John Fantuzzo is the Albert M. Greenfield Professor of Human Relations at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education and the Faculty Director of the Penn Child Research Center.[1][2]
He is a recipient of the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Involvement Award[3] and the National Head Start Research Mentor Award.[1]
Fantuzzo has been a faculty member at Penn since 1988, where he has worked extensively with the School District of Philadelphia's early childhood education programs.[1] Fantuzzo's research and work focus on the design, implementation, and evaluation of school- and community-based strategies that benefit low-income children in high-risk urban settings.[4] He has conducted multiple studies, some with the National Head Start Program, that research the effect of community and family violence on school readiness, the influence of social/emotional adjustment problems on educational success, and early childhood education.[1][5][6]
Fantuzzo worked on the development of integrated citywide databases for agencies that serve young children, such as the Kids Integrated Data System or KIDS database, a Philadelphia-area database that is one of the only municipal databases of its kind.[7] Fantuzzo is also a principal investigator of EPIC, or Evidence-Based Program for the Integration of Curricula, a Head Start program for disadvantage and at-risk preschoolers. EPIC integrates social, emotional, and cognitive supports with literacy and numeracy education and is being implemented at several preschools in Philadelphia.[8] Fantuzzo also serves on the editorial boards of research journals in education and early childhood, including the Journal of Educational Psychology, Early Childhood Research Quarterly, and School Psychology Review.[1]
In 2009 Fantuzzo presented the Albert M. Greenfield Memorial Lecture, a review of research findings titled "The Educational Well-Being of African American Boys: A Philadelphia Story of Challenges and Possibilities."[1]
Fantuzzo holds a B.A. in psychology from Marietta College (1974), an M.A. in theology from the Fuller Theological Seminary (1976), and a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the Fuller Graduate School of Psychology (1980). In 1990, Fantuzzo received an honorary M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania.[1]