Developmental
I’m really interested in is how our biology interacts with our environments to shape the people we become over time. I’m especially interested in the transition from childhood to adolescence when kids are entering a part of their lives where they:

• Have increased freedom / less parental supervision
• Come to be more strongly influenced by their peers and friends and what their peers and friends think of them
• Experience changes in brain development; neurodevelopment in parts of the brain tied to reward processing outpace development of parts of the brain tied to impulse control and self-regulation
• Undergo all sorts of hormonally-driven changes to their physiology and stress response system activity, which feeds back into brain function and development

Understanding the convergence of these factors and how they all interact is really what’s at the heart of my research program. Each child or teen experiences these things to different degrees: For some the ride on the rollercoaster of adolescence is an easy one and for others it’s quite rough. So, I think it’s important to understand not just on average how teens develop, but also the individual differences that help to explain how children and teens change over time. The developmental topics I’m most interested in include decision making, risk-taking, sensation seeking, substance use, and delinquency.

Is this research useful? That is a common question and one that should be at the front and center (or at least near the front and center) of every researcher’s work. I think that the research outlined above is very useful, and one of my goals is to take the research part and help to apply it to make programs aimed at preventing or intervening with adolescent risky behavior more effective. I think that more targeted prevention and intervention programs are the way to go, and this work will help to identify, for example, how teens who are hypersensitive to peer evaluation may be best served in a prevention or intervention program by choosing “modules” that teach skills for coping with peer evaluation or peer pressure. I’m very fortunate to be in a department that supports and promotes this type of collaborative and multidisciplinary work that’s aimed at both advancing knowledge of child and adolescent development as well as applications to improve child and adolescent health and adaptation.

Methodological
I enjoy learning about and teaching analytic methods for developmental science. These are the statistical “tools” that we have to test our data against our hypotheses and theories. Thus, it’s important to have a good grasp on how each statistical tool can be used and its strengths and limitations. I am especially interested in how analytic methods can be applied in novel ways to test theories and developmental principles.

I teach graduate courses on mediation and moderation analysis and multilevel analysis currently. I’m also nominally in charge of the HDFS graduate certificate in Research Methods for Human Sciences.

We are all people and have inherent value and unique experiences. The culture we live in, the culture we were raised in, and our individual experiences all contribute to who we are. These cultural and individual experiences are influenced by our race, ethnicity, socioeconomic background, sex, gender, religion and other factors in complex ways. We should value and appreciate these complexities in one another in our working relationships as well as in the participants involved in the scientific research process. Insights derived from diverse experiences and backgrounds are valuable for both personal and professional growth. It is important to me that students can share their own unique experiences and perspectives when they feel comfortable doing so as well as to feel comfortable bringing up issues tied to equity, justice, and inclusion.

Undergraduatestudents: Students who work me tend to have an interest in research broadly and most students have had some interest in developmental processes, biological underpinnings of behavior, or analytic methods. I have worked with students in both HDFS and other departments including Biology, Psychology, Nursing, and whatever department “Pre-Med” falls under. Undergraduate students would be expected to help with participant recruitment, data collection, data management, and statistical analysis. Undergraduate students have the option to contribute to conference presentations and manuscripts as authors.

Graduate students: Advanced (i.e., graduate) students would be expected to additionally contribute to research lab management and meeting organization, provide some level of undergraduate mentorship that is fitting with their experience, and work with me on developing and executing research study proposals, plans, and designs. It would also be expected that, in addition to other research project publications, work required for a graduate degree (e.g., thesis, qualifying exam, dissertation) would be developed in collaboration with me to be of sufficient quality for publication in peer review journals.

Mentoring approach: I schedule one hour each week to meet with each graduate student to discuss whatever it is they have on their plate (e.g., class work, research projects). These meetings are student-led and should be based on each student’s unique short and long term goals. My main goal as a mentor is to help each student reach their goal, whatever that may be. I have had students move on to relevant private sector work, public service, and academic positions. I’m not interested in having an academic copy of myself; I would much rather help students shape the trajectory that will be most satisfying to them.

Because of my strong emphasis on student self-motivation and self-direction, I work best with students when they are:

• Organized and with a plan or set of goals to build a roadmap to
• Excited to employ and develop their critical thinking skills to their areas of inquiry
• Curious and thoughtful about the dominant theories and methods in their area of inquiry as well as alternate and novel approaches