Deborah Jane Stipek will step into her new role as dean of the School of Education on January 1, 2001. "She is one of the country's most respected researchers in the areas of early education, child development and motivation, and has been a significant voice in the public policy dialogue on child development and welfare," says University President John Hennessy.

Stipek, a professor in the School of Education at UCLA since 1977, earned her doctorate in developmental psychology from Yale University. She graduated summa cum laude in psychology from the University of Washington and also studied at the institute founded by developmental psychologist Jean Piaget at the Universite de Geneve in Switzerland.

Stipek is a specialist in early childhood development, achievement and motivation, classroom instruction and issues related to child and family policy. Her research focuses on preschool and elementary school-aged children, as well as on classroom conditions that affect effort and interest in academic tasks.

A member of Phi Beta Kappa, the Society for Research in Child Development, and the American Educational Research Association, Stipek currently is co-director of the National Institute of Mental Health's Training Program in Human Development and also directs the Corinne Seeds University Elementary School at UCLA.

Corinne Seeds is a university lab school founded 100 years ago, which has a diverse population of 450 children, from age 4 through the sixth grade. Some 1,000 public school teachers, administrators and policymakers visit the school each year for professional development activities and to attend seminars about using technology in classrooms.

"I really enjoy teaching and I'm very committed to working with public schools," Stipek says. "Although I won't have a lab school to run at Stanford, I hope to be involved with school reform and I know there's a wonderful group of people at Stanford who stand poised and already have been playing an important role in working with school districts."

A former legislative assistant in the office of U.S. Senator Bill Bradley, Stipek said the time she spent in Washington, D.C., as a Congressional Science Fellow was an intense "real-life experience in working with government" on issues of children and family policy.

"It's very important that those of us who do research on education are well connected with and interacting on a regular basis with people who are doing education," she said. "We need to be informed by their concerns and challenges."

Stipek is author of Motivation to Learn: From Theory to Practice (1988), and co-editor of Constructive and Destructive Behavior: Implications for Family, School and Society (in press). She also has written journal articles and book chapters on Project Head Start, adolescent learning, gender differences in children's achievement-related beliefs, motivating underachievers, mathematics education and bilingual programs.