Craig H. Hart received his Ph.D. from Purdue University in 1987. He was formerly an Associate Professor in the School of Human Ecology at Louisiana State University. He served as Chair of Marriage, Family, and Human Development in the School of Family Life at Brigham Young University from 1998 to 2004, as an associate dean in the College of Family, Home, and Social Sciences from 2006-2009, and as the Associate Academic Vice President for Faculty at BYU from 2009 to 2018. He has been serving as the Director of the BYU Faculty Center since August of 2018.

Dr. Hart has authored and co-authored numerous scientific papers on parenting/familial linkages with children’s social development and on developmentally appropriate practices in early childhood education. His work has appeared in leading developmental science journals such as Child Development and Developmental Psychology, and in early childhood education research journals including Early Childhood Research Quarterly. His collaborative research program has most recently focused on cultural influences, with studies conducted in Australia, China, Italy, Japan, Russia and various parts of Asia and the United States. Research that he has been involved in has been cited over 10,000 times by national and international scholars in his field.

He has also published two edited books entitled Children on Playgrounds: Research Perspectives and Applications and Integrated Curriculum and Developmentally Appropriate Practice: Birth to Age Eight. He has served on several journal editorial boards, was associate editor for Early Childhood Research Quarterly (1995-2006), and is co-editor of Wiley/Blackwell's Handbook of Childhood Social Development. Dr. Hart has served on the Bio-behavioral and Behavioral Sciences subcommittee, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).