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

Richard Fiene, PhD. (Senior Researcher): Dr. Fiene has over 35 years of experience in doing national, state and local research and evaluation studies in the early care and education field. He has a Ph.D. in developmental psychology. Dr. Fiene has conducted research and policy analyses and assessments for various state agencies, has conducted research and evaluation studies and completed data collection and analyses for large-scale state studies. He has completed performance measurement and program assessments for state and national organizations and agencies and has conducted national multi-state research into early childhood licensing and accreditation systems. He has also taught and done research at Penn State University for over 30 years.

Dr. Fiene has worked with KeyStone Research Corporation on several research and evaluation projects over the past 15 years in assessing the quality of professional development systems in various state agencies. He also assisted in the data collection and analysis of these studies and has co-authored numerous publications with Joyce Miller, President of KeyStone Research Corporation.

Further, Dr. Fiene has worked for and within state government agencies for over 25 years as research director and special assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Children, Youth and Families and to the Secretary of Public Welfare in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Kimberly Skarupski, Ph.D., M.P.H.(Senior Researcher): Dr. Skarupski is an assistant professor at the Rush Institute for Healthy Aging, Department of Internal Medicine, at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, IL. She is also president and owner of Academy Evaluators, Inc., an organization that specializes in program evaluation. Dr. Skarupski received her Ph.D. in sociology (1996) from Case Western Reserve University with a major concentration in gerontology and medical sociology. She received a master of public health degree from the University of Pittsburgh in 2002.

Dr. Skarupski has research and practice expertise in program evaluation (e.g., research and policy analysis/assessment; research and evaluation design, data collection and analysis; performance measurement; and program assessments). She developed and teaches a Program Evaluation course and has had numerous invitations to speak about program evaluation and measuring outcomes, most recently by the office of Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, J. Dennis Hastert. Dr. Skarupski has designed numerous program evaluations ranging from a three-year Department of Education, Preparing Tomorrow's Teachers to Use Technology (PT3) grant for Mercyhurst College. to a two-year evaluation of a prison-based fathering education program for the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, to a local faith-based, school-district wide abstinence program, and numerous other evaluations of educational programs in public housing authorities, homeless shelters, domestic violence agencies, teenage pregnancy organizations, and science museums. Dr. Skarupski's gerontologic research agenda includes race/ethnic health disparities and as such, she has expertise with diverse populations. Dr. Skarupski most recently consulted with KeyStone Research Corporation on the Pennsylvania Child Care/Early Childhood Development Training System (T.E.A.C.H. Early Childhood ® Project) from 2001-2003 where she attended a train-the-trainer session on three data collection instruments, assisted in organizing a statewide training conference, conducted a 5-day training session including site visits, and then assisted in subsequent data analyses for the project.

Elwood L. Robison, Ph.D. (Senior Researcher): Dr. Robinson is a clinical psychologist that specializes in research design and psychometric properties associated with educational and pychological test development. Additionally, he is Director of a National Institute of Health Training Grant to training undergraduate students in the science for careers in biomedical research. One of his responsibilities to NIH is program evaluation which consists of analyzing the data needed to assess the stated measurable goals and outcomes that are specific to his program. Additionally, he am a clinical researcher investigating psychosocial and behavioral factors associated with cardiovascular disease and cancer in underserved population in the U.S. His consulting business, Euthenics, provides a variety of services to the science and educational community including; statistical consultation, research design analysis, program evaluation, clinical trial designs, scientific product analysis, and clinical and psychological services. He conducted workshops and training programs related to diversity in science, research, and education. Lastly, he currently serves as consultant to Metametrics, one of the leading educational research companies in the U.S.

Elizabeth Jaeger, Ph.D. (Senior Researcher): Dr. Jaeger's area of expertise is in research and evaluation design, data collection and analyses. Currently, she is the Director of the Child Development Laboratory and an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Saint Joseph's University. Prior to joining the faculty at Saint Joseph's University, Dr. Jaeger served as an Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Psychology at Temple University.

Her research is concerned with both basic and applied issues in early child care. From 1995 to 2001, she served as a Co-Principal Investigator on the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. The study, coordinated by NICHD, is a national, multi-site longitudinal study examining the effects of variations in early rearing experiences on child development through fifth grade. While at Temple University, she also served as a Co-Principal Investigator on two evaluations of child care interventions in Philadelphia, both funded by the William Penn Foundation. These included the evaluations of Child Care Matters and the Philadelphia Early Childhood Collaborative.

Since assuming her position at Saint Joseph's University, she conducted the Philadelphia Child Care Quality Study for the Improving School Readiness Project of the United Way of Southeastern PA, which served as part of the basis for a United Way intervention known Early to Learn: Partners for School Readiness Project (E2L). She also conducted an evaluability assessment of E2L and an evaluation of the Preschool Plus component of the Early to Learn initiative in its first three years. Preschool Plus is an multidisciplinary effort to improve the quality of early care and education settings in the Philadelphia region. She is currently conducting an evaluation of a literacy intervention that is a new component of E2L, funded through the Knight Foundation. This intervention aims to improve the literacy practices of teachers and the emergent literacy of preschoolers.

In addition to evaluations of relatively large initiatives, she has also conducted evaluations of local programs in Philadelphia including the Neighborhood Parenting Program of the Preschool Project and the Playgroup Intervention being implemented by the Philadelphia Early Childhood Collaborative. The latter is an innovative early care and education setting aimed at improving the school readiness of children who have not had exposure to formal ECE environments. Her evaluation studies, whether large or small, have all focused on interventions attempting to serve the needs of the diverse population of children and families in the Philadelphia region.

Ross Koppel, Ph.D. (Senior Researcher): Dr. Koppel is president of the Social Research Corporation, a twenty-six-year-old research and evaluation group in Wyncote, PA. For the past fourteen years Dr. Koppel has also taught research methods in the sociology department of the University of Pennsylvania. In addition, Professor Koppel teaches a Ph.D.-level course on research methods at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Koppel has extensive expertise in: research design, evaluation research, statistics, educational systems analysis, policy analysis, survey development, educational processes, and labor force analyses.

Currently, Dr. Koppel is the Principal Investigator of Penn's medical school's study of hospital workplace organization and medication errors. As well, he has 34 years experience in evaluation and assessment work-- including projects for the U.S. Congress' Office of Technology Assessment, the U.S. Customs Service, Wharton Econometric Forecasting Associates, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the CDC, the Alzheimer's Association, the Life Sciences Career Alliance, the US Department of Labor, the Pennsylvania's Governor's Office, and the NJ Department of Health and Senior Services, among many others.

Dr. Koppel has developed, administered and analyzed over one hundred and fifty surveys on topics ranging from job satisfaction to bureaucratic efficiency. He has conducted research on a very wide variety of topics, including labor force processes, the impact of technology on jobs and skills, the effects of healthcare information technology on medication error, breast cancer screening, Alzheimer's disease costs to businesses, perceptions of time, utility company policy, deregulation, discrimina­tion in the workplace, research and evaluation policy, ethics of social research, education policy, leisure industries, social ecology, employment in the arts, wage and earning determination, drug abuse, and statistical analysis in social research.

Patricia M. Ulbrich, Ph.D.: Dr. Ulbrich has over 20 years of experience in teaching, research, program development and program evaluation in the fields of higher education and human services. She received a Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Illinois and a NIMH post-doctoral fellowship in social psychology at the University of Indiana . Her research has focused on gender, race, and class disparities in health and social statuses. She has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in sociology, and worked to integrate issues of race, class and gender into the curriculum at the University of Miami and the University of Akron . She has also provided diversity training (gender equity, cultural competency, inclusivity) for schools and non-profit organizations.

As a Senior Research Associate at Adagio Health in Pittsburgh , Dr. Ulbrich developed, implemented and evaluated research focused on women's health. These efforts included process and outcome evaluations. She evaluated CDC funded, community based adolescent pregnancy prevention programs in Pittsburgh . She designed, implemented and evaluated an innovative project to introduce screening for domestic violence in family planning clinics in rural, southwestern Pennsylvania . She served in an advisory capacity to both the CDC and the Office of Population Affairs, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, regarding national research and policy agendas on domestic violence and reproductive health. She also collaborated with a family planning agency in Philadelphia to secure NIH funding to study differential access to emergency contraception in Pennsylvania . Her consulting business, Ulbrich and Associates, provides a variety of services to non-profits and foundations including applied research, program development and program evaluation for making data-driven decisions to ensure quality and effectiveness of programs and projects. Working as a community volunteer, she provided the strategic leadership to envision the Women and Girls Foundation of Southwest Pennsylvania and served as President of the Founding Board of Directors. She designed and conducted the Status of Women in the Counties (eleven counties in southwest Pennsylvania ) research project as a needs assessment for the foundation. Dr. Ulbrich has presented the results of applied and evaluation research in peer-reviewed journals and at national conferences.