History

History of the ECEI

The Early Childhood Education Institute (ECEI) didn’t become one of the leading early education research groups in the country overnight. Instead, five periods of growth occurred between its founding in 2006 and transition to new leadership in 2024.

ECEI’s Beginnings: 2006-2009

The ECEI was founded in 2006 when Dr. Diane Horm was recruited for the newly created position of the George Kaiser Family Foundation (GKFF) Endowed Professor at the University of Oklahoma–Tulsa. As the name suggests, this position was endowed by GKFF to strengthen educational and research opportunities in early childhood education in northeast Oklahoma to support GKFF’s growing investments in Tulsa-based programs for young children and their families. The goal for the position in 2006 was twofold: to partner with Tulsa Educare and CAP Tulsa’s Head Start and Early Head Start programs to conduct applied research aimed at maximizing services for young children, birth through age 5, and their families; and to work with Tulsa Community College and other OU faculty to launch a bachelor’s completion program in early childhood education at OU-Tulsa. Dr. Libby Ethridge was also hired as an early childhood education faculty member in 2006 and together they built the bachelor’s completion program, partnering with Tulsa Community College, recruiting students, and developing community partnerships for practica experiences. The first cohort of bachelor’s students graduated in 2008. Relative to the ECEI, Dr. Horm started with a few small research contracts with Tulsa Educare and CAP Tulsa and hired a few staff members to assist with data collection for the Tulsa Educare Implementation Study. The ECEI hosted our first Early Childhood Leadership Institute in 2008 to introduce the ECEI and our interest in sharing research-based information to inform the work of early childhood program leaders, administrators, and policymakers in the state.

ECEI's first Advisory Board - 2014

The Early Years: 2010-2015

Within five years, the ECEI was working on several evaluation projects, including continuing and strengthening our relationships with Tulsa Educare and CAP Tulsa, and securing new projects with Smart Start Oklahoma, the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, and the Frank Porter Graham (FPG) Child Development Institute at the UNC-Chapel Hill. Our staff grew to include project directors and research associates; we created a logo; launched our first website; and devoted attention to building the infrastructure to support ECEI’s work. In 2010, in collaboration with FPG and the Educare Learning Network, the ECEI participated in the launch of the Cross-site Educare Randomized Clinical Trial (RCT) with Tulsa Educare as one of five sites. This study continued in Tulsa until the early 2020s and received national attention with important publications documenting the lasting impact of early and consistent enrollment in high-quality ECE.

OU-Tulsa launched a Ph.D. Program in ECE in 2011, and for the first time, doctoral students started to work with the ECEI as graduate assistants. They not only had the opportunity to apply the research skills they were developing through their coursework, but they also introduced their unique research interests. Some notable examples include studies focused on the teaching teams in Head Start classrooms and the opportunities diapering affords to develop teacher-child bonds and children’s attention.

ECEI’s early growth positioned the institute to be competitive in securing the designation as an OU University Strategic Organization (USO) in 2011. This designation indicated that the OU Vice President for Research recognized and supported ECEI’s potential to conduct research that was fundable by state and federal governments and private foundations and resulted in useable information to make a difference in the lives of Oklahomans. Through this USO designation in 2011, OU provided support for the ECEI to build our research capacity; and this investment paid off with ECEI securing additional state and federal funding.

The USO designation served as a catalyst for the ECEI to form an Advisory Board consisting of OU, state, and national researchers and leaders. We expanded our staff by hiring Senior Researchers and Postdoctoral Research Fellows and invited Affiliated Faculty with the result expanding ECEI’s research focus and opportunities. During this time, we also expanded our physical presence on the Tulsa campus. The University supported our growth by renovating space to provide new offices, a conference room, and research rooms facilitating observational and interview research with young children and their families.

Our local and national profiles also expanded and we continued hosting the Early Childhood Leadership Institute for a total of 12 annual programs. In 2012, Dr. Horm was invited to join the new federally convened Network of Infant/Toddler Researchers (NiTR) to highlight and spawn research on the under-researched infant-toddler age group.

The marquis outside the Circle Cinema at the ECEI's 10th Anniversary celebration in November 2016

Planting SEEDs for the Future: 2016-2020

We celebrated ECEI’s 10^th anniversary in 2016. While we celebrated our past accomplishments, we used our 10^th birthday as a time to plan for the future. Since 2016 the ECEI has continued to grow, adding new evaluation projects, applying for additional federal and state funding, and publishing numerous peer-reviewed and practitioner articles and books (please check out our publications list here). We continued to serve as the Local Evaluation Partner for Tulsa Educare, evaluate CAP Tulsa’s programs along with the Oklahoma Early Childhood Program (OECP), and added additional research studies that increased the knowledge base about young children and their development in ECE programs. In 2016 we launched our largest study to date, the SEED (School Experiences and Early Development) Study in partnership with researchers at Georgetown and McGill Universities. ECEI’s role with the SEED Study continued until 2024 and this project has yielded multiple publications and presentations on the topic of the contributions of preschool and pre-K to children’s long-term development.

The ECEI’s work also continued to influence OU. In 2018 and 2022, Dr. Horm led proposals that resulted in early childhood cluster hires with new faculty added to both the Norman (Psychology and Sociology) and Tulsa (Drs. Jang and Beisly in ECE) campuses to support multidisciplinary research focused on young children.

Recovery: 2021-2024

With the COVID pandemic starting in March of 2020, ECEI activities diminished as our early childhood program partners either shuttered or reduced operations. However, the ECEI committed to retaining our full-time staff and we engaged in some of our “back-burner” projects. During this time, the ECEI published a compendium of infant toddler measures that was distributed nationally, explored remote data collection techniques, and worked on writing projects.

As programs resumed, so did the busy data collection schedules of the ECEI. In addition to resuming our ongoing data collection with Tulsa Educare and CAP Tulsa, we completed two important studies in 2024 – the Tulsa Educare RCT and our data collection role with the SEED Study. These two studies are contributing important information due to their unique features—both are longitudinal studies that followed children over extended time periods. Longitudinal studies are difficult and expensive to implement and the ECEI is proud of our robust work that has had, and will continue to have, impacts on practice, policy, and research.

During this period the ECEI also collaborated with colleagues to strengthen early childhood measures of early language and literacy, and launch a new line of research on the impact of air quality in ECE classrooms. These projects are on a path for continued growth.

COVID changed the way we perform some of our work, but our work continued - 2020-2021

The Future: 2024 and Beyond

Upon her retirement in December of 2024, Dr. Horm reflected on the accomplishments of the ECEI between its inception and 2024, noting five areas of accomplishments: 1) Building early childhood as a key focus area across OU’s three campuses; 2) Developing strong community collaborations that enriched both academic and research programs; 3) Strengthening focus on the infant/toddler period as foundational and in need of additional research; 4) Creating a fertile setting for longitudinal research; and 5) Conducting applied research that impacted practice, policy, and research. She also recited some statistics about the ECEI.

The ECEI started in 2006 with one staff member (Dr. Horm). Over 140 people have worked at the ECEI over the past 18 years—a reflection of ECEI’s growth in projects over time but also an illustration of the number of people who have received applied training in early childhood.
Relative to external funding, the ECEI grew from $17,500 in research contracts in 2007 to securing over $30 million in external funding over its first 18 years.
The ECEI has widely disseminated our research findings with over 130 journal articles and a long list of professional presentations at the local, state, national, and international levels.

Founding Director Diane Horm, left, and new ECEI Director Kate Gallagher

In August 2024, ECEI named a new director, Dr. Kathleen Gallagher. Dr. Horm, commenting on her successor stated, “Dr. Gallagher has deep knowledge of early childhood content, experience working in early childhood programs, applied research expertise that aligns with the ECEI’s mission and vision, and experience at two other top-notch university-affiliated early childhood research groups. This combination of background experiences uniquely qualifies her to take over leadership of the ECEI. I feel confident that she will excel as she builds on the ECEI’s capacities to continue its growth and foster its prominence as a national leader in ECE research.”

Although she is bringing her own energy and direction to the ECEI, she is committed to continuing and furthering ECEI’s research agenda in the following five established priority areas:

Longitudinal determinants of child opportunity
Early childhood services and quality of care
Early childhood workforce characteristics and well-being
The intersections of early childhood care and health
Early childhood measurement development

With a successful foundation, committed staff, experienced leadership, and clear research priorities, the future is promising for the ECEI and its generation of applied knowledge for ECE in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and our nation. The ECEI plans to continue its growth and foster its prominence as a national leader in ECE research.