Intern LaJune Cain starts her day with a warm greeting.

The Division of Student Affairs has been reorganized over the past year. Gregory Roberts will profile a department within the division each week to clarify these changes and inform the campus community of the services offered.

The University of St. Thomas Child Development Center is licensed to serve 65 children ranging in age from 6 weeks to 5 years old. The center has long waiting lists but gives enrollment priority first to the children of current UST students, then UST faculty and staff and finally to members of the surrounding campus community.

The Child Development Center is, first and foremost, committed to providing high-quality early childhood programming. Offering a highly creative curriculum with a strong developmental focus, the center is accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children — a distinction achieved by about 8 percent of early childhood programs across the country.

The center also is committed to the development an promotion of best practices in the early education industry. This commitment has led to a number of program initiatives that are of particular benefit to the broader St. Thomas community. These include:

• Internship Project: The Child Development Center offers opportunities for experiential learning through its Internship Project. Both undergraduate and graduate students can complete one- and two-semester credit-bearing internships, independent study and student-teaching experiences in the center.
• Student work-study and volunteer opportunities: Each semester, 45 to 60 students gain valuable insights in areas such as: child development, family relationships, teaching methods, curriculum development and conflict resolution. The skills they learn in the center will serve them will in their future work and family lives.
• Student research: The Child Development Center is an ideal venue for student or faculty-student research in a number of academic disciplines, including: education, music, psychology, sociology, health and human performance, and business.
• Parents’ Gatherings: The center’s parent support-and-education group meets monthly and covers a wide range of parent- and family-related topics. Parents’ Gatherings are open to everyone in the St. Thomas community.