Daniel R. Anderson, Ph.D.

Daniel Anderson received his Ph.D. from Brown University and is Professor of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst where he is Head of the Developmental Psychology Area. He has published numerous research articles and monographs concerning children’s attention to and comprehension of television, family television use, and the impact of television on intellectual and social development. His current research focuses on media impact on infants and toddlers as well as brain activation during adult television and film viewing. Professor Anderson has worked extensively with television networks and production companies concerning the development of educational television programs including Sesame Street, Gullah Gullah Island, Blue’s Clues, Bear in the Big Blue House, and Dora the Explorer.

Sandra L. Calvert, Ph.D.

Sandra L. Calvert, the Director of the Children’s Digital Media Center (CDMC), is a Professor of Psychology and a core member of the Communication, Culture, and Technology Program at Georgetown University. Her book, Children’s Journeys Through the Information Age (McGraw Hill, 1999), provides a critical synthesis of the research about children’s social and cognitive development in relation to information technologies. She and co-editors Amy B. Jordan and Rodney R. Cocking recently completed Children in the Digital Age: Influences of Electronic Media on Development (Praeger, 2002), a book that examines how the changing media landscape impacts children’s development.

Professor Calvert’s current research examines the role that interactivity and identity play in children’s learning from entertainment media through studies conducted by the Children’s Digital Media Center, a collaborative research center funded by the National Science Foundation. She is also involved in media policy, recently completing research that was funded by the Smith Richardson Foundation to examine what children are learning from the educational and informational television programs required by the Children’s Television Act.

Professor Calvert is a fellow of the American Psychological Association. She served on the Advisory Panel for Excellence in Children’s Television for the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, on the Advisory Board for the Center for Media Education, and on the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Tools and Strategies for Protecting Children from Pornography and Other Objectionable Content on the Internet. She has consulted for organizations such as Nickelodeon Online, Sesame Workplace, Blue’s Clues, and Sega of America, to influence the development of children’s television programs, computer and Internet software, and video games.

Amy B. Jordan, Ph.D.

Amy B. Jordan is a Senior Research Investigator at the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. Since 1996, Dr. Jordan has served as the director of the Media and the Developing Mind Sector for the Center. She oversees the analyses of the quantity and quality of television programming for children and the evaluation of the impact of public policy initiatives such as the Three-Hour Rule and V-Chip legislation.

Dr. Jordan serves as a lecturer at the Annenberg School for Communication, where she has taught courses in Research Methods, Communication Behavior, and Children and Media. Dr. Jordan is the author of the annual “State of Children’s Television” reports (1996-1999) and has written numerous journal articles, book chapters, and encyclopedic entries on children’s media and children’s media policy. Additionally, Dr. Jordan has been quoted in over 200 newspapers and magazines and has appeared as a children’s TV expert on national television and radio news programs and as an expert witness before the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications.

Prior to her position at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Jordan worked as a research associate at Public/Private Ventures, a national, non-profit organization that designs and evaluates social programs for disadvantaged youth. She has also been an assistant professor and coordinator of the Media Studies Program at Widener University. Dr. Jordan received her B.A. from Muhlenberg College, her M.A. from the Annenberg School for Communication and her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Jordan and her husband Dr. John Spandorfer live in Narberth, Pennsylvania with their three children.

Gary E. Knell

Gary E. Knell is President and Chief Executive Officer of Sesame Workshop. Knell leads the non-profit educational organization in its mission to create innovative, engaging content that maximizes the educational power of all media to help children reach their highest potential. In his role, Knell has been instrumental in focusing the organization on Sesame Street’s global mission, including groundbreaking co-productions in South Africa, Russia, China and Egypt. He leads over 300 dedicated producers, researchers and other talented professionals in a variety of media applications, including television, print, online and radio.

He also has served as Senior Vice President and General Counsel at WNET/Channel 13 in New York, was Counsel to the US Senate Judiciary and Governmental Affairs Committees, and worked in the California State Legislature and Governor’s Office.

Knell a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a participant in the Aspen Institute Forum on Communications and Society as well as the Columbia University American Assembly. He is also serves on the Board of the Zimmer Children’s Museum in Los Angeles, The Kitchen, a performing arts center in New York City, and National Video Resources, and serves on the Board of Governors of the American Center for Children and Media as well as the Advisory Board for the Music Educators National Conference in Alexandria, VA. He holds a Doctorate of Jurisprudence from Loyola University School of Law, and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Journalism from the University of California at Los Angeles.

Gary Knell is married to Kim Larson Knell and is the father of four children.

John P. Murray, Ph.D.

John P. Murray, Ph.D. is a Professor of Developmental Psychology in the School of Family Studies and Human Services at Kansas State University. Dr. Murray's interest in television and children is reflected in more than 30 years of research. He began his research working as a Scientist-Administrator at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), directing research for the U.S. Surgeon General's Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behavior, in 1969. His continuing research on TV and children is focused on neuroimaging of children's brain activations while watching televised violence. His 10th book on the impact of television will be published next year by Erlbaum Publishers (Norma Pecora, John Murray, and Ellen Wartella. "Children and Television: 50 Years of Research").

Michael Rich, MD, MPH

Michael Rich, MD, MPH is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, Assistant Professor in Society, Human Development and Health at the Harvard School of Public Health, and practices adolescent medicine at Children’s Hospital Boston. He is the founder and Director of the Center on Media and Child Health at Children’s Hospital Boston, which is committed to pursuing research, developing interventions on negative health effects of media, and creating and advising on production of health-positive media.

Dr. Rich came to medicine after a twelve-year career as a filmmaker (including serving as assistant director to Akira Kurosawa on Kagemusha); his current areas of health research and clinical work bring together his experience and expertise in medicine and media. He has investigated and published on the status of media education in pediatric and child psychiatry residency programs and has performed content analyses of music videos, studying them for portrayals of violence, weapon-carrying, and substance use. His primary research uses media tools to investigate child and adolescent health. Video Intervention/Prevention Assessment (VIA), for which Dr. Rich was honored by the Society for Adolescent Medicine with their New Investigator Award, explores the illness experience through patient-created “video diaries.”

A member of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Committee on Public Education, Dr. Rich has authored or co-authored four policy statements on media and child health for the AAP and has written and presented testimony on media and child health to a variety of legislative bodies ranging from the Chicago City Council to U.S. Congress. Cognizant of the potency of the image and of the primacy of mass media as a source of information and influence, Dr. Rich studies media as a force that powerfully affects child health and health behavior and uses it as a tool for medical research, education, health care policy, and patient advocacy.

Donald F. Roberts, Ph.D.

Donald F. Roberts is the Thomas More Storke Professor in Communication at Stanford University, where he has taught and conducted research on children and media since 1968. He began his career examining the impact of television violence on children’s behavior for the first U.S. Surgeon General’s Report on Television and Social Behavior. Over the ensuing years, he has examined such issues as, the influence of media exposure on children’s and adolescents’ beliefs and behavior in such areas as violence, pro-social behavior, school performance, political attitudes, and consumer knowledge and attitudes. His most recent books include an examination of the role of popular music in the lives of adolescents (It’s NOT Only Rock and Roll) and a large-scale, national survey of U.S. youths’ media behavior (Kids and Media in America; Patterns of Use at the Millennium).

Roberts’ study of young people’s media use reports the only national, random sample survey of U.S. children’s and adolescents’ use of all of the various media conducted in at least the past 30 years. It provides a comprehensive look at how media-saturated young people’s lives have become, and is the first to examine young people’s overall media budgets, to clearly document the “ghettoization” of their media use, and to describe distinctly different types of young media users, providing provides perhaps the most detailed map of U.S. young people’s media behavior ever assembled.

Dorothy G. Singer, Ph.D.

Dorothy G. Singer is Senior Research Scientist, Department of Psychology, Yale University. She is also Co-Director of the Yale University Family Television Research and Consultation Center, and Fellow, Morse College. In addition she is Senior Research Associate, Yale Child Study Center. Research interests include early childhood development, television effects on youth, and parent training. She has authored over 150 publications, and written seventeen books, some of which have been translated into Dutch, Italian, and Japanese.

Currently, Dr. Singer is involved in a Parent Training Project to teach parents to play with their preschoolers as a means of enhancing cognitive and social skills. In addition, she consults with parent groups, television industry executives, and government agencies concerning television and education. She is on the board of Weston Woods Institute, the Letter People, Inc., International Play Panel for LEGO, and consults with Learning Curve International Inc. As a developmental psychologist she is involved in writing and developing teacher training materials for day care centers and for parents. Another facet of her work deals with media literacy and educating children to be critical users of television. She has co-authored curricula for grades K to High School concerning the media. She was on the Advisory Board of CBS to help select children's programs for television. Dr. Singer was given the Distinguished Contribution to the Science of Psychology Award by the Connecticut Psychology Association in 1997.

Selected book titles are: The House of Make- Believe: Children's Play and the Developing Imagination; Creating Critical Viewers; A Piaget Primer: How a Child Thinks; Playing for their Lives: Helping Troubled Children Through Play Therapy; The Parents' Guide: Use TV to Your Child's Advantage. Her newest books with Jerome L. Singer are: Handbook of Children and the Media and Make- Believe: Games and Activities to Foster Imaginative Play in Children.

Ellen Wartella, Ph.D.

Ellen Wartella, Ph.D., is the dean of the College of Communication at The University of Texas at Austin, the largest and most comprehensive communication college in the country.

In addition to her role as dean, Dr. Wartella is an active scholar with ties to higher education, the industry and public policy through her research on the effects of media on child development. She has written and edited several books on mass media effects on children and is the co-principal investigator on a five-year, multi-site research project titled Children’s Research Initiative: Children’s Digital Media Centers funded by the National Science Foundation. As a consultant to the Federal Communications Commission, Federal Trade Commission and Congressional investigations of children and television issues, she has been an advocate for better programming for children.

She earned her Ph.D. from The University of Minnesota in 1977 and completed her post-doctoral research in development psychology in 1981 at The University of Kansas. She serves on numerous boards, including the Board on Children, Youth and Families, part of the National Academies of Sciences; the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health (chair); Sesame Workshop (formerly The Children’s Television Workshop); the Center for Media Education; the Council of Better Business Bureaus; the National Advisory Committee of the Decade of Behavior initiative; and the Children’s Advertising Review Unit.

Prior to becoming dean of the College of Communication at The University of Texas, Dr. Wartella was a University Scholar and Research Professor at the Institute of Communications Research at The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She also taught in the Department of Communication at The University of California, Santa Barbara and in the Department of Communication at Ohio State University.