Meet Our Bloggers

Clinical Work with Adolescents

Kristie Esposito Brendel, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, has worked directly with children and adolescents in a number of settings including schools, group homes, hospitals, and currently, her private practice. Her research interests include family-based interventions for anxiety disorders, peer mentoring programs, and the human rights of children. Kristie is ABD at Loyola University Chicago and is looking forward to completing her degree in Social Work this fall.

Emerging Scholars

Laura Wray-Lake is an Assistant Professor of Positive Psychology in the School of Behavioral and Organizational Sciences at Claremont Graduate University. She received a Ph.D. in Human Development and Family Studies from Penn State University in May 2010, and has been an elected Emerging Scholar Representative for SRA since 2008. Her research focuses on value development and civic engagement among adolescents as well as processes of value socialization within the family that facilitate social responsibility.

Carolyn Spellings is a graduate student in the Child and Family Studies Department at the University of Tennessee, having received her master’s degree in the same department in August, 2009. Her scholarly interests center on the development of females, and particularly how that development is impacted by social and political contexts. At the last Biennial Meeting, Carolyn was elected Emerging Scholar Representative and will serve in this role until 2014.

Policy

Brian L. Wilcox, Ph.D., is Director of the Center on Children, Families, and the Law and Professor of Psychology at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln, where he teaches courses on intervention research methods as well as child and adolescent development and public policy. He has published in a number of areas related to child, youth, and family policy, including adolescent sexual behavior and risk-taking, youth violence, child maltreatment, child care, and children and media. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association.

Prior to coming to the University of Nebraska, Wilcox served as Director of Public Policy for the American Psychological Association, as a legislative assistant to Senator Bill Bradley, and as a member of the Psychology faculty at the University of Virginia. In 2005 he was a Senior Fulbright Scholar at the Center for the Psychological Study of Street Children at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul in Porto Alegre, Brazil. He received his doctorate in Community Psychology from the University of Texas at Austin. Wilcox is also a Senior Program Associate with the William T. Grant Foundation.

President's Blog

Niobe Way

Research with Ethnic Minorities

Moin Syed is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. His research is broadly concerned with identity development among ethnically and culturally-diverse adolescents and emerging adults, with particular focus on the development of multiple personal and social identities (e.g., ethnicity, social class, and gender) and the implications of identity development for educational experiences and career orientation.

Teachers' Corner - The Adolescent Professor

Rob Weisskirch, MSW, Ph.D., has been teaching at California State University, Monterey Bay for nine years and is currently an Associate Professor of Human Development in the Liberal Studies Department. He previous taught in the Child and Adolescent Studies Department at California State University, Fullerton. He received his Ph.D. in Human Development from the University of California, Davis, a Master of Social Work degree from San Diego State University, and a Multiple Subjects Teaching Credential and B.A. in Psychology from the University of California, Irvine. His research interests focus on language brokering, ethnic identity, acculturation and immigrant issues, how technology affects relationships, and pedagogy of adolescent development. He recently published a study on parent and adolescent relationships and cell phone use.