Early Learning Center’s first year beyond all expectations

Andrew enjoys a ride down the big slide on the Early Learning Center’s preschool playground.

4:20 p.m., June 22, 2005--Mothers and fathers brimming with praise and University officials pleased with the Early Learning Center’s demonstrated potential for service and learning, mingled with infants, toddlers and youngsters ignoring the heat Tuesday, June 14, to celebrate the center’s first year.

The center is a full-day, full-year early care and education clinical research facility providing outstanding care for children and their families, as well as research opportunities and training for members of the University and the general community. For an overview of the Early Learning Center, click here.

President David Roselle and Provost Dan Rich attended the open house and both noted that the praise from parents was effusive.

UD’s Early Learning Center, Roselle said, is special for a number of reasons. “We know that early intervention and improving care to Delaware’s children are critically important,” he said, “and the state-of-the-art facility provides high-quality care to children enrolled while providing the promise of enhancement of care for the 40,000 children throughout the state who are in child-care settings.

“This center is clearly a ‘best practices’ facility and a prototype of what could, and should, be done,” Roselle said. “There is much to learn here, and I’m pleased that our students, faculty and staff are doing so, in ways that benefit the children and the community as a whole.”

Rich said, “The Early Learning Center is a wonderful example of the University’s commitment to discovery learning--the integration of instruction, research and service. It plays an important role in the education of students from many disciplines and it provides both graduate and undergraduate students, as well as faculty, the opportunity to work directly with children and their families.”

Jugglers provide entertainment alfresco.

The celebration took place outdoors in the center’s spacious backyard, where attendees sat on blankets and lawn chairs in between Jungle Jims and swing sets, helping themselves to food and listening to music by Tom Soupkup, David Weddington and Dave Smith.

Children could decorate their own cupcakes, make paper hats, run the parent/child obstacle course and add artistic touches to the center’s first-anniversary mural. Jugglers taught the youngsters subtraction each time they dropped one of the balls they were levitating.

Of its first year, director Karen Rucker said of the center, “It’s totally exceeded our expectations. Forty percent of our children are living in poverty with multiple risk factors. For them to be able to come to a place like this with so many resources is wonderful.”

The center’s programs help identify children at risk--for example, children who have trouble with reading--and then work on those risk factors at an early age. Other center programs provide parent training, regular sessions with a social worker and help finding housing and developing essential life skills, she said.

Tim Barnekov, dean of the College of Human Services, Education and Public Policy, agreed that the first year for the Early Learning Center has been an overwhelming success, especially as a teaching tool. “It’s been fantastic. We’ve involved so many units across campus, many more than we had expected this soon,” he said. During the spring semester alone, 15 courses and seven research studies were held at the center.

Kuno, 4, joins in the fun.

“Teaching a class in pediatric care at an actual child-care facility is rare,” James (Cole) Galloway, assistant professor of physical therapy, said. “Child-care centers are not generally built from the ground up to support education, but this one is. The best part is that it allows almost all areas of common interest in child care to work together,” he said.

Galloway, who also is a member of the center’s program council, had 32 students doing research at the center for five to seven weeks during the center’s first year. “Everybody at the center has grown and learned, not just the kids,” Galloway said.

Gloria Brown of Newark said her 2-year old, Brandon, had been withdrawn before he started coming to the center when it opened. “His behavior has gotten a lot better. He really likes it here. I wouldn’t have him any place else.”

Photos by Kathy F. Atkinson

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