UpDate - Vol. 15, No. 39, Page 1
August 15, 1996
Roberta M. Golinkoff is interim education dean

     Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, H. Rodney Sharp Professor of
Educational Studies and a member of the UD faculty since 1974, has
been named interim dean of the College of Education, effective Sept.
1, Provost Mel Schiavelli announced today.
     Golinkoff replaces William B. Stanley, professor of educational
development who has served as interim dean since former dean Frank B.
Murray retired last September. Stanley is going on sabbatical.
     Golinkoff also holds joint appointments in the departments of
Psychology and Linguistics. In 1980, she spent a sabbatical year at
the University of Pennsylvania, sponsored by the Sloan Foundation
Program , studying cognitive science.
     Golinkoff's research has focused on how children learn their
native language, and she has developed a new method to test children's
knowledge of language before they can speak. She studies how adults
address infants who are learning language and whether "baby talk"
assists in language learning. Golinkoff also derived a set of
principles children use to help them acquire the vocabulary of their
language.
     Golinkoff, who has been a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellow,
received a James McKeen Cattell Supplemental Sabbatical Award for
Psychologists, a Distinguished Faculty Graduate Teaching Award from
the College of Education and a research fellowship from the UD Center
for Advanced Study.
     A fellow in both the developmental psychology and educational
psychology divisions of the American Psychological Association, she is
a member of the Society for Research in Child Development, the
American Psychological Association, the Jean Piaget Society and the
Mid-Atlantic Language Union.
     She is editor or co-editor of three books and co-author of The
Origins of Grammar, Evidence from Early Language Comprehension. She
also has written many book chapters and articles, as well as reviews
for more than 20 journals, and has served on the editorial boards of
Child Development, the Journal of Educational Psychology,
Developmental Psychology and Society for Research and Child
Development Monographs.
     Golinkoff received her bachelor's degree from Brooklyn College
and her doctorate in developmental psychology from Cornell University.
She held a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh's
Learning, Research and Development Center.