Education And Psychology

Velma McBride Murry (Vanderbilt University) Velma McBride Murry, has been selected to receive the APA Distinguished Scientific Award for the Applications of Psychology from the American Psychological Association. Murry is the Lois Autrey Betts Professor of Education and Human Development and University Distinguished Professor of Human and Organizational Development… Read More

Being able to tell whether an image is real or generated by AI may be something you’re born with: object recognition. “It’s a stable trait that helps people meet new perceptual challenges,” study author Professor Isabel Gauthier said. “We were shocked to see how intelligence or even technology training did not help accurately judge if a face is AI.” Object recognition has been linked to success in a wide range of tasks, such as X-ray analysis and cancer cell categorization. Read More

Vanderbilt University has announced its fall 2025 recipients of the Seeding Success, Scaling Success and Rapid-Advancement MicroGrant Program awards, providing internal funding to help faculty launch new research directions, strengthen proposals and compete for major external grants. Read More

By Jennifer Kiilerich Toddlerhood is a critical window for developmental interventions. But up to 75 percent of children born with cleft lip or palate don’t receive the speech-language support they may need until grade school. This lag puts them at risk of challenges with communication, social… Read More

By Jenna Somers A new study finds that a culturally sustaining treatment can help nearly half of young Spanish-speaking children with early language delays improve their skills significantly—five times more than standard care alone. Led by researchers at Vanderbilt University Peabody College of education and human development, the… Read More

In 2021, Kathleen Seabolt, executive director, Vanderbilt Child & Family Center , founded the Owls kindergarten as a pilot program at The Acorn School, which provides care for young children of Vanderbilt University faculty and staff. Beginning in the fall of 2026, Owls will migrate across campus to join the Susan Gray School, Vanderbilt’s inclusive pre-school that is part of Vanderbilt Peabody College of education and human development. Read More

Tracing policy decisions from early America to today, the reports reveal how long-standing choices continue to shape access and outcomes for families. Press Contact: Sydne Lewis, 615-343-9946, sydne.lewis@vanderbilt.edu The Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center at Vanderbilt University published the first installment in a series of reports, Social Policy… Read More

By Jenna Somers Dean Camilla P. Benbow David Lubinski (Vanderbilt) Camilla Benbow and David Lubinski have won the Dunnette Prize from the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP), for their scholarship on talent identification and talent… Read More

By Jennifer Kiilerich and Krystal Schmidt On a rainy November afternoon in a North Nashville classroom, students who once struggled in math periodically shouted out “zearned it,” receiving stickers or candy from their teacher as they hit milestones in the math program of the same name.  Sherrilyn Dovi,… Read More

Education Week has released the 2026 Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings, an annual list of education researchers who have demonstrated the greatest influence over educational policy and practice. Four researchers from Vanderbilt Peabody College of education and human development are among the 200 who made the rankings. That places them in the top… Read More

By Jennifer Kiilerich On a gray, blustery December day in Nashville, students piled coats and bags into the corner of a bright, windowed classroom inside Vanderbilt Peabody College’s Six Magnolia Circle. Lively chatter, applause and words of support bounced around the room, and holiday cookies lined a table by… Read More

Warren Lowell (Vanderbilt University) Warren Lowell joined the faculty at Vanderbilt Peabody College of education and human development as an assistant professor in fall 2025. He is an urban sociologist, population scientist and public policy scholar whose work focuses on housing, internal migration and child well-being. He studies… Read More

By Jenna Somers Almost anyone who starts a new job reads training and policy documents as part of an on-boarding process. They might peruse the assigned reading to check the right boxes, but how much are they really learning in the process? How can employers verify learning from training materials… Read More

Funding renewals from major philanthropic organizations will strengthen operations and research efforts aimed at improving outcomes for young children and families.   Press Contact: Sydne Lewis, 615-343-9946, sydne.lewis@vanderbilt.edu The Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center at Vanderbilt University Peabody College of education and human development celebrates the most recent renewed financial… Read More

How do smartphones affect the brains of teenagers? That question is at the core of a new grant awarded to the School for Science and Math at Vanderbilt (SSMV) by the Dana Foundation, which works to advance neuroscience in alignment with community values and societal priorities. Menton Deweese, director… Read More

By Jennifer Kiilerich Golnaz Arastoopour Irgens When Vanderbilt researcher Golnaz Arastoopour Irgens learned about a new all-girls secondary school, located not far from Vanderbilt University, she quickly saw how its mission aligned with her own work. She set about fostering a collaboration that would connect young learners to her… Read More

By Jenna Somers Mark Lipsey Mark Lipsey, professor emeritus of public policy at Vanderbilt Peabody College of education and human development, has been awarded the Stockholm Prize in Criminology, the world’s largest and most prestigious criminology prize. Lipsey received the award for his research on rehabilitative programs… Read More

Vanderbilt supports new faculty every step of the way—by connecting them with senior faculty who serve as mentors, observe their classes and provide valuable feedback, and proofread their grant proposals to make them stronger. These professors who joined Vanderbilt in the past few years shed light on how the university has helped them succeed.  Read More

By Jenna Somers On October 30 and 31, education scholars, practitioners and policymakers convened Schoolteacher at 50. The conference marked the 50th anniversary of sociologist Dan Lortie’s book about the ethos of the teaching profession. Attendees reflected upon Lortie’s insights at the time of publication as well as their applicability… Read More