Professional Biography
Diana Slaughter Kotzin, Ph.D. (formerly Diana T. Slaughter-Defoe) has been professor emerita since July 2011. From 1998 to 2011, she was the inaugural Constance E. Clayton professor in urban education of the University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests included culture, primary education, and home-school relations facilitating in-school academic achievement.
Before joining Penn in 1998, Diana taught for 20 years at Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy (1977-97) and was on the faculties of the department of psychiatry at Howard University (1967-68), the Child Study Center at Yale University (1968-70), and the Committee on Human Development and department of education at the University of Chicago (1970-77).
Diana earned her doctorate in 1968 from the Committee on Human Development, University of Chicago, where she specialized in development and clinical psychology. In 1969 her dissertation received a distinguished research award from Pi Lambda Theta. In June 2007, the University of Chicago awarded its Lifetime Professional Achievement Citation, and in 2012 she was elected to the National Academy of Education (NAEd). In 2018, Diana was presented the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award by Marquis Who’s Who. In 2019, the American Psychological Association designated her a “pioneer woman of color among the first to break into psychology’s ranks.” She is writing a memoir about her career that spanned more than 40 years in academic and higher education.
