Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor, Chico State Uni­ver­si­ty, Child Devel­op­ment Department

Dr. Shel­ley R. Hart has been full-time fac­ul­ty in the Depart­ment of Child Devel­op­ment at Chico State since 2014 and a Research Asso­ciate in the Bloomberg School of Pub­lic Health, Depart­ment of Men­tal Health at Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty since 2013. She stays for­mal­ly active in the com­mu­ni­ty as a Com­mis­sion­er for both the First Five Butte Coun­ty Chil­dren and Fam­i­lies Com­mis­sion and the Juve­nile Jus­tice Delin­quen­cy Pre­ven­tion Com­mis­sion and infor­mal­ly with mul­ti­ple orga­ni­za­tions and com­mu­ni­ty-based ini­tia­tives, such as an Adverse Child­hood Expe­ri­ences (ACEs) NEAR Sci­ence Edu­ca­tor with North Val­ley Com­mu­ni­ty Foun­da­tion (NVCF).

A Par­adise-native, Dr. Hart attend­ed Butte Col­lege as a young, sin­gle moth­er. Sub­se­quent edu­ca­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties led her to places like San­ta Cruz (UCSC; Bach­e­lor of the Arts), the Davis-area (CSU, Sacra­men­to; Mas­ter of the Arts), San­ta Bar­bara (UCSB, PhD), and Bal­ti­more (Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty; NIMH Post­doc­tor­al Fel­low­ship). Her roots remained deep in the area with fam­i­ly and close friends and despite won­der­ful expe­ri­ences in these oth­er places, when the posi­tion at Chico State became avail­able, she jumped at the chance to move ​“home”.

Dr. Hart is a nation­al­ly cer­ti­fied school psy­chol­o­gist with a num­ber of years pro­vid­ing direct ser­vice in the schools. She also has over 15 years of expe­ri­ence in the men­tal health are­na work­ing with severe­ly impaired indi­vid­u­als in psy­chi­atric facil­i­ties or tran­si­tion­ing back into the com­mu­ni­ty. Her desire to inter­vene ear­li­er in the pro­gres­sion of men­tal health chal­lenges and her per­son­al expe­ri­ences with depres­sion (par­tic­u­lar­ly post­par­tum depres­sion) have strong­ly influ­enced her schol­ar­ly and ser­vice interests.

Along with her hus­band and dogs, Dr. Hart spends as much time with fam­i­ly — includ­ing a grand­son — and friends as pos­si­ble. They are often eat­ing out at one of the many great restau­rants in town, enjoy­ing the beau­ti­ful out­doors local­ly, or bar­be­quing at someone’s house. How­ev­er, she also par­tic­u­lar­ly enjoys those rare occa­sions when she is able to stay home and just relax.