Affiliation: University of Illinois at Chicago
	Email: muobrien@uic.edu

Mary Utne O'Brien is Executive Director of the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) and Research Professor of Psychology and Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. CASEL is a scientific organization devoted to advancing the science and expanding the practice of SEL in all schools, pre-K through high school. As Executive Director of CASEL, Mary is responsible for all aspects of CASEL management and day-to-day operations, and for developing new directions and projects for CASEL. Mary also works directly on CASEL projects: she was a lead author of the CASEL documents Safe and Sound: An Educational Leader's Guide to Evidence-Based SEL Programs (2003) and Sustainable, Schoolwide, SEL: Implementation Guide and Toolkit (2006); directs CASEL’s work in Transformational Educational Leadership Development; and edits CASEL’s periodic electronic newsletter on SEL research, practice, and policy advances, CASEL Connections. 

Mary earned the PhD in Sociology (focus on research methods and social psychology) in 1978 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She was Senior Survey Director at the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago throughout the 1980s, where she was responsible for the design and management of complex federal surveys. At NORC she directed William Julius Wilson's Study of Urban Poverty, Peter Rossi's study of the homeless, and a number of school-based Department of Education and RAND Corporation studies. From 1991 to 1996 she was Associate Professor of Epidemiology in the School of Public Health (SPH) at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she developed and taught the school's first course on the epidemiology of HIV/AIDS, as well as a course in quantitative and qualitative methods of research. While at SPH she was Research Director and Co-Director of the nation's largest research and service project for the prevention of HIV infection among injection drug users.  

Prior to joining CASEL in 1999, Mary led research on the implementation and impact of school-wide social and emotional learning in a Chicago suburban elementary school district; consulted with Harvard's Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (Felton Earls, PI); and wrote Chicago's five-year Strategic Plan for HIV/AIDS Prevention 1999-2001, as well as major sections of Chicago's Violence Prevention Strategic Plan (cited by CDC as a national model for such planning). In 1999 she also wrote the Project Safe Start grant that resulted in a five-year, multi-million dollar award to the Chicago Department of Public Health from the Department of Justice. She has written numerous scholarly articles and reports of her work.  

Weissberg, R. P., Payton, J. W., O’Brien, M. U., Munro, S. (2006). Social and emotional learning. In R. Nuzzi, D. Narvaez, D. Lapsley, C. Power, & T. Hunt (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Moral Education. Greenwood Press: Westport, CT.

O’Brien, M. U., Weissberg, R. P., & Shriver, T. P. (2003).  Educational leadership for academic, social, and emotional learning.  In M. J. Elias, H. Arnold, & C. Steiger (Eds.), EQ+IQ:  Best Leadership Practices for Caring and Successful Schools (pp. 23-35). Corwin Press: Thousand Oaks, CA. 

O'Brien, M. U., Weissberg, R. P., Walberg, H. J., & Kuster, C. B. (2003).  The contributions and complexities of studying trends in the well being of children and youth.  In R. P. Weissberg, H. J. Walberg, M. U. O'Brien, & C. B. Kuster (Eds.), Long-term Trends in the Well-being of Children and Youth (pp. 3-25). Washington, DC: Child Welfare League of America. 

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