PHILADELPHIA -- John W. Fantuzzo, a University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education professor, has received the Head Start Research Mentor Award from the federal Administration for Children and Families.

Fantuzzo is the third recipient of the award, which previously has gone to Ed Zigler and Julius Richmond, the two people most responsible for the creation of the program.

In addition to Fantuzzo's own groundbreaking research of the Head Start program, he has shepherded Penn graduate students interested in Head Start research.

As an advisor and mentor to his graduate students applying for the highly competitive Head Start Research Scholarships, Fantuzzo has a perfect record.  All 11 of the students under his tutelage have received funding for their dissertation research on Head Start through the scholarships.

In studying Head Start, Fantuzzo has conducted longitudinal studies on the impact of community and family violence on school readiness as well as the effects of early social and emotional adjustment problems on early school success.

Fantuzzo serves on the editorial boards of several major research journals in education and early childhood, including the Journal of Educational Psychology, Early Childhood Research Quarterly and School Psychology Review.

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