Rate My Professor Kyle Chambers

Kyle Chambers is a Professor of Psychological Science and Associate Provost for Institutional Research and Analytics at Gustavus Adolphus College. He serves as Chair of the Institutional Review Board (IRB) since 2020. Previously, he chaired the Department of Psychological Science from 2017 to 2020. Chambers joined Gustavus Adolphus College in 2008 as Assistant Professor of Psychological Science after earning his Ph.D. He was tenured and promoted to Associate Professor in 2013-2014 and later advanced to full Professor. His academic background includes a B.A. in Philosophy and Psychology from Oklahoma State University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2004. In his current administrative position, he leads a team utilizing data analytics to inform strategic institutional decisions. Chambers has taught extensively in Psychological Science, delivering courses such as Child Development (22 times), General Psychology (17 times), Statistics and Research Methods II (14 times), Psychology of Language (7 times), and others including internships in Academic Data Visualization with R.

Chambers specializes in cognitive development, focusing on language learning processes in infants and preschoolers. His research investigates phonotactic constraints and how children generalize linguistic regularities from limited auditory input. Notable publications include "Infants learn phonotactic regularities from brief auditory experience" (Cognition, 2003), "Learning phonotactic constraints from brief auditory experience" (Cognition, 2002), "A vowel is a vowel: generalizing newly learned phonotactic constraints to new contexts" (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2010), and "Representations for phonotactic learning in infancy" (Language Learning and Development, 2011). These contributions have advanced understanding of early phonological acquisition. Chambers received the Presidents' Civic Engagement Steward Award in 2011 for student projects creating interactive developmental psychology exhibits for local children's museums. He also served on the Society for Research in Child Development Teaching Committee from 2015 to 2019, supporting developmental scientists in pedagogy.