Mary Jane Eisenhauer has served young children & families for over 20 years as an educator, advocate, researcher, consultant and teacher educator, committed to high quality early learning and innovative teacher education at the local, state and national levels. At PNW, she is Professor and Associate Director for the School of Education and Counseling. Her research focuses on strengthening community partnerships & she has published in Young Children & Journal of Community Engagement and Higher Education. She is the director of PNW’s Center for Early Learning, which provides outreach, professional development and ongoing support for preservice and in-service early childhood educators.

An engaged scholar, Eisenhauer has presented at Campus Compact, IARSLCE and the International Symposium on Service-Learning and edited the faculty workbook Charting the course for service-learning: From curriculum considerations to advocacy. She is a mentor for the Scholarship of Engagement Fellows for the Purdue System and served as Senior Faculty Fellow for Indiana Campus Compact. In 2015, she received the Brian Douglas Hiltunen Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Scholarship of Engagement. She earned Ed.D. in Curriculum & Social Inquiry – Early Childhood Development from National-Louis University, and her B.S. and M.S. in Education and Social Policy from Northwestern University.