Margaret Friend – Professor / Author/ Community Advocate

I’ve always been curious. When I was little, I used my allowance to buy all sorts of science kits at the store. When other kids wanted bicycles (don’t get me wrong, I wanted a bicycle too), what I most wanted was a microscope so I could investigate the creek near the playground at school. I was the first person in my family to attend college and, as such, I saw what a privilege that was and how difficult it was to achieve. I had to learn how to navigate college while paying my own way. My professors knew me well. I showed up at their doors regularly and convinced them to give me a chance in their laboratories where my learning expanded far beyond anything that I imagined. I learned that any opportunity to learn was a good opportunity. I went on to earn my Ph.D. in Developmental Science at the University of Florida and extended my training beyond the Ph.D. in laboratories in Berkeley, San Francisco, and in Geneva, Switzerland. I was interested in how young children learn about the world and the people around them. What sorts of information were very young children taking in about their world and how did they manage so much information at once?

Since those early days and years, I’ve become increasingly interested in children’s language acquisition, particularly their rapid learning of many new words over the first few years of life. Most people are surprised to learn that the number of words a child knows when they are two or two-and-a-half years of age predicts their development and success over the life course including, for example, their reading ability in the third grade, their chances of graduating high school, of attending college, and even their employment and health in adulthood. This is incredible, especially since so many factors can influence this early development. Did you know for example that when parents and their infants engage in a “conversation,” even if the infant is only babbling, that the language areas of their brains become synchronized? So these early interactions are setting things in motion that will have a big impact in the child’s life. When children learn new words, they are learning concepts that will guide their learning throughout life. This is pretty exciting but it also means that we have a big responsibility to ensure the best possible learning environments for children very early in life and into kindergarten and elementary school and beyond.

I am currently a tenured professor at SDSU and a published author. My students, colleagues, and I work to understand the factors that best support early learning. In addition, we are interested in how we can best measure what children know in the early years. I am the developer of an assessment to directly ask children about the words and concepts that they know. This assessment has been extended to many languages around the world. Most recently, my colleagues and I used it to better understand patterns of Indigenous language loss in a rural community in northern Argentina. We will use this information to inform social and education policy. I regularly teach classes at the undergraduate and graduate levels and direct a laboratory where I train students at all levels in research practices.

I am passionate about helping students learn to learn and about giving students the same opportunities that I am lucky to have had. I’m eager to ensure that every student has a chance to pursue their dreams and I put heart and soul into making this a reality. I serve, or have served, on the Curriculum Committee, the SDSU Fulbright Program Committee, the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee, and I regularly mentor to first-generation and underrepresented students on our campus. However my dedication to providing the best possible opportunities for our children extends beyond the children in my research and the students in my lab and classroom. I want to make sure that we are making the best choices in our communities for families and their children and, toward that end, I serve as President of Normal Heights for Smart Growth.

Normal Heights for Smart Growth focuses on how we use growth (growth in our population and the necessary growth in housing to support the population) to foster healthy and thriving communities. Some key ideas from the Smart Growth perspective are that we need to build a mix of homes (some for young folks, some for older folks to age in place, some for working families), we need to maximize opportunities for housing by building mixed-use dwellings where businesses and housing coexist (this can provide employment in the neighborhood, but also easy access to services), we need to make sure that there is adequate green space (tree canopies and parks provide respite from the heat, help to actually lower the temperature in the neighborhood by cooling the air, and provide opportunities to play, exercise, and gather), we need to make sure that our neighborhoods are walkable and transit-friendly, offering a range of options to get where we need to go safely, and we need to give communities a voice in creating these healthy communities. When we do this, we reduce stress on parents which then filters down to healthier, happier relationships with children, we foster a sense of belonging and community, and we give kids a safe place to play and to call home. This ties back into my commitment to supporting the best learning environments for children and to giving every child a chance to thrive.