Carla Horwitz is a faculty member of Yale Education Studies, the Yale Child Study Center, and the Department of Psychology. She was Director of Calvin Hill Day Care Center for forty years, and has served as the Director Emerita since retiring in 2016. Despite the competing demands of these roles, she still finds time to work with undergraduates. She advises several Education Studies capstones each year, and she is currently co-teaching Child Development with her colleague, Ann Close.
One of Professor Horwitz’s favorite teaching experiences comes from having her students create curricula that demonstrate concepts in math, science, and/or art. She frames this assignment as an open-ended process, and encourages her students to draw on their creativity and observations. Though the project has changed since the pandemic, it has produced many inspiring results, and she looks forward to it each year.
Beyond the classroom, Professor Horwitz is an advocate for quality early childhood education. She is a member of the National Association for the Education of Young Children, and she works with Connecticut’s Early Childhood Alliance to increase funding for early childhood care. She is also a board member of several nonprofits, including Read to Grow (which gives parents children’s books while they are still in the hospital) and All Our Kin (a family childcare network and advocacy organization in New York and Connecticut).