Dr. Mary Ann Rafoth
I have been a K-12 classroom teacher, school psychologist, coordinator of psychological services, university trainer for aspiring teachers and school psychologists, university liaison for college students with disabilities, early childhood consultant, and university-based psycho-educational clinic director in a career spanning over thirty years. I also served as a university administrator for many of those years.
An educational psychologist and certified school psychologist, I have been a frequent consultant to schools and agencies. My research interests involve strengthening independent learning skills in students, alternatives to retaining students, school readiness issues, and program and student learning outcomes evaluation.
I authored or co-authored several chapters in the frequently referenced Best Practices in School Psychology and Children’s Needs volumes published by the National Association of School Psychologists. I am the first author of Strategies for Learning and Remembering: Study Skills across the Curriculum (NEA Professional Library, 1993) and the author of Inspiring Independent Learning: Successful Classroom Strategies (1999, NEA Professional Library). I have published over 40 refereed articles and made over fifty presentations at state, national, and international conferences in my career.
I retired as Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at Robert Morris University in 2022. I served as Vice Provost for Academic Affairs at Robert Morris from August 2017 until February of 2019 and as Dean of the School of Education and Social Sciences at Robert Morris from 2011 to 2017. I previously served as Dean of the College of Education and Educational Technology at Indiana University of Pennsylvania from 2005 until 2011.
I was chairperson of the Educational and School Psychology Department at IUP from 1999 to 2005 and was also the Director of the Center for Educational and Program Evaluation and coordinated the Educational Psychology Master’s degree program and the School Psychology Certificate program and directed the department’s Child Study Center.
As director of the Child Study Center I coordinated assessment and intervention services at no cost to children and families throughout western Pennsylvania and worked on a number of grant initiatives to provide early intervention services to children and families, particularly those struggling with poverty and educational inequality, in Pittsburgh and in Indiana and Armstrong counties.