Ellen A. Wartella is a leading scholar of the role of media in children’s development. Professor of Communication Studies and of Psychology at Northwestern University since 2010, she was Executive Vice Chancellor, Provost and Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California

University of California

The University of California is a public university system in the U.S. state of California. Under the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the University of California is a part of the state's three-tier public higher education system, which also includes the California State University...

, Riverside, from 2004 -2009. , Wartella was dean of the College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin from 1993-2004, where she also held the Walter Cronkite Regents Chair, the Mary Gibbs Jones Centennial Chair, and the UNESCO Chair in International Communication.

She received a B.A. with honors from the University of Pittsburgh

University of Pittsburgh

The University of Pittsburgh, commonly referred to as Pitt, is a state-related research university located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded as Pittsburgh Academy in 1787 on what was then the American frontier, Pitt is one of the oldest continuously chartered institutions of...

 in 1971, and M.A. (1974) and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Minnesota

University of Minnesota

The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...

. She then taught at Ohio State University

Ohio State University

The Ohio State University, commonly referred to as Ohio State, is a public research university located in Columbus, Ohio. It was originally founded in 1870 as a land-grant university and is currently the third largest university campus in the United States...

 and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign before assuming the Texas deanship.

The author or editor of 12 books and approximately 175 book chapters, research articles, technical reports and research papers, Wartella is a co-principal Investigator on a 5-year multi-site research project entitled: “IRADS Collaborative Research: Influence of Digital Media on Very Young Children” funded by the National Research Foundation (2006-2011). She was a co-principal Investigator on the National TV Violence Study (1995-1998) and a co-principal investigator of the Children's Digital Media Center project funded by the National Science Foundation (2001-2006).

Currently chair of the Front-of-Package Marketing study committee of the Institute of Medicine for the National Science Foundation, she serves on Board of Trustees of Sesame Workshop

Sesame Workshop

Sesame Workshop, formerly known as the Children's Television Workshop , is a Worldwide American non-profit organization behind the production of several educational children's programs that have run on public broadcasting around the world...

 and the National Educational Advisory Board of the Children's Advertising Review Unit

Children's Advertising Review Unit

The Children’s Advertising Review Unit of the Council of Better Business Bureaus is a U.S. self-regulatory organization that was established in 1974 by the National Advertising Review Council . It is an independent self-regulatory agency for the promotion of responsible advertising to children...

of the Council of Better Business Bureaus and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences Board on Children Youth and Families. She recently served on the Institute of Medicine's Panel Study on Food Marketing and the Diets of Children and Youth (2006). During 2006-2007 she was the Inaugural Fellow of the Fred Rogers Center. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she is a member of the American Psychological Association, the Society for Research in Child Development and is the past President and Fellow of the International Communication Association. She received the Steven H. Chaffee Career Productivity Award from the ICA, the Distinguished Scholar Award from the National Communication Association and the Krieghbaum Under 40 Award from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.

Sources

• Provost Biography, University of California, Riverside http://provost.ucr.edu/bio/how.php
• Curriculum Vitae, Ellen Wartella, University of California, Riverside http://provost.ucr.edu/bio/wartella3_07.pdf
• News release: http://www.communication.northwestern.edu/news/press_release.php?itemID=94