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Department of Child Development
The Child Development Department at Humboldt is a dynamic community of learners committed to supporting and promoting positive experiences for children, families, and their communities.
Through a strong developmental foundation and hands-on learning experiences, students engage collaboratively with children, families, and peers to advocate for social justice and promote the well-being of children and families.
Program Options
Child Development & Family Relationships, B.A.
This versatile Bachelor of Arts program prepares students to support the optimal development and wellbeing of children and their families. Taking inclusive, multigenerational, relational, and lifespan approaches, students incorporate multilogical thinking and trauma informed care/practices in their work.
Choose from three concentrations:
- Teaching
- Child & Family Services
- Specialized Studies
Child Development Elementary Education (Liberal Studies, B.A.)
This dynamic program is designed for students to integrate the knowledge of the California subject matter taught at the elementary level with knowledge of the characteristics of children and of the theories and methodologies appropriate to working with school age children. Choose from two concentrations:
- Elementary Education
- Special Education ITEP
Hands-On Learning
The Child Development Lab provides high quality applied learning experiences to students as they teach preschool-aged children and collaborate with their peers. Students apply developmental knowledge into practice and engage in reflective teaching with constructive feedback and guidance from faculty supervisors and teachers.
Community Driven
Students have opportunities to work in the community, gaining valuable professional experience from local tribes and organizations. The Directed Field Experience course is supervised community fieldwork that integrates theory into practice.
Led by Research
Our faculty stay up to date with the most recent research related to the field of Child Development. Research projects, which involve students, are conducted by individual faculty members, as well as by the department as a whole.
Place-Based Learning Communities: Educators for Social Justice
As a Child Development freshman, you’ll participate in hands-on activities with your peers before classes even start and in some cases, have the opportunity to live in the same residence halls with your peers. Child Development students will be a part of Educators for Social Justice, which helps you discover how learning about issues of education and social justice today can shape futures tomorrow.
Featured Alumni
Career Options
Our programs are designed for students who wish to work with and for children and families in the private and public sectors, including childcare, education, special education, Indigenous education, counselling, social work, family resource programs, and policy development.
Here are a few examples of possible career fields.
- Early Childhood, Elementary, Special Education Teacher
- Curriculum Specialist
- Community Mental Health Work
- Family/Child Advocate
- Infant/Early Childhood Mental Health Practitioner
- Social Services Provider
Achievements
Find out what our students, faculty, and staff are being recognized for.
Dr. Meenal Rana
Child Development
Dr. Meenal Rana, along with her colleagues from Virginia State University and the University of Nevada, co-authored the article titled, "Transnational Families in the COVID-19 Era: Health and Well-being of South Asian Older Parents with Adult Children Abroad". Using the backdrop of the global pandemic, globalization, and immigration, the paper focused on the health outcomes of older parents in transnational families. The study used autoethnographic data from the three authors to examine the cultural perception of care, sense of familism, care reciprocity, gendering of care, use of technology, and economic factors relevant to health and wellbeing in transnational families.
Dr. Meenal Rana
Child Development
Dr. Meenal Rana and Dr. Mona Abo-Zena completed the special issue of Religions, “Focusing on the Elusive: Centering on Religious and Spiritual Influences within Contexts of Child and Young Adulthood Development” in the fall of 2024. The issue includes 11 articles representing a diversity of sociocultural and religious groups representing different countries of residence (e.g., El Salvador, India, Pakistan, USA), immigrant countries of origin (e.g., Nepal), ethnic and racial groups (e.g., Latinx, Asian, white European/Danish), and religious groups (e.g., Muslim, Jewish, Roman Catholic, Later Day Saints, Hindu) on topics such as sexual violence, parent-child relationships, death, LGBTQIA+, and mental health.
Riley N Nelson, Amanda Johnson Bertucci, Sara Swenson, Angel Seguine, Meenal Rana
Child Development
Child Development and Psychology students, three of whom were part of Dr. Rana's Children & Stress class in fall 2023 co-authored a peer-reviewed article, titled, "Building Resilience during Compassion Fatigue: Autoethnographic Accounts of College Students and Faculty in Education Sciences. The student authors are Riley N Nelson, Amanda Johnson Bertucci, Sara Swenson, and Angel Seguine. Utilizing an autoethnographic approach, this study covers a breadth of compassion fatigue, from predisposition to onset and recovery, and considers alternative strategies for coping, including creating meaning from difficult experiences.