Officials announced a new interim executive director for UCLA’s child care centers Friday.
Deborah Shine Valentine will replace Jayanti Tambe on May 15 as director of the UCLA’s Early Care and Education centers, which provide child care for children of UCLA faculty, staff and students.
In February, a task force found that Tambe, who resigned to pursue a doctoral degree, was not collaborative and transparent in making decisions at the center and did not communicate well with teachers and parents.
The task force recommended that the ECE hire a new executive director with better leadership skills, clarify hiring and firing policies and improve communication between parents, teachers and administrators.
Valentine holds a doctoral degree in childhood studies from Rutgers University-Camden, a master’s in educational ministry and a bachelor’s in elementary education. She was most recently an assistant professor of early childhood education at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.
The director for the ECE’s Krieger Center, Moisés Román, also resigned Thursday, after being placed on leave from his position indefinitely.
Román, who worked at the ECE for 25 years, resigned to spend more time with family and pursue opportunities in new media and television, according to his letter of resignation.
The Fernald Center’s former director, Genevieve Saffren, will return as a special project manager through August to search for a permanent director for the Fernald Center with other ECE managers, teachers and parents.
Officials added ECE will implement more changes in the near future.