Kearns Professor in Urban Education and Innovative Leadership Mary Walsh (Caitlin Cunningham)
Through an anonymous $10 million gift, the Center for Optimized Student Support, a path-breaking, evidence-based approach to supporting students both in and out of school, will be renamed the Mary E. Walsh Center for Thriving Children in honor of the Lynch School of Education and Human Development professor who founded the program three decades ago.
Under the direction of Walsh, the Daniel E. Kearns Professor in Urban Education and Innovative Leadership, the center and its signature initiative, City Connects, have grown to serve 45,000 students annually in public, charter, and Catholic schools in Massachusetts and other states, as well as Dublin, Ireland. A program has also been adapted to serve students at an Ohio community college.
鈥淭his transformative gift ensures we will be able to sustain our work and broaden our efforts in the future,鈥� said Walsh, a clinical-developmental psychologist who has been a 集美麻豆faculty member since 1989. 鈥淚t is a tremendous honor to all the members of our team over the years, our site coordinators, thousands of educators, and community partners who have been instrumental in this work. We are thrilled and delighted.鈥�
The center has drawn from research in child development and learning to advance 鈥渨hole child鈥� approaches that recognize students鈥� in-school performance is affected by out-of-school factors, such as hunger, homelessness, trauma, and stress affect, that shape a child鈥檚 readiness to learn, Walsh said.
鈥淲e are so pleased about this extraordinary gift,鈥� said Stanton Wortham, Charles F. Donovan, S.J., Dean at the Lynch School. 鈥淔or three decades, Mary Walsh has been building an exceptional program that is improving lives for tens of thousands of children. She conceptualized it, raised funds for it, built it, and commissioned research that shows it is both successful and extremely cost-effective. Her consistent focus on developing the whole child fits wonderfully with the 集美麻豆mission of formative education. This gift will ensure that Mary鈥檚 program will continue to benefit children, across the United States and beyond, well into the future.鈥�
“This transformative gift ensures we will be able to sustain our work and broaden our efforts in the future. It is a tremendous honor to all the members of our team over the years, our site coordinators, thousands of educators, and community partners who have been instrumental in this work. We are thrilled and delighted.”
At the core of the center鈥檚 approach is City Connects, an evidence-based intervention Walsh and her colleagues in the Boston Public Schools developed and formally launched in 2001. Implemented in schools serving predominantly under-resourced neighborhoods and families, City Connects helps teachers and schools provide integrated supports to address the in- and out-of-school needs of students and foster their strengths.
Walsh calls the program a 鈥渓ong-standing research-practice partnership鈥� that links the work done every day in schools to rigorous research intended to show what interventions work and how extra support translates into student success over time.
Groundbreaking research by Walsh and her colleagues from 集美麻豆and other universities showed that students in City Connects schools, when compared to peers who never received City Connects, demonstrated gains in academic achievement that were similar in magnitude to the harmful effects of poverty.
In addition, Walsh and her colleagues have reported in leading peer-reviewed journals on a range of research discoveries, including:
鈥ow and why addressing out-of-school factors improves student social-emotional and academic outcomes.
鈥emonstrating that