Campus treasure supports children, teaching, research, and human thriving
In the bright, friendly classrooms at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Child Development Laboratory (CDL), you’ll see infants, toddlers, and preschoolers playing and taking part in activities designed to stimulate young minds. But children aren’t the only ones learning — students and faculty from across campus use the facility as a critical tool for teaching and research, fulfilling a mission that sets the CDL apart from lab schools nationwide.
“The Child Development Laboratory here at U. of I. is viewed as a model lab school by our peers at other institutions,” said retired CDL director Brent McBride. “Most major institutions have a laboratory school of some sort, but as far as being really well integrated into teaching and research activities to support the academic mission of the host institution, our model is unique in having an impact campus-wide.” McBride recently retired after 34 years as director; Hannah Kye has since taken the reins.
Embedded in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS) in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES), CDL provides unparalleled care for children while serving students and faculty from across campus.
Benefitting children throughout the community
The CDL serves 160 children every year as a high-quality daycare and preschool. Some CDL families are university faculty, staff, and students, but at least 25% of spots are reserved for community members. But it’s not a simple lottery system to get in; the makeup of the CDL population is carefully balanced to reflect the diversity of the Champaign-Urbana community.
“We very specifically use enrollment so we get a broad spectrum of faculty, staff, students, and community families as well as diversity across socioeconomic status, race, and ethnicity,” McBride said.
At least 25% of families receive financial support to attend via subsidy vouchers from the State of Illinois for low-income families, scholarship funds from donors, and through the use of a sliding fee scale. These opportunities ensure even greater representation, which McBride says strengthens conclusions that can be drawn from research conducted at CDL.
The research-backed curriculum is play-based and developmentally appropriate for every age. And as a testament to the quality of the environment, teacher turnover is very low.
“We have highly trained teachers; they are great at what they do. And on top of being amazing teachers, they are also part of the research and teaching mission. So, they have a broader scope than somebody who's typically in that profession,” said Ramona Oswald, HDFS department head. “We couldn't do what we do at the CDL without them.”
Families enrolled at CDL understand the facility is more than a daycare and preschool. Parents agree to the research and teaching components of CDL’s mission and quickly get used to finding research consent forms in kids’ cubbies or hearing about new student teachers in the classroom. Many parents take advantage of the research and teaching infrastructure, quietly slipping into each classroom’s attached observation booth to check on their kids after the occasional tearful goodbye.
“CDL provided our kids with an extremely strong educational foundation,” said former CDL parent Elly Hanauer-Friedman. “The teachers were exceptional in how they nurtured early academic learning alongside social and emotional growth and support. Years later we can see how our boys benefited from their time at CDL.”
A critical tool for education
Each year, the facility hosts more than 50 classes from 13 departments across campus, averaging more than 3,000 student observations, 1,300 student class projects, and 50 internships.
“The CDL provides opportunities for students to not just learn about kids and their early development, but to watch it unfold in an unstaged environment — it’s a real world, real life, real time, real everything immersion in that experience,” Oswald said. “Regardless of the life and career paths of our students, immersion in the CDL environment is an invaluable experience.”
The observation booths are a key asset. Attached to each classroom, the booths are fitted with microphones and information that help observers listen to and identify children as they interact with each other and CDL staff.
Research professor Nancy McElwain taught the required undergraduate research methods course in HDFS for more than a dozen years, relying heavily on CDL’s observational tools.
"Students in that class have the chance to go through the whole research process from selecting a research question to coding child behaviors in CDL’s observation booths to writing and presenting results,” McElwain said. “It’s an amazing resource and not something the students would be able to experience without the CDL right here on campus.”
The CDL also supports students training to become early childhood educators through the College of Education.
“The CDL is a great partner for us for field placements,” said Stephanie Sanders-Smith, the Yew Chung – Bernard Spodek Scholar in Curriculum and Instruction in the College of Education. “In the fall semester of senior year, all of our students have placements in a local preschool. We have anywhere from 15 to 25 students, depending on the cohort, and we usually place three to five students at the CDL. They actually take over and run the classrooms for four weeks during the semester.”
The College of Education houses the University Primary School, a preschool through 5th grade lab school that hosts education students for in-class observations. But because the students graduate with a license covering birth through age 8, Sanders-Smith says the CDL fills an important gap with infants and toddler age groups. And CDL’s observation booths — a feature the primary school lacks — allow students to observe classroom dynamics more naturally.
“When we do observations at University Primary, we all go marching in the classroom. At CDL, we can observe without disrupting the class,” Sanders-Smith said. “Also, the observation booths allow instructors to watch when students are interacting with children.”
Early childhood education students aren’t the only ones learning to teach children at CDL. Graduates of the dance program at Illinois often go on to teach dance fundamentals to children, and training with CDL kids provides a key opportunity to hone those skills. Betty Allen, director of the children’s dance program, says few dance schools offer hands-on instruction in teaching children.
“We want to provide an authentic experience for our students. Without the CDL, I wouldn't be able to do that,” Allen said. “Although we offer dance classes for children in the community, our students also need to have the experience of teaching as guest artists in school classrooms. The CDL provides that totally different and needed experience. And if my students can experience both, it better prepares them for the future.”
A testbed for campus-wide research endeavors
In addition to teaching, more than a dozen faculty — along with undergraduate and graduate researchers from eight campus units — use the CDL as a critical site for data collection to conduct paradigm-shifting research. The numbers of researchers and projects fluctuate from year to year, but the site is always abuzz with research activity.
As just a few examples, undergraduate researchers in art and design have tested toy design, graduate students in nutrition have studied responsive feeding in infants, and professors in speech and hearing sciences plan to deploy artificial intelligence to identify potential language delays or disabilities. The CDL’s unique population, protocols, and facilities make it all possible.
McElwain’s research on wearable sensors for infants couldn’t happen without the CDL.
“We have a new study at CDL where, with parental consent, we fit infants with a wearable device and code their behaviors in real time using an app we’ve developed,” she said. “The CDL is just a very unique context in which to do this kind of research.”
Michelle Nelson, head of the Department of Advertising in the College of Media, appreciates how accommodating the CDL has been in facilitating her research on food packaging and child nutrition. For example, using the CDL population, Nelson and her students demonstrated the power of cartoon spokes-characters on product labels, with kids overwhelmingly choosing products with familiar characters.
“The CDL makes it really easy for faculty because research and teaching are such a high priority over there. The organization, the training, the access, and the process are so well-honed. They’ll even adjust classroom schedules as necessary to accommodate our presence,” Nelson said. “Things that are impossible to imagine in a regular daycare environment.”
Oswald says the kids aren’t really interrupted by the research, except for occasional pullout activities. “There's so much care in making sure that the education is meeting all of the standards, that the research is being conducted ethically, that the students who are coming in to be trained in some ways are being well supervised, there’s a heightened sense of care for the children and children's well being.”
It is this holistic perspective that makes the CDL so much more than a high-quality early childhood school.
“The CDL is a flagship,” Oswald added. “It puts human thriving at the forefront and it says there is a science to child development. That’s the rock we stand on. It matters that people are trained and that facilities and curriculum are high quality. It really is a treasure that should not be taken for granted.”
Unfortunately, the building that houses the preschool classrooms for the CDL no longer meets modern standards. A capital campaign is seeking donations to build a new, modern facility — which will be an expansion of the Early Childhood Development Facility built in 2003 — to do justice to the lasting impact of the CDL.
Contributions to the building project can be made online to the “Child Development Laboratory Fund.” Contact the Office of Advancement at 217-333-9355 or acesadvancement@illinois.edu to discuss naming opportunities and other giving opportunities to support the CDL’s mission.