Jason Hustedt

Jason Hustedt is an Associate Professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences at the University of Delaware and Research Director for the Delaware Institute for Excellence in Early Childhood (DIEEC). His research focuses broadly on early childhood programs and policies, with a particular emphasis on Head Start/Early Head Start programs and on state-funded pre-K initiatives. A key recent project is the Starting at Home grant, which was funded as a multi-year Early Head Start University Research Partnership by the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. This project was part of the Buffering Toxic Stress Consortium, and incorporated Promoting First Relationships, a parent-child interaction intervention, into Early Head Start home visits.

Dr. Hustedt’s research on state-funded pre-K programs began at NIEER, where he served as the project manager for the first five editions of the State Preschool Yearbook series from 2002-2007. He also served as Principal Investigator for large-scale, multi-year evaluation studies of state pre-K initiatives in Arkansas and New Mexico, supported by more than $2.5 million in state funding. He has written and presented to a variety of audiences on topics related to state pre-K and kindergarten readiness, and his current focus in this area involves examining impacts of the New Mexico PreK program by children’s race and ethnicity. Dr. Hustedt’s teaching at the University of Delaware focuses primarily on child and family policy issues and on research methodology. He holds a Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from Cornell University.