Stephanie Rowley

Stephanie J. Rowley is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Education and dean of the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Virginia. Before returning to UVA, where she earned a Ph.D. in developmental psychology, she was provost and dean at Teachers College, Columbia University. Prior to joining Teachers College, Rowley spent nearly 20 years on the faculty at the University of Michigan where she served in several key leadership positions, including interim chair of the psychology department, chair of the Combined Program in Education and Psychology, and associate vice president for research for social science, arts, and humanities. In these roles, she was successful in advancing research and teaching support for faculty, developing interdisciplinary collaboration, and strengthening graduate student life and development.  

Rowley’s research takes up questions about how parents, teachers, and peers shape the rapidly developing identities and world views of young adolescents, children between the ages of 12 and 14. Her work explores how parents’ views of the world shape the ways in which they socialize their children and how that socialization relates to the children’s own views of themselves as individuals, members of social identity groups, and learners. Core to this research is the premise that race, gender, and social class are critical factors in these processes and that their interrelations change as youth move through adolescence to adulthood.

In recent years, Rowley has also begun to explore how children’s understanding of inequality evolves throughout adolescence and how that understanding shapes their views of themselves and their achievement-related motivation. Like her more general work, this research acknowledges the ways in which beliefs related to race, gender, and social class converge and diverge in important ways.

Rowley and her colleagues have published this work in journals in education, developmental psychology, and gender and cultural studies. Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Spencer Foundation.

Rowley has won numerous awards for her research, teaching, service, and mentorship. Among her most valued awards have been those received for her outstanding mentoring of students. She currently lives in Charlottesville, Virginia with her husband, Larry, whom she met when they were graduate students at UVA.

Ph.D., University of Virginia, 1997
M.A., University of Virginia, 1995
B.A., The University of Michigan, 1992

Curriculum Vitae