Rena F. Subotnik, PhD, served as the director of the Center for Psychology in Schools and Education (CPSE) at APA from 2002–2023, and dedicated her leadership, advocacy, and research career to promoting the application of psychological science to education. Before she came to APA, Dr. Subotnik was a middle school teacher in Seattle Public Schools, a professor of educational psychology at Hunter College, research coordinator of the Hunter College laboratory schools (1984–1997; 1998–2000), and a AAAS-APA Congressional Science Fellow from 1997–1998.
Dr. Subotnik, in collaboration with Cynthia Belar, PhD, and Steve Rollin, PhD, founded the Coalition for Psychology in Schools and Education. The coalition was designed to promote high quality application of psychology to programs and policies for schools and education. Under the leadership of Dr. Nicole Barnes, both CPSE and the Coalition for Psychology in Schools and Education continue to generate public awareness, advocacy, clinical applications, and cutting-edge research to enhance educational and developmental opportunities for students, with a special focus on pre-K to 12 teacher preparation programs and professional development. Dr. Subotnik was supported in this work by the National Science Foundation, the American Psychological Foundation, the Association for Psychological Science, the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, and the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation.
Dr. Subotnik co-authored, with Paula Olszewski-Kubilius and Frank Worrell, the Megamodel, which appears in publications such as Scientific American, Scientific American Mind, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Frontiers in Psychology, Psychological Science in the Public Interest, and the Annual Review of Psychology, and co-edited, with Paula Olszewski-Kubilius and Frank Worrell, The Psychology of High Performance: Developing Human Potential Into Domain-Specific Talent.