Dear Colleagues:  

I am pleased to announce that Professor Carol Scheffner Hammer has accepted the position of Vice Dean for Research, effective September 1, 2020.  As Vice Dean for Research, Carol will work with Teachers College faculty, students, staff, and administration to provide leadership on issues affecting our research environment.  She will have responsibility for optimizing the research infrastructure, supporting and growing faculty research, fostering interdisciplinary research efforts, and helping to lead the College’s research mission.   

Professor Hammer joined Teachers College’s Department of Biobehavioral Sciences in 2015 as Professor of Communication and Sciences Disorders and has been serving as Department Chair of BBS since January 2020.  Prior to joining Teachers College, she served as Professor and Department Chair in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at Temple University.  

Professor Hammer’s research focuses on promoting the school readiness and academic outcomes of children from diverse sociocultural backgrounds and children who are bilingual. Specifically, her research targets four interrelated areas: the trajectories of children’s language and literacy development; understanding environmental and cultural influences on children’s development; developing valid assessments of children’s language abilities; and developing and evaluating culturally and linguistically responsive home- and classroom-based interventions that promote children’s language and literacy development. Professor Hammer’s work has been funded continually since 2000, with over $25 million in funding from federal agencies including the National Institutes of Health-NICHD, the US Department of Education, and the Administration for Children and Families. In addition, she served as a member of NIH-NICHD study sections for 7 years and a member of review panels for the Institute of Education Sciences for 11 years. Dr. Hammer is a past editor of the American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology and a fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. 

Please join me in thanking Carol for her willingness to serve as a member of our College’s leadership team.  I am excited to work with such an expert colleague and am confident her leadership will advance our research mission.  

Sincerely,

Stephanie J. Rowley, PhD
Provost and Dean of the College