The Ph.D. Program in Life-Span Developmental Psychology at West Virginia University anticipates admitting four students to begin graduate work in Fall 2009. Highlights of the life-span developmental program and a list of faculty and their current research projects appear below. Additional information can be found on our website: http//www.wvu.edu/~psychology/.
PROGRAM. WVU's Psychology Department received the "Innovation in Graduate Education Award" from the American Psychological Association in 2005. The award recognizes the junior-colleague model used to train graduate students in research, teaching, and service. We view graduate training as modeling and instruction in a variety of professional skills and roles, only some of which are acquired in the classroom. As junior colleagues, students and faculty collaborate in research, rather than students serving as research assistants assigned to individual faculty members. Students develop individualized plans of study. Contact among faculty and students outside the classroom is frequent and casual. WVU has an illustrious history in life-span development as one of the first programs in this field. Our program continues to provide in-depth training to the next generation of life-span developmental psychologists. Graduates are highly successful in obtaining employment and find positions in academia, government, research institutions, foundations, and applied settings.
RESEARCH TRAINING. Initially, faculty members provide a high degree of structure and guidance that is tailored to the students' entry-level research design and data analysis skills. By the end of training, students have developed a research specialty and can successfully design and execute all stages of a research project (e.g., data collection, analysis, dissemination of findings). Students attend professional conferences and present their research to regional, national, and international audiences. Students also regularly publish their work in scholarly journals and books. The department and college provide funds to support student research and travel to conferences.
TEACHING TRAINING. Graduate students receive structured, supervised, hands-on teaching experience. All students become proficient in a variety of teaching technologies and methods. For those students whose career plans emphasize college teaching, a college teaching specialization is available.
FUNDING. All students receive 4 years of financial support via research or teaching assistantships (3 years if entering with a Master's degree), plus a tuition waiver.
THE LIFE SCIENCES BUILDING. The $57 million award-winning Life Sciences Building houses state-of-the-art research and teaching facilities. Each graduate student has an office and a computer with internet access and the latest software (e.g., SPSS, Word). Graduate students conduct research in faculty members' laboratories, and in off-campus locations (e.g., schools, senior centers).
A COMMITMENT TO STUDYING THE LIFESPAN. West Virginia University is recognized as the birthplace of life-span psychology. Graduate students specialize in life-span processes (e.g., cognitive or social development) and/or in an age period (infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, aging).
WVU & MORGANTOWN. WVU has an enrollment of over 26,000 students and is a Carnegie Research Extensive University. WVU has highly successful Big East sports teams, intramural sports, plays, concerts, lectures, symphony, a $34 million Student Recreation Center, and other leisure activities.
APPLICATION DUE DATE: December 15, 2008.
FACULTY RESEARCH INFORMATION & CONTACT INFORMATION
Katherine Karraker, Ph.D. (Email: Katherine.Karraker@mail.wvu.edu).
Dr. Karraker's research interests are in the general area of infant social relationships. She and her students are currently studying several aspects of the parenting of infants, as well as infant temperament and adults' perceptions of infants. The effects of infant night waking on parents has been one topic of their recent research. They have been interested both in how parenting practices encourage or discourage infant night waking and in how infant night waking can produce depressive symptoms and other problems in parents because of the sleep deprivation the parents experience. The lab group has also focused on individual differences in infants, with a particular interest in temperament. For example, a recent study has examined the developmental course of infants who demonstrate a slow-to-warm-up temperament in infancy. Dr. Karraker and her students also are interested in the factors that influence adults' perceptions of infants. They are studying the impact of infant prematurity, gender, and names on adults' perceptions. Finally, they are also interested in parents' knowledge about infant development in general and parents' knowledge about and expectations for their own infant's behavior and development.
Amy Gentzler, Ph.D. (Email: Amy.Gentzler@mail.wvu.edu). In a current project, Dr. Gentzler is investigating children's emotional responses to negative and positive events and testing whether children show memory biases for earlier emotional reactions. Other projects are mainly in the data analysis or writing stage. With a sample of children at-risk for depression, her team is studying how physiological risk (in terms of heart rate or vagal tone) or maternal responses to children's negative emotions relates to children's development of emotion regulation strategies and depressive symptoms. With college student samples, Dr. Gentzler and her research team have been examining questions relating to emotions and coping, such as how specific emotional reactions predict particular patterns of coping, whether experiencing positive affect amidst a stressful experience is associated with more adaptive outcomes, and whether responses to positive events vary by people's attachment style or gender.
Hawley Montgomery-Downs, Ph.D. (Email: Hawley.Montgomery-Downs@mail.wvu.edu). The sleep research laboratory is accepting incoming graduate student team members. In addition to their individual thesis and dissertation projects, students have the opportunity to work on and receive research stipends through several ongoing studies: A) Postpartum Sleep Deprivation and Fragmentation: Effects on Maternal Functioning" (NIH Grant R21HD053836) explores the effects of sleep deprivation vs. fragmentation on new mothers. This naturalistic study includes continuous actigraphy and physiologic outcome measures from postpartum week 1 through 12. A graduate assistant is assigned to each participant to whom they make weekly home visits to data collection. All students have access to data and are encouraged to contribute new ideas for examining them. B) Environmental Tobacco Smoke Exposure and Pediatric Sleep-Disordered Breathing (SDB): explores the relation between exposure to second hand tobacco smoke and symptoms of SDB among children <6 years. Hair samples are used to objectively examine tobacco exposure. C) Neonatal Follow-up Sleep Schedule and Symptoms Survey: Children born prematurely are at increased risk for SDB. However, the developmental trajectory of snoring and risk symptoms for SDB among these children is unknown. The purpose of this study is to learn more about sleep schedules and symptoms among infants who are born prematurely.
Julie Hicks Patrick, Ph.D. (Email: Julie.Patrick@mail.wvu.edu). Dr. Patrick's research focuses broadly on healthy aging among middle-aged and older adults. As such, research in her lab examines cognitive, psychological and physical well-being. Research projects include examinations of grandparents raising grandchildren, cognitive interventions at mid-life, and health behaviors, including eating disorders. Her work has been published in Psychology and Aging, Journal of Gerontology, and Quality of Life Research. As P.I., Dr. Patrick has held grants from the National Institute on Aging, National Cancer Institute, and the American Psychological Association.
JoNell Strough, Ph.D. (Email: JoNell.Strough@mail.wvu.edu). Dr. Strough conducts research in two areas: collaborative everyday problem solving and gender development. Current problem-solving projects include further analysis of data collected as part of the Pairs Everyday Problem Solving Study (PEPS), funded by the National Institutes on Aging (see Strough, McFall, Flinn, & Schuller in press--Psychology and Aging). Current work is aimed at understanding processes that contribute to effective collaborations among friends. Another project follows up findings indicating that older adults make decisions that are more logical than those of younger adults (Strough, Mehta, McFall & Schuller, 2008—Psychological Science). In collaboration with Dr. Patrick's research team, Dr. Strough's team is examining everyday problem solving as it applies to custodial grandparenting. In her research on gender development, Dr. Strough and her students are investigating: a) causes and consequences of sex segregation across the life span, and b) how gender-typed behaviors vary according to the social context of interactions with friends versus romantic partners.
New Faculty Member to begin Fall 2009. We are currently conducting a national search for a new faculty member to join the life-span developmental area in the Fall of 2009. The specialty area of the faculty member is open. Depending on date of hire, the new faculty member may accept students to begin graduate training in Fall of 2009.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: JoNell Strough, Ph.D. Associate Professor & Coordinator, Life-Span Developmental Program Department of Psychology 53 Campus Drive West Virginia University Morgantown, WV 26506-6040 http://www.wvu.edu/~psychology/ phone: (304) 293-2001 x31648 fax: (304) 293-6606 email: JoNell.Strough@mail.wvu.edu Office: 2212 Life Sciences Building ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
