Ellen Wartella

In May 2015, at an education conference in Washington, D.C., Wartella discussed a recent survey she led of about 1,000 preschool teachers, in a sampling that included schools serving a range of socioeconomic levels. The survey was a continuation of a previous one held two years prior to that of the more recent. Wartella revealed that from 2012 to 2014, the number of preschool teachers with tablet computers in their classrooms nearly doubled, rising from 29 to 55 percent. More than half of the teachers with tablets said they used the computers to help teach students while three-quarters of them said they used them for administrative tasks, such as emailing parents. There isn't a consensus on how to use these technologies in preschools, with young children and their developing brains, in developmentally appropriate ways, she said.

Ellen A. Wartella is the Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani Professor of Communication Studies, professor of psychology, of human development, and of behavioral medicine, and director of the Center on Media and Human Development at Northwestern University, where she has worked since 2010. Earlier, she was executive vice chancellor, provost, and distinguished professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside, from 2004 to 2009. She also served as Dean of the College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin from 1993–2004, where she also held the Walter Cronkite Regents Chair, the Mary Gibbs Jones Centennial Chair, and the UNESCO Chair in International Communication.

Formerly chair of the Front-of-Package Marketing study committee of the Institute of Medicine for the National Science Foundation, she serves on the National Educational Advisory Board of the Children's Advertising Review Unit of the Council of Better Business Bureaus and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences Board on Children Youth and Families, as well as a Scientific Advisory Board Member of Children and Screens: Institute of Digital Media and Child Development. She recently served on the Institute of Medicine's Panel Study on Food Marketing and the Diets of Children and Youth (2006). During 2006-2007 she was the inaugural fellow of the Fred Rogers Center. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she is a member of the American Psychological Association, the Society for Research in Child Development and is the past president and fellow of the International Communication Association (ICA). She has received the Aubrey M. Fisher Mentorship Award, the Applied Public Policy Research Award, and the Steven H. Chaffee Career Productivity Award from the ICA, the Distinguished Scholar Award from the National Communication Association, and the Krieghbaum Under 40 Award from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.

In 1985, Wartella became an associate of the Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP). WIFP is an American nonprofit publishing organization. The organization works to increase communication between women and connect the public with forms of women-based media.

Wartella received a B.A. with honors from the University of Pittsburgh in 1971, and M.A. (1974) and Ph.D. (1977) degrees from the University of Minnesota.

Ellen A. Wartella (born October 16, 1949, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania) is a leading scholar of the role of media in children’s development. She is the chair and professor of communication, director of Northwestern University's Center on Media and Human Development, and an adviser for the review at Northwestern University. She studies social policy, media studies, psychology, and child development at the University. She believes that smartphones are disruptive in a way that's different from earlier technology.