Dr. Sharo Shafaie is a professor of Child Development at the Southeast Missouri State University, in the College of Health and Human Services. He has a doctoral degree in Psychology, a master's degree in Educational Psychology from the University of Oklahoma, and holds a bachelor's degree in Guidance & Counseling. He has taught a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses in several areas including Education, Psychology, Human Development, Human Services, and Child Development, Family Studies programs. Dr. Shafaie is a recipient of numerous awards including the College of Health and Human Services' Outstanding Teacher, Outstanding Researcher, and Outstanding Service provider awards and was nominated for the University's outstanding Faculty Merit award at the Southeast Missouri University.

Dr. Shafaie is active in research and providing professional services in his field; he has received and managed a substantial number of grants to fund research projects as well as several educational and clinical outreach projects to offer intervention services for early childhood professionals, young children with special needs and developmental delays, families, and early childhood professionals in the Southeast Missouri region.

Currently, he serves as the Administrative Coordinator of the Child Development Associate Certificate (CDA) and Workshop On Wheels(WOW) training programs in the Southeast Missouri region. The program covers more than 20 counties in the Southeast Missouri region and is designed to offer educational technical assistance and professional development training to early childhood educators to improve the quality of the curriculum in their classrooms.

Moreover, Dr. Shafaie is a licensed board-certified therapist and serves as a mental health consultant to parents, teachers, and mental health agencies. His primary research interests have been in the area of early social interaction, parenting issues and topics related to the cognitive and psychosocial development of young children, and he has presented his research findings at many national and international conferences. Dr. Shafaie's recent research interests are in the areas of fatherhood, autism, "at-risk" children and families, and contributions of the parent-child relationship in the child's development, mental health, and educational achievements. He has been a referee for numerous national and international conferences and has served on the editorial board of several professional journals.