, developmental disabilities, and the need to address the quality of early childhood environments from a systemic framework. In addition, FPG and NIE-NTU will increase their capacity to work in partnership to build a disability inclusion network whose members can exchange ideas, collaborate on research, and enhance the lives of children with disabilities and their families.  
 
Vinh and Lim note that this work closely aligns with the work of Harms, who helped develop the Singapore Preschool Accreditation Framework (SPARK), and has been a strong advocate for high-quality learning opportunities for each and every child and family, especially those from underserved communities.