Christine M. McWayne, Ph.D. is the Principal Investigator of the RISE project, a curriculum and professional development/research effort with Head Start programs in Boston, and funded by the National Science Foundation, the Brady Education Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation and private support from Ellen R. Cohen to Tufts University. Dr. McWayne is Professor in the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development at Tufts University. She earned her doctorate in School, Community, and Clinical-Child Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 2003. Dr. McWayne’s work has focused primarily on two areas: (1) understanding the interplay of contextual factors in the home, school, and neighborhood as they impact children’s early development of social and academic competencies; and (2) the advancement of a partnership-based research approach to improve early childhood education programs, specifically, those promoting school success for urban-residing children from families of low income. A major part of her program of research has been to develop and validate psychometrically sound and ecologically sensitive assessment measures for use in urban preschool programs, including measures of parenting and family engagement practices for socioculturally diverse families. Dr. McWayne has served as the principal investigator (PI) on several other grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Administration for Children and Families within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She has served on the journal editorial boards of Early Childhood Research Quarterly and the National Head Start Association’s Dialog, and was Associate Editor for the American Education Research Association’s Educational Researcher, the Journal of School Psychology and the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology. She has numerous publications and has given over 150 presentations on the factors associated with children’s school readiness, family engagement, and positive parenting in socioculturally diverse communities.