FACULTY
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Right Place, Right Time… and So Much More Distinguished Professor of Education Jacquelynne Sue Eccles has contributed a career’s worth of seminal achievements to the field of educational psychology. By Phillip Jordan
As Jacquelynne Sue Eccles would have you believe, her legendary career in educational psychology is largely the byproduct of fortuitous timing. “I just so happened to be in the right place at the right time to take part in three really transformative moments in educational research,” says the UCI School of Education’s Distinguished Professor of education.
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But don’t let the modesty fool you. Eccles is one of the leading developmental scientists of her generation, and she’s made monumental contributions to the study of student motivation and after-school programming. Her research is no secret, either. According to Research.com, she’s the second-most-cited motivational scientist in the world, and she’s ranked No. 13 nationally and No. 25 worldwide among all psychological scientists. So, yes, Eccles’ career timing may be impeccable, but so, too, is her intellectual curiosity, investigative research and work ethic. To wit, those three “right place, right time” moments include: • Developing a seminal theory on the motivations behind students’ academic and career choices — the Expectancy-Value Theory that’s often referred to simply by Eccles’ name. • Conducting research on students’ psychological, social and physical development that led to major reforms of the junior high school model of education in the 1980s and 1990s. • Chairing a 2003 National Research Council committee that authored a game-changing report outlining the most effective after-school programs to meet the developmental needs of adolescent students. “Essentially, I’ve spent my career studying why people do what they do,” Eccles says. “What they choose to study, what they want to pursue. And then thinking about how we as educators can help meet their developmental needs so they can make the best choices possible for them.” Eccles cites her background as an early scholar of gender and ethnicity in STEM as the gateway
Photo by Carol Jean Tomoguchi-Perez