Child Development

Welcome to the Applied Research in Child Health and Enhancing Resilience (ARCHER) laboratory in the College of Health and Human Sciences, Department of Applied Human Sciences at Kansas State University and through Kansas State Research and Extension. The ARCHER lab’s research and programming efforts are supervised and conducted by Dr. Bradford Wiles, Assistant Professor and Extension Specialist in Early Childhood Development. Almost all work in the lab occurs in collaboration with undergraduate, graduate, and other university faculty and industry researchers and colleagues. Former and current collaborators can be found on our collaborators page.

Vision

Our vision is to build health and resilience in vulnerable families with young children. Specifically, using a collaborative model of applied developmental research and outreach, we continue to focus our efforts on providing all families with young children with the knowledge, skills, and decision-making strategies to make a difference in their lives. This vision explicitly includes rural, low-income, and ethnically and racially diverse families.

Mission

Our mission is to reach all families with young children and assist them in applying helpful, usable, and timely research-based practices to the activities and contexts in which they learn and grow. The mission of the ARCHER lab reflects our commitment to both conduct research, and apply research findings to positively affect the lives of all families with young children in Kansas, the Great Plains, the U.S., and beyond.