CHICAGO (August 05, 2010)—Erikson Institute, the nation’s leading graduate school in child development, has been selected as a highest-rated application in the Department of Education’s 2010 Investing in Innovation Fund (i3) competition. The i3 fund is part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s historic $10 billion investment in education reform.

Erikson’s application ranked eighth among 49 i3 grant winners nationwide—a prestigious group that includes Johns Hopkins University and Harvard Graduate School of Education. Nearly 1700 institutions applied for innovation funds, from corporations to school districts.

The Institute’s share of the $650 million total in i3 grants will serve to increase the reach and impact of its Early Mathematics Education Project, which currently provides professional development in teaching early mathematics to nearly 100 Chicago preschool and kindergarten teachers each year.

“We are honored and thrilled by this award,” said the project’s principal investigator Jie-Qi Chen. “It is a wonderful acknowledgment of a program that has had proven success and an opportunity to give far more children—especially those who are disadvantaged—the widespread and long-lasting benefits of early math education.”

For more information about the Early Mathematics Education Project, go to: http://earlymath.erikson.edu