Staff: Tawni Mosley

• Crystal Baity

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Tawni Mosley had a running joke about her name with her father.

Mosley grew up in Bangor, Pennsylvania, where her father worked in factories (think Billy Joel's "Allentown" anthem).

When her mom was expecting, her dad was working in a textile plant making cloth for the auto industry.

Mosley leads a team that provides early education and high-quality care for children who are 12 weeks to 5 years. The center is a model training facility for students majoring in birth through kindergarten education, family and community services, and child life in ECU's Department of Human Development and Family Science. It serves as a research and intern site and collaborates and partners with several departments on campus

"I am very passionate about early childhood education," she said. "I hope that at the end of my life I will be able to say that I have helped to make positive changes for the students, the teachers and the families."

The center opened in 1938 as part of the home economics department at then East Carolina Teachers College and has evolved to what it is today, Mosley said.

"When I found that out, I thought, '1938?' How in the world did they all know that this would be something because childcare didn't come into existence until really the '90s," she said. "ECU has always been so forward thinking in knowing that we needed a place to teach child development."

An emphasis now is building children's social and emotional abilities.

"All of us as we get older, that's a skill you really need to have - being able to communicate with others, work well with others, have empathy for others," Mosley said. "I really feel like more than the ABCs and 123s, that is what kids really need."

Mosley worked 32 years with a national childcare company, which she followed to Cary in 2012. She later met her husband, Bob, who grew up in Greenville and graduated from ECU in 1991.

"Honestly, if it wasn't for Bob, I would not be here at ECU," she said. "When Bob and I met, he introduced me to the great town of Greenville and ECU. I fell in love with ECU, Greenville and Bob all at the same time."

Mosley has four adult children - Mitchell, Lindsay, Izzy and Austin. "They have grown up to be the most amazing people," she said.

She collaborated with Mitchell to write an adventure series when he was just 4 - "fun little stories that we developed together," she said. He loved art and drawing pictures, and now at 31, he and his wife are both artists.

She wants them to illustrate the book, which is on her bucket list to publish, along with a second book she's written about how to have children deal with the death of their pet that came from her personal experience losing her "heart dog."

"We need something more hopeful," she said. "I have a lot of parents ask me, 'Do you have a good book on this?'"

Positivity is one of the qualities she looks for in people she works with and that she models for staff and students. While a student at Moravian University in the work study program, Mosley worked in the athletics department for longtime women's basketball coach Mary Beth Spirk.

"Coach Spirk was an amazing person who truly changed my life," Mosley said. "Her leadership style was full of compassion for people. I think of how she treated me as a college student and I now try to emulate that with how I treat the students I encounter."

One summer during college, Mosley worked with her father at a printing press. "That was very difficult work," she said. "My dad worked so hard his entire life and I'm sure it meant a lot to him when I went to college."

"Allentown" epitomized her youth, she said, because her father was always worried about getting laid off and finding a new job. "It was hard, but I vowed to go to college and make my life better," she said.

Thinking back, being at ECU was meant to be, she said.

"This has just been an amazing journey for me," Mosley said. "Just coming here, and collaborating, I love that part of it. Pirate Nation is amazing, and just being a part of that, I really do feel this job has been waiting for me my whole life."