LATROBE, PA – Saint Vincent College is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Jessica Black, an assistant professor of psychological science and licensed clinical psychologist, as the Rita McGinley Endowed Chair in Early Learning and Children’s Media and a member of the Roundtable of Scholars at the College.
Named in honor of the late McGinley—philanthropist, children’s educator and longtime friend of Saint Vincent College—the role champions research that directly serves families and communities while drawing inspiration from TV personality Fred Rogers’ timeless commitment to using media to nurture kindness, emotional growth and honest communication.
Black’s appointment began Aug. 1.
“Dr. Jessica Black will champion research that directly serves families and communities,” said Father Paul Taylor, O.S.B., C’87, S’91, PhD, president of Saint Vincent College. “Her work will be an integral part of the Fred Rogers Institute (FRI) at Saint Vincent College and build upon the excellence of the Institute as a trusted national and international resource that is faithful to Mister Rogers’ legacy and vision.”
In her role as the Rita McGinley Endowed Chair in Early Learning and Children’s Media, Black will drive research initiatives that bridge the gap between scholarship and community impact while engaging Saint Vincent students in the work. The position seeks to develop evidence-based practices that help children thrive in a digital age while advancing Rogers’ vision of media as a positive learning tool.
“An opportunity to positively contribute to healthy relationships between children and their helpers guided by the work of Fred Rogers while serving the Saint Vincent College students and community, a community grounded in Benedictine values that prioritize relation with others, is exceptionally rare,” Black said. “I’m looking forward to serving and working with Saint Vincent College students through teaching and mentorship in a place that honors preparing students not for just a career but for a life of meaning lived in community with others, which is the key to overall health and well-being.”
Black is no stranger to the Institute as she previously served in a consultant role from 2020-2021. She consulted on several projects, including the creation of psychoeducational literature to promote conversations between children and their helpers concerning difficult topics such as when a child’s loved one dies and when a child’s loved one has an addiction.
“Facilitating the discussion of difficult things that children are facing was central to Fred Rogers’ work as he highlighted how not mentioning difficult things can often lead children to experience increased distress,” Black said. “Fred correctly noted that when we fail to talk with children about the difficult things that they are facing, it often leads them to think that the problem must be so bad that there is no way to manage it. Children can also think that they are to blame for the problem, as young children are naturally and necessarily egocentric.”
This initial experience as a consultant showed Black the impact and uniqueness of the Institute. Now in her new role as the Rita McGinley Endowed Chair in Early Learning and Children’s Media, Black hopes to enhance the Institute’s mission and use media as an engaging teaching tool to help promote healthy relationships between children and their helpers.
“The Benedictine values that the College community holds and strives to live by such as community, obedience and humility naturally align with Fred’s works,” Black said. “Taking my clinical psychology expertise guided by Fred Rogers’ works and aligned with Benedictine values, a primary goal that I have in this position is to use the tool of media to help promote healthy relationships between children and their adult helpers through two main avenues. I want to provide psychoeducation to helpers on how to be more present with children, and I want to empower children’s helpers to know that they ‘already have everything that they need within them’ to have conversations with children about difficult things that children may be facing.”
Black has taught in the College’s Department of Psychological Science since 2018, first as an assistant professor before stepping down to adjunct professor due to family reasons. She is looking forward to returning to a full-time role.
She has a variety of published articles in peer-reviewed publications to her credit in addition to book chapters and unpublished treatment manuals. Black has worked in a variety of clinical settings, including Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center as well as UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh and its Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine. Most recently, she sees psychotherapy clients in a local private practice.
Black holds a PhD in clinical psychology with a health psychology focus from the University of Cincinnati College of Arts & Sciences. She earned the Outstanding Master’s Student Award for her distinguished master’s thesis. She completed her clinical internship at the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center followed by a T32-funded two-year postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh. Black completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Pittsburgh majoring in psychology with a history minor.
Dr. Junlei Li served as the inaugural Rita McGinley Professor for Early Learning and Children’s Media and co-director of the Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children’s Media, renamed in May 2022 as the Fred Rogers Institute. He now serves as Saul Zaentz Senior Lecturer in Early Childhood Education at Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Following Li’s departure in 2018, Dr. Dana Winters, C’06, stepped into the role as the Rita McGinley Endowed Chair in Early Learning and Children’s Media. She served in that capacity until 2021, when she was promoted to Rita McGinley Endowed Executive Director of what is currently the Fred Rogers Institute. Winters now serves as vice president for enrollment and student success at the College, while Emma Swift Lee is the Endowed Executive Director of the Institute.
Planned under Rogers’ guidance and established in 2003 at Saint Vincent College near his hometown of Latrobe, the FRI is the single most authoritative resource for studying the beloved television personality’s legacy.
Rogers established the Institute with the goals of working with current professionals to support their practice in the service of children and families, researchers looking to deepen their understanding of the important issues facing children, and students at the College who aspire to serve children and their helpers.
About the Roundtable of Scholars
Archabbot Boniface Wimmer, O.S.B., founder of Saint Vincent Archabbey and College, studied at the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich, an institution that was home to a roundtable of European professors whose positions were endowed by Bavarian King Ludwig I. The Rita McGinley Endowed Chair in Early Learning and Children’s Media is part of Saint Vincent College’s own Roundtable of Scholars: expert professors serving in faculty positions endowed by the financial commitments of alumni and friends.
These endowed faculty chairs work to promote and enhance collaboration in their scholarship and research across the College’s academic community while also preparing students for successful careers and lives of purpose and meaning.
