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New facility will accommodate 237 children from six-weeks to 12-years-old
Karen L. Rucker, director of UD’s new Early Learning Center

3:15 p.m., July 23, 2003--Karen L. Rucker, the director of UD’s new Early Learning Center (ELC), is literally coming in on the ground floor. Not only will she organize and staff the center and help set its goals and standards, she also is involved in planning the physical layout of the building to accommodate staff, students and 237 children from six-weeks to 12-years-old.

The center will be located in the former Girls Inc. building on Wyoming Road, and renovation will begin this summer. The building will be gutted and reconfigured to accommodate 30 infants, 48 toddlers and 84 preschoolers. An additional 75 school-aged children will be at ELC before and after school and during summers.

Facilities will include 22 classrooms, a kitchen, two therapy assessment rooms, a parent meeting room, a parent resource room, a half gym, offices and observation and teaching areas where students and others can see the children in action. Some rooms will serve many purposes.

“There are four dimensions to the ELC—quality child care, research, family services training and education for the community, and undergraduate education and preservice training,” Rucker said. “It’s exciting to plan a building that meets the needs of all of these constituents.

“The most important constituent is the children,” she said. “Respecting children and following their interests is the key to quality child care. You have to genuinely understand the significance of early care and education. Child-care providers make a significant impact in molding and helping children during these critical early years.”

The children enrolled at ELC will have diverse backgrounds, and 20 percent will be children with special needs.

Rucker said her goal is to make ELC a model child-care center that goes beyond the standards for accreditation and can be used for training child-care providers, as well as discovering what programs work best for children and their families. She also wants to create a community at the center, making it more than a place to drop off and pick up children for day care. She said she plans to have the center work with and partner with parents to create a network of families through informal get-togethers.

The school also will provide teaching, learning and research opportunities for UD faculty and students. “The ELC will enable us to follow children’s progress for several years as they grow up at the center,” she said.

A multidisciplinary project, ELC is part of the College of Human Services, Education and Public Policy, and Rucker will be working with Michael Gamel-McCormick, associate professor of individual and family studies and director of the Center for Disabilities Studies, and ELC’s Program Council with Gamel-McCormick and representatives from cooperative extension, education, individual and family studies, nursing, physical therapy and psychology.

Rucker received her bachelor’s degree in education from UD in 1976 and her master’s degree in family support studies from Nova Southeastern University. She was named an Outstanding Young Woman of America in 1990. She brings many years of experience to ELC, and she will draw upon her background in all phases of child care—from building and budgets to training personnel and working with different agencies and organizations—in her new position.

A junior high school teacher until her now-grown twin sons, Jim and John, were born, Rucker became active as a volunteer in a twins club, doing community outreach, parent education and crisis networking. When the twins were young, she became active in the early childhood field, joining a local nonprofit organization as children’s program director.

She found the field so rewarding, Rucker said, that she has remained in early care and education for more than 20 years.

Her next job was as director of a local child-care center that had major problems and was in danger of losing its license. It was a challenge, but Rucker turned the center around.

Then Rucker became involved with corporate day care centers, working for two major national child-care providers. She worked as director, regional manager and as district education coordinator. In that role, she was a mentor/trainer for child-care directors in Delaware and other states in the region and helped centers to become accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC).

Only 5-7 percent of child-care centers are accredited nationwide, and getting ELC accredited after the mandatory year’s waiting time is a priority, Rucker said.

In 1999, she moved back to Newark and formed her own company, ECE Solutions, becoming an education specialist and consultant. She offered technical assistance to centers, from the construction phase to completion, working to improve fiscal management and helping centers achieve accreditation.

Rucker also has been active in the community in child-care and sat on the Montgomery County Child Care Commission in Maryland. Currently she serves on the board of the Delaware Association for the Education of Young Children and is an advisory member on various committees related to children and their families.

Now Rucker is working and planning for June 2004, when ELC plans to open its doors to its young charges, their families, the community and to UD faculty and graduate and undergraduate students.

Article by Sue Moncure
Photo by Kathy Atkinson


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