Tufts University, Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development

The Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development at Tufts University, in Medford, Massachusetts, is a focal point for contemporary applied developmental science (ADS), with an illustrious history reflecting key themes of the evolution of ADS in the United States as well as in its increasingly global scope. From its founding in 1922 to its current situation as the home base for the Applied Developmental Science Institute, the scholarly journal Applied Developmental Science, as well as the Handbook of Applied Developmental Science (Lerner, Jacobs, & Wertlieb, 2003), Eliot-Pearson's traditions and innovations shape and define ADS, and the department serves as a demonstration, laboratory, training, and dissemination center for the field (http://www.ase.tufts.edu/epcd).

The Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development is an interdisciplinary department in the School of Arts and Sciences, composed of a faculty and staff that includes educators, psychologists, physicians, attorneys, social policy analysts, child life specialists, sociolinguists, and other professionals, all sharing [Page 1104]a common commitment to generating and using knowledge as part of the process of improving the quality of life and enhancing the development of children. The community includes as many as 150 Tufts undergraduate students who elect to concentrate in child development as one of their more than 50 options for the bachelor's degree at Tufts, some 95 students enrolled in a variety of master's level programs, and 35 students pursuing doctoral degrees. Eliot-Pearson established the nation's first PhD program in applied child development in 1981 (Wertlieb & Feldman, 1996). Among the educational, research, and community services affiliated with the department are its Eliot-Pearson Children's School, the Evelyn Pitcher Curriculum Resource Laboratory, the Center for Reading and Language Research, the Center for Applied Child Development, the Applied Developmental Science Institute (http://www.ase.tufts/adsi), the Tufts Educational Day Care Center, and the Child and Family Web Guide (http://www.cfw.tufts.edu). In addition, faculty and students affiliate with a broad range of applied developmental science activities across the university and in other university and community venues.

Originally, one of the nation's first nursery schools, the Ruggles Street Nursery School, was established in Boston in 1922, importing from Europe what was then a compelling model for the care and education of young children. At that time, child care was part of a nascent public health movement, with nurses running what would become nursery schools. Abigail Adams Eliot advanced the broadening scope, with an emphasis on child development and family support in what would become increasingly educational institutions. It was quickly apparent to her that as these new schools flourished and propagated, a cadre of new professionals would need to be prepared; so, by the late 1920s, Eliot established the Nursery Training School of Boston:

Philanthropist Mrs. Henry Greenleaf Pearson continued to support Eliot's enterprise, and by the 1950s, the Eliot-Pearson School thrived as an independent professional institution and relocated from Roxbury, in Boston, to a suburban location at Tufts University. While expanding the school and completing her own formal education (a doctorate from the Harvard School of Education in 1930), Eliot engaged in significant national efforts to establish what is now the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and to implement child and family policy initiatives in the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the Children's Bureau, and other community collaborations, precursors to applied developmental science enterprises today.

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