Professor Jill V. Hamm named interim education dean
Since 2017, Hamm has led growth as the UNC School of Education’s associate dean for research and faculty development.
Jill V. Hamm, William C. Friday Distinguished Professor of Education, will serve as interim dean of the UNC School of Education effective May 15. Provost J. Christopher Clemens made the announcement during the school’s full faculty meeting on April 30.
In addition to her faculty role, Hamm serves as the school’s associate dean for research and faculty development.
Hamm will assume leadership duties ahead of the departure of Fouad Abd-El-Khalick, who leaves Carolina to become provost and senior vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Massachusetts Amherst on June 30, overlapping to ensure a seamless transition.
Hamm has served as a faculty member in applied developmental science at Carolina since 1999. As associate dean for research and faculty development, a role created in 2017 and held by Hamm since, she has played a leading role in growing the school’s annual research expenditures from $6.2 million in 2016 to $22.2 million in 2023. This growth greatly expanded Carolina’s ability to better serve the people, especially students and educators, of North Carolina and beyond. Under her direction, the school increased its research capacity and expanded its pipeline through the creation of several pre- and post-award staff positions.
Hamm’s research interests center on early adolescents’ social, behavioral and academic adjustment, and the role of peer relations in successful school adaptation. She has applied her research findings on naturally occurring academic and social processes in schools to the development and testing of professional learning experiences designed to help middle and high school teachers create supportive classroom and school environments. She is the author or co-author of more than 50 peer-reviewed journal articles and 16 handbook, monographs, and book chapters. Hamm has served as principal investigator or co-principal investigator on funded research projects totaling over $18 million.
Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the Institute for Education Sciences, as well by the William T. Grant Foundation and the Spencer Foundation. She currently co-leads a $1.5 million NSF-funded collaborative research grant — CASCADE or Collaborative Activities in STEM Careers for Adolescent Engagement — with Horizon Research Inc., a Chapel Hill-based company that works to improve STEM education efforts through research.
Hamm is a past associate editor of the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology and has served on the editorial boards of JADP and the Journal of Educational Psychology. She also previously directed the Social Development Intervention Research Program at the Center for Developmental Science at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Hamm holds a doctorate and Master of Science in educational psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and completed a post-doctoral research fellowship through the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
With Hamm serving as interim dean, Jeffrey A. Greene, McMichael Professor, will take on her role as interim associate dean for research and faculty development on May 15.
Greene was associate dean for academic affairs and director of graduate studies for 2½ years until July 1, 2020. He has served on the school’s faculty since 2007 after earning his doctorate in educational psychology from the University of Maryland. His research leverages the science of learning to help people be better critical consumers and producers of information, particularly in online and technology environments.
