The pool of early care and education professionals that provide services to KSRC on an as needed basis and comprise teams that are established for each early care and education research and/or consulting project include:

Darlene Hamilton,M.B.A. (Early Care and Education Program Manager): Darlene Hamilton has over 30 years of work experience in the field of early care and education, both in direct service as well as management. As the Associate Executive Director of the YWCA of Greater Pittsburgh, she developed and implemented training and accreditation support programs for home- and center-based child care providers, supervised the child care subsidy program, and managed a regional child care resource service. As an independent consultant, she has provided service to the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare (DPW), helping to develop standards for a statewide resource and referral system, to provide oversight and coordination services for the statewide professional development system, and to develop performance standards for home-based providers. Darlene has served on several local, state and national committees and boards, including the National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies (NACCRRA) board, the PA Child Care Association (PACCA) board, and the Pennsylvania (AEYC) board. Ms. Hamilton also served as the Training System and Technical Assistance Coordinator for PA Pathways, in which she served as the liaison between the training organizations, trainers, and the PA Pathways administrative office.

James E. Van Horn, Ph.D. (Senior Content Specialist): Dr. Van Horn is Professor of Rural Family Sociology at Penn State and Director of the Penn State Better Kid Care Program. He is a Certified Family Life Educator. In May of 2000, Van Horn was awarded the prestigious Penn State University Faculty Outreach Award, a system wide award given to the outstanding faculty person who does outreach education.

He is Director of the Better Kid Care Program- a program that annually provides over 275,000 hours of training to early childhood educators, care providers, parents and employers. Van Horn also produces and hosts the award winning, nationally televised training program for child care providers that monthly enrolls over 100,000 providers across the United States.

In recent years, he has worked with business and industry, examining work family issues in relationship to family stress and employee benefits involving child care. Van Horn regularly provides training and consultations with various agencies dealing with families and children.

Van Horn is a member of the Penn State Graduate Faculty and teaches graduate courses on the rural family, socialization of children, America's culturally diverse families and family stress and strengths. He routinely works with and mentors graduate students at both the master's and Ph.D. level and returning adult students on the undergraduate level.

Dr. Van Horn has also done extensive marriage and family therapy and has worked with children in play therapy groups. He has spoken and written extensively on childhood socialization, strengthening American families - family stress and family strengths. For over 15 years, Van Horn wrote a weekly feature by-line column "Today's Family" for the Associated Press which reached over 5 million homes each week. He writes articles and columns for many other publications.

Frances G. Langan, Ed.D. (Senior Content Specialist): Dr. Langan is a professor and chair of the Division of Education at Keystone College has been employed at Keystone College since 1980. Initially employed as an assistant professor in the division of Social and Behavioral Sciences, she has taught courses in Child Psychology, Psychology of Disability, Curriculum and Program Planning for Infants, Toddlers, and Preschool Children, Human Services Systems, Elementary Curriculum, Problems and Issues in Education, Foundations of Education, and Ethics in Education. She Chaired the Division of Social Sciences from 1998 to 2005 and in 2005, assumed the Chairmanship of the Division of Education.

An advocate for young children, Dr. Langan serves on local, state, and national boards that focus on improving the quality of children's educational programs. As an individual dedicated to life-long learning, she is committed to providing optimum educational experiences for adults engaged in academic pursuits.

Dr. Langan currently serves on the Mid-Atlantic Early Childhood Education Network (MECEN), a project of Temple University; the Success by Six Steering Committee for the United Way of Lackawanna County; the Northeast Council of Elementary School Administrators; the Pennsylvania Department of Education Early Childhood Guideline Committee; the Pennsylvania Key Career Lattice Committee; and has been a board member of the Day Nursery Association and the Career Technology Center of Lackawanna County since 1995.

In addition to working as a consultant for KeyStone Research Corporation, Fran has been a consultant for the Lackawanna and Luzerne County Head Start programs; Hildebrandt Learning Centers; Susquehanna County Childcare Agencies; Community Services for Children; and the Diocese of Scranton. Consultant services included grant writing, training, and administrative support. Grants secured total in excess of two million dollars.

Joyce Lang, M.P.A. (Subject Matter Specialist): Ms. Lang holds a Masters in Public Administration from Penn State University and she is currently on the adjunct faculty at Northampton Community College. She developed and teaches the Leadership Seminar in Early Childhood Education, which is part of the PA Director's Certificate. Prior to that, she directed the Northeast Region School-Age Child Care Project for 20 years; she also created and implemented a Program Evaluation/Quality Enhancement Project cited in the book No Time to Waste . These projects had been funded by KeyStone Research Corporation with the funding that KSRC received to operate the PA Pathways professional development system.

Ms. Lang is a founding member of the National School-Age Child Care Alliance (now the National Afterschool Association) and a board member of the Pennsylvania School-Age Child Care Alliance. She has been trained and is a certified assessor for the Program Administration Scale. She is a Certified Trainer with the Pennsylvania Trainer Quality Assurance System, created and administered by KeyStone Research Corporation.

Ms. Lang is a member of the Systems Workgroup that created Keystone STARS in PA and member of the STARS Standards Review Committee. Further, she directed comprehensive Child Care Resource and Referral Service for 22 years, including child care subsidy programs, professional development programs (some of which were funded by KeyStone Research Corporation), employer-supported child care and advocacy. She has extensive experience (22 years) in the management of technical assistance and accreditation mentoring projects, one of which was created and funded by KeyStone Research Corporation (the STARS TA project).