Christine Groark
Director, Social Child Welfare Index Project
School of Education
University of Pittsburgh
LL104 LXONE
Pittsburgh, PA 15260 USA
Email: cgroark@pitt.edu
Education


Areas of Expertise

  • Early Care and Education
  • Early Intervention
  • Orphanage Care
  • Nonprofit Management
  • Program Development

Professional Biography

Dr. Groark is Co-Director of the University of Pittsburgh Office of Child Development (OCD) and Associate Professor of Education. She received her BA from Alliance College and her MEd and PhD from the University of Pittsburgh in Early Childhood Special Education. The Office of Child Development is devoted to promoting and managing university-community and interdisciplinary partnerships in the domains of education and training, research, humans service demonstrations, program evaluation, and policy studies pertaining to children, youth, and families. Groark has been the principal investigator for numerous large collaborative programs implementing and evaluating new service and policy initiatives on behalf of children and families, such as the Pittsburgh sites of the National Comprehensive Child Development Program, Healthy Start, Early Head Start, and the Starting Points programs as well as several large, innovative local initiatives. Her service, training, research, and project development activities have focused on prenatal care, infant mortality and morbidity, early intervention services, foster and adoptive care, special education, child development, research and service demonstrations projects for families in low-income neighborhoods, program evaluation, program management, policy development, and strategic planning for nonprofits. Groark is the author of many articles and book chapters in the areas of university-community collaborations, international youth services, and early intervention; she is a consulting editor for the Journal of the International Association of Special Education; and she was given the University of Pittsburgh Chancellor’s Award for Distinguished Contributions to Public Service in 2004.

Research Interests & Current Projects

Dr. Groark's primary responsibility has been to develop OCD as a major example of a university-community collaborative unit specializing in applied research and policy studies with respect to children, youth, and families. OCD has grown from $150,000 to more than $7 million per year and from three employees to as many as 83. It has raised approximately $140 million for projects in interdisciplinary education, research, experimental interventions, program evaluation, and policy studies. It is one of the most comprehensive, largest, and applied such units in the country and is frequently consulted as a model for other universities in the USA and around the world.

Courses Taught

  • PSYED 1198 – Directed Study
  • PSYED 2596 – Internship in Child Development
  • PSYED 3343 – Comparative Education
  • Proseminar on Applied Issues on Children and Families in Society, School of Education, Applied Developmental Psychology, University of Pittsburgh
  • Program Development and Grant Writing Strategies, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh
  • How to Write Effective Proposals, Professional Executive Series (Community College of Allegheny County)
  • Teaching Children with Disabilities in Your Classroom (Duquesne University)


Selected Publications

Groark, Christine J. & McCall, R. B. (in press). Community-Based Interventions. In M. Rutter et al. (Eds.), Rutter’s Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 5th Ed. London: Blackwell Publishing Company.

Kochanoff, Anita; Weinraub, Marsha; Shlay, Anne; Fiene, Richard; Greenberg, Mark; Groark, Christine; McCall, Robert; Mehaffie, Kelly; Nelkin, Robert; Smith, W. E. (in press). Predictors of Early Child Care and Preschool Educational Opportunities: Inequality at the Starting Gates? Developmental Psychology.

McCall, Robert; & Groark, Christine J. (2007). A Perspective on the History and Future of Disseminating Behavioral and Social Science. In M. K. Welch-Ross and L. G. Fasig (Eds.), Handbook on Communicating and Disseminating Behavioral Science, (pp. 15–32). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Groark, Christine J.; Mehaffie, Kelly; McCall, Robert; & Greenberg, Mark. (Eds.) (2006). Evidence-Based Programs and Practices for Early Childhood Care and Education. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Kaczmarek, Louise; & Groark, Christine J. (2006). Early Intervention Practices for Children with and At Rsk for Delays. In C. J. Groark, K. E. Mehaffie, R. B. McCall, and M. T. Greenberg (Eds.). Evidence-based Programs and Practices for Early Childhood Care and Education. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

St. Petersburg – USA Orphanage Research Team (2005). Characteristics of Children, Caregivers, and Orphanages for Young Children in St. Petersburg, Russian Federation. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology: Special Issue on Child Abandonment, 26: 477–506.

Groark, Christine G.; & McCall, Robert. (2005). Integrating Developmental Scholarship into Practice and Policy. In M. H. Bornstein and M. E. Lamb (Eds.), Developmental Psychology: An Advanced Textbook, 5th Edition (pp. 570–601). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Groark, Christine J.; Muhamedrahimov, Rifkat J.; Palmov, Oleg I.; Nikiforova, Natalia V.; & McCall, Robert B. (2005). Improvement in Early Care in Russian Orphanages and Their Relationship to Observed Behaviors. Infant Mental Health Journal, 26(2): 96–109.

Muhamedrahimov, Rifkat J.; Palmov, Oleg I.; Nikiforova, Natalia V.; Groark, Christine J., & McCall, Robert B. (2005). Changing Social Environment for Young Children Living in Baby Homes. In V. M. Behterey (Ed.), Contemporary Psychology, Conference Abstracts (in Russian), (pp. 251–255). Kazan: Centre of Innovative Technologies, Kazan State University.

McCall, Robert; Groark, Christine J.; & Nelkin, Robert. (2004). Integrating Developmental Scholarship and Society: From Dissemination and Accountability to Evidence-Based Programming and Policies.  Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 50th Anniversary Issue (invited), 50(3), 326–340. Reprinted in G. W. Ladd (Ed.) (2007), Appraising the Human Developmental Sciences: Essays in Honor of Merrill-Palmer Quarterly (pp. 366–381). Detroit: Wayne State University Press.