The Harvard Medical School, Department of Psychiatry is offering four NIMH-supported Postdoctoral Fellowships involving independent research under supervision of experienced clinical researchers in biological and social/developmental fields, participation in integrative seminars, and related courses.  Diverse opportunities at over 41 research sites include: brain imaging, psychophysiology, psychopharmacology, genetics, neurochemistry, social psychiatry, child development and longitudinal studies of adult development.

Open to doctorates in biological/psychological sciences, psychiatrists and other physicians.  US Citizenship or Permanent Resident Status required.  Minority and MD applicants strongly encouraged. Appointments are one year, renewable to two.  NIMH-determined pay scale. Rolling admissions application review begins immediately for July 1, 2010 start date.

Applications accepted until all fellowships have been awarded.  Contact:  Ms Rebecca Good, Program Administrator, Clinical Research Training Program, Judge Baker Children's Center, 53 Parker Hill Ave., Boston, MA 02120-3225, (617) 278-4293, crtp@jbcc.harvard.edu

The University of Michigan’s Survey Research Center (SRC) is seeking a scholar/scientist with a background in childhood/adolescent obesity, exercise, eating habits, and determinants thereof. This scholar will participate in the leadership of a large, ongoing national study focused on American secondary schools and entitled Youth, Education, and Society (www.yesresearch.org), sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The successful applicant will collaborate with an existing team of social scientists and staff. Development of original studies is also encouraged.

Qualifications include a PhD in a related discipline: psychology, sociology, social psychology, epidemiology, economics, public health, policy, or medicine. Requires good knowledge of survey methods, quantitative data analysis techniques, and substantive knowledge of the obesity literature and field.

Applicants should submit a letter describing scholarly activities, funded research programs and plans, and interests in SRC to SRCSearch@isr.umich.edu. Please include a CV, references, and one or two recent publications. Various levels of appointment are possible, depending on experience and qualifications. Salary is highly competitive. Joint appointment with another department, institute, or school may be possible if desired.

The position will remain open until filled. The University of Michigan is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer and is responsive to the needs of dual career couples.

The Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research is offering a two-year position working on a national study of environmental influences on behaviors associated with overweight among youth. Work would focus on the ongoing national study Youth, Education, and Society (www.yesresearch.org), part of the Bridging the Gap initiative sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The successful candidate will work with a team of experienced social scientists on analysis, writing, and instrument revision with opportunities for mentoring.

Qualifications include a PhD in a related discipline: psychology, sociology, social psychology, epidemiology, economics, public health, policy, or medicine. Requires a good knowledge of survey methods, quantitative data analysis techniques, and preferably some substantive knowledge of the obesity literature and field. Excellent written communication skills are necessary, as well as an ability to work collaboratively and constructively as a member of a research team. Salary range of $55,000–60,000/yr.

Applicants should submit a letter describing their scholarly activities, any funded research, and their plans and interests to SRCSearch@isr.umich.edu. Please include a CV, references, and two recent publications or papers. Applications will be reviewed as they are received until the position is awarded. The University of Michigan is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer and is responsive to the needs of dual career couples.

Positive Development of Minority Children
Call for papers for Special Issue of Child Development Perspectives

The development and well-being of ethnic and racial minority children have received sustained attention over the past few decades from policymakers, researchers, and practitioners (see Quintana et al., 2006, for a review). These efforts have resulted in a body of research that, while rigorous and insightful, has for the most part been conducted from a deficit-perspective that emphasizes the negative effects of inadequate economic and social resources and an elevated rate of behavior problems, decreased social competence, and reduced school success among these children.

Recently, there has been increased interest in the study of positive child development among minority children (Eccles & Gootman, 2002; Lerner, Jacobs, & Wertlieb 2003). This approach reflects the view that individual, family, and community factors can have both negative (e.g., behavior problems) and positive (e.g., success in school) effects on children’s outcomes.  Protective factors such as developing positive attachment relationships with healthy adults (MacDonald et al., 2008) and participating in growth-promoting activities such as early childhood education or after-school programs (Beeghly et al., 2006; Frank et al., 2002) may not only prevent the occurrence of later problems but also create a positive developmental pathway (Papini, Roggman, & Anderson, 1991). Similarly, the formation of a strong ethnic identity can be an important predictor of positive outcomes for children (Phinney, 1990; Yip, Seaton & Sellers, 2006).  It is thus important to understand both risk and resilience in this population.

The purpose of this special issue is to invite scholars to present articles that summarize emerging trends or conclusions and advance our understanding of positive child development among ethnic minority children.  Articles suitable for publication in Child Development Perspectives include reviews or commentary, as well as conceptual papers or papers that primarily discuss methodological issues. Manuscripts presenting new empirical data are not appropriate for this journal. All manuscripts will undergo a review process, although this process may be more abbreviated for some types of submissions (e.g., commentary) than others (e.g., author-initiated submissions).

Please send a 500-word abstract of the proposed manuscript to Nancy Eisenberg (Nancy.Eisenberg@asu.edu) and Natasha Cabrera (ncabrera@umd.edu)  by MAY 15, 2010; inquiries submitted after this date may also be considered. We will notify authors of acceptance by JUNE 30, 2010. The deadline for submission of final manuscripts is SEPTEMBER 30, 2010.

February 5, 2010

Wednesday, March 10, 2010  
1:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.  
Philadelphia Downtown Marriott, Liberty Ballroom Salon A

Opening remarks
Professor William Damon
Director, Stanford Center on Adolescence

Introductory remarks, Session 2
Professor Jeffrey Arnett
Clark University, Department of Psychology

How do adolescents form a meaningful intention to contribute to something beyond themselves? What impacts the development of this life purpose? Meet and collaborate with a community of scholars dedicated to understanding how young people direct their lives. Roundtables and posters will provide interactive opportunities to explore how young people develop a life purpose, why it is important for us to support them in that endeavor, how purpose functions in adolescent development, and what other psychological and social phenomena affect purpose. 

 Join engaging discussions of cutting-edge topics in youth purpose research including

• Family social location and sense of purpose: A case study of rural adolescents
• Civic engagement and purpose: a review of constructs and an empirical study
• Purpose and Spirituality: Adolescent Spiritual Development across Cultures
• Developmentally Appropriate Interventions to Support Purpose
• The Role of Purpose in Career Development in Late Adolescence

Mingle among posters that describe the latest findings on purpose in relation to

• The impact of after school clubs and service learning activities on students’ beliefs and attitudes towards citizenship
• Implicit Theories in Altruistic Forms of Purpose
• Purpose and Spirituality in Diverse Adolescents around the World
• Purpose and Adjustment in High School: Adolescent Purpose Aligns with Marcia’s Identity Statuses
• Adolescent Narratives and Writing After Katrina

See the Stanford Center on Adolescence http://coa.stanford.edu for more information and to register.
Email Elissa Hirsh hirsh@stanford.edu with any questions.

Please share this message with colleagues and students who may be interested.

February 5, 2010

We are happy to announce that Journal of Research on Adolescence (JRA) is now part of the Wiley-Blackwell Early View service. The implementation of Early View for JRA represents our commitment to speed the dissemination of manuscripts, reducing time to publication without sacrificing quality of peer review or production.

Articles in JRA are now routinely published through Early View in advance of their appearance in a print issue. All have
undergone the usual peer review process, are edited, and complete—they only lack page numbers and volume/issue
details—and are considered fully published from the date they first appear online. To view all the articles currently available,
please visit the journal homepage on http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/123263000/issue. Articles are available as
full-text HTML or PDF and can be cited by using their Digital Object Identifier (DOI) numbers. For more information on DOIs, please see http://www.doi.org/faq.html.

Upon print publication, articleswill be removed from the Early View area and will appear instead in the relevant online issue, complete with page numbers and volume/issue details. No other changes will be made.

January 15, 2010

We would like you to know about the Center on Early Adolescence website, https://www.earlyadolescence.org/.

The Website is a resource for people doing research on early adolescence and provides information to parents, policymakers, and educators who are concerned about early adolescence.  Features of the Website include:

• A Measures Repository, http://measures.earlyadolescence.org/, which presents detailed information about 49 measures relevant to early adolescence. The Center invites you to add measures to this repository. As it grows it will become an increasingly valuable resource for the field.
• A Webinar on Prevention that describes evidence-based prevention practices.
• Improving the Wellbeing of Adolescents in Oregon, a document that details what is needed to support adolescents’ successful development. It is at https://www.earlyadolescence.org/system/files/AdolescentWellBeing.pdf
• Information and links to the many projects affiliated with the Center on Early Adolescence;
• Guidance for parents of adolescents;
• Information for policymakers and educators about evidence-based interventions that can prevent most adolescent problem behaviors.
• Data on the cost of adolescent problem behaviors and the cost/benefit of evidence-based interventions.

January 8, 2010

The Educational Psychology and Applied Developmental Science Program offers doctoral training that is research intensive, interdisciplinary in perspective, and relevant to practice and policy.  Research focuses on schools, classrooms, and other youth settings as contexts critical to child and adolescent development. (See http://curry.edschool.virginia.edu/ep-ads for more information.)

The Educational Policy Program provides students with preparation that draws on a theoretical foundation and employs appropriate methods to offer causal evidence on important education policy questions. The program is organized on four conceptual components: strong preparation in methods that permit causal inference, a grounding in a social science discipline, an understanding of the working of schools, and working knowledge of the existing educational policy landscape and literature. (See http://curry.edschool.virginia.edu/component/content/article/117-policy-studies/1744-policy-studies for more information.)
 
Both programs offer Virginia Education Science Training Fellowships funded by the US Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences.  For details see http://curry.edschool.virginia.edu/VEST and contact Jen Mashburn jmashburn@virginia.edu for more information.

December 18, 2010

Laurence Steinberg was awarded a $1 million research prize by the Jacobs Foundation.

Laurence Steinberg, Distinguished University Professor and Laura H. Carnell Professor of Psychology at Temple University, has been named the recipient of the inaugural Klaus J. Jacobs Research Prize in the field of youth development. The prize was announced today by the Jacobs Foundation, one of the largest foundations in Europe.

Presented to individuals in recognition of outstanding scientific accomplishments that represent groundbreaking contributions to improving the lives of young people, the Jacobs prize carries an award of one million Swiss francs, the equivalent of one million U.S. dollars.

“I am honored to have the work my colleagues and I have done recognized,” said Steinberg, a member of Temple’s psychology faculty since 1988. “But I’m also proud that our field is receiving this recognition. The Jacobs prize draws attention to the fact that the scientific study of adolescent development is an important enterprise.”

“It is with tremendous pleasure and pride that we award the first Klaus J. Jacobs Research Prize to Professor Laurence Steinberg,” said Dr. Bernd Ebersold, CEO of the Jacobs Foundation. “A trailblazer in the field of developmental psychology, Professor Steinberg exemplifies the foundation’s commitment to combining research, application, and active communication to improve the lives of young people. It is our hope that this prize will enable Professor Steinberg to extend his extraordinary scientific contributions and continue to support the development of children and adolescents around the world.”

An internationally recognized expert on psychological development during adolescence, Steinberg is a former President both of the Society for Research on Adolescence and the Division of Developmental Psychology of the American Psychological Association. 

Full Press Release: http://www.temple.edu/newsroom/2009_2010/11/stories/Steinberg.htm