Alliance for Catholic Education
Nicole McNeil has been appointed the inaugural Sweeney Family Director of the Institute for Educational Initiative’s new Center for Educational Research and Action (ERA), effective October 1.
The new center, known as ERA, will be led by McNeil, who is the Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) College Professor in Notre Dame’s Department of Psychology and director of the Cognition, Learning, and Development (CLAD) Lab.
ERA will organize, accelerate, and amplify Notre Dame’s education research and programming efforts. Through professorships, research training programs at the postbaccalaureate and postdoctoral levels, and research seed funding, ERA will support ground-breaking research with demonstrable application for the improvement of schools and student learning and more fully integrate all education research and application within the IEI.
McNeil is a developmental cognitive scientist whose research focuses on mathematical cognition, print awareness, and symbolic understanding. She investigates fundamental mechanisms of human learning and partners with educators to design learning environments that foster academic success. Her work is funded by grants from the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Educational Sciences and the National Science Foundation. She joined the Notre Dame faculty in 2006 after completing her Ph.D. in psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University.
As an IEI fellow, McNeil has been deeply involved in the institute for many years, directing the Education, Schooling, and Society supplementary major from 2012–2022 and regularly teaching in the ACE Teaching Fellows program while also directly improving the lives of students through the TutorND program.
The announcement comes alongside the naming of Matt Kloser, founding director of Notre Dame’s Center for STEM Education, as the Hackett Family Director of Notre Dame’s Institute for Educational Initiatives.
“This talented leadership team and the new Center for Educational Research and Action will empower the IEI to reach its fullest potential and to be an even more integral part of Notre Dame’s mission as the leading global research University and a force for good in the world,” said Vice President and Associate Provost for Teaching and Learning Ron Metoyer.
"Notre Dame is uniquely positioned to bridge two competing approaches in educational research: those focused on generating robust causal evidence and testing ‘what works’ and those focused on service to educators implementing programs in context,” McNeil said. “We already have so much excellence in interdisciplinary educational research to build on, and I'm excited to work with my friend and colleague Matt Kloser to strengthen and expand our research efforts in service of children and schools."
“I can think of no greater privilege than to work even more deeply with faculty and staff in the IEI who, through the formation of teachers and leaders, direct service to schools and children, and transformative research, have dedicated their careers to ensuring the highest quality of education for all young people,” Kloser said.
“This is an exciting inflection point in the IEI as we launch the ERA Center. Through the leadership of Nicole McNeil—an amazing scholar and even better person committed to helping young people flourish through education—we seek to become the exemplar for how research can both move the field forward and help elevate the already transformational work of ACE, our various centers, and undergraduate and graduate educational programs.”