Jill Pentimonti
Director of Research Advancement, University of Notre Dame
Dr. Jill Pentimonti is the University of Notre Dame’s Director of Research Advancement, responsible for strengthening the University's impact and reach with federal research agencies by establishing federal resource guides for faculty, providing DC agency visit support, and coordinating faculty engagements with research communities of interest. In this role, Dr. Pentimonti also continues to pursue her own line of research through managing her current research portfolio of grants (totaling $5 million in funding from the Department of Education as a Principal Investigator), pursuing new funding opportunities, and serving as an Affiliate of the Institute for Educational Initiatives. Dr. Pentimonti brings over twenty years of experience in a variety of educational settings to the role, to include over a decade of experience conducting federally-funded research within both university and non-profit research firm settings.
Prior to joining Notre Dame, Dr. Pentimonti was a Principal Researcher at the American Institutes for Research and a Senior Research Scientist at The Ohio State University, where she was responsible for both securing and managing federally-funded grants. Specifically, her roles at these two institutions involved engagement with all stages of the research advancement process, including oversight of scientific rigor, grants administration, staff and fiscal management, and dissemination efforts.
Dr. Pentimonti’s research fits within the social science and educational policy research context, with an emphasis on understanding factors that may influence young children’s development in early educational settings. Specifically, her work has focused on examinations of applied issues in early language and reading development, to include the development of instruments to assess classroom instruction and empirical investigations of evidence-based interventions in early childhood settings. Her work spans both general and special education settings, and largely involves a focus on vulnerable populations.
Dr. Pentimonti has extensive training in quantitative methods such as hierarchical linear modeling, growth curve modeling, and latent class analysis. Her recent publications include articles in Child Development, Developmental Psychology, Clinical Pediatrics and Early Childhood Research Quarterly.
Dr. Pentimonti earned a doctorate in Reading and Literacy in Early and Middle Childhood from The Ohio State University, a master’s degree in Reading Education from the University of Virginia, a master’s degree in Education from Northwestern University, and a bachelor’s degree in Finance from the University of Notre Dame.