Meagan Henry: Reflections on 15 Years of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center

I first learned about the Joan Ganz Cooney Center when I was working with Sesame Workshop’s research team as a graduate student. I was able to join Lori Takeuchi, who was the research director at the time, for fieldwork in Queens on a Cooney-Center study about young children’s perceptions of technology. The questions we asked during our interviews that day revealed that kids in 2010 didn’t differentiate between telephones, smartphones, flip phones, cameras, music players, and gaming devices. At that moment, everything was just a “phone,” and a lot of kids didn’t understand that some forms of technology did “just one thing.” (How primitive, right?!) On the drive back to Manhattan, we had an incredibly interesting conversation about media convergence, kids’ media habits, family learning, and why Mexican food in Southern California is the best Mexican food. 

From that day on, anytime I’ve been lucky enough to work with the Cooney Center, attend an event they are hosting, write a guest blog post, or even just connect with a fellow alum, it always turns out to be a wonderful learning experience that makes me want to be better at what I do. Shortly after the infamous taco day, Lori and Michael Levine offered me a job wearing multiple hats on the research team and communications team with Catherine Jhee. I was excited to jump in and see all aspects of the work JGCC was doing. The research community I have gotten to be a part of, and the quality of work I was able to contribute to, have given me valuable training for the rest of my career. After the Cooney Center, I went on to work as a researcher in Learning and Development at Disney, and at the CREATE lab at NYU where I was lucky to work on research in partnership with Microsoft, the New York Hall of Science, NYCDOE, and the University of Vienna while working towards my PhD. 

When I decided to move back to New York after a three-year stint in Tokyo, and to finish my PhD after some time at home as a mom to my two pint-sized research subjects, my Cooney Center family was among the most supportive and helpful colleagues anyone could hope for. I was so touched by the generosity and care of Catherine when I got a chance to work with her again (while wrangling small kids at home and figuring out the logistics of an international move back home from Japan!), and was so delighted to meet new colleagues and step back into the fascinating and impactful work the center was doing a decade later than when I started. 

Now as I (finally!) finish my PhD this summer, I’m so grateful and excited to once again be collaborating with the Cooney Center through research with my advisor Jan Plass on the RITEC (Responsible Innovation in Technology for Children) project with LEGO and UNICEF. Bringing it full circle, I’m still looking at questions about kids’ media habits and family learning for my dissertation, and always looking for amazing tacos in NYC.