Dear Colleague:
Please forward this message to students seeking admission to a doctoral training program in psychology.
The Ph.D. Program in Life-Span Developmental Psychology at West Virginia University anticipates admitting students to begin graduate work next fall. Highlights of the life-span developmental program and a list of faculty and their current research projects appear below. Additional information can be found the website of WVU's Department of Psychology: http://psychology.wvu.edu/.
APPLICATIONS. Applications are due December 15. Applications are submitted at: http://grad.wvu.edu/; other application information is posted on our website: http://psychology.wvu.edu/future_students/graduate_programs/application_information/how_to_apply.
PROGRAM. WVU's Psychology Department received the "Innovation in Graduate Education Award" from the American Psychological Association http://www.apa.org/monitor/apr06/integration.html. 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 the college provide funds to support student research and travel to conferences.
TEACHING TRAINING. Graduate students become proficient in a variety of teaching technologies and methods. All students receive structured, supervised, hands-on teaching experience. For those students whose career plans emphasize college teaching, a college teaching specialization and/or a university teaching certificate is available.
FUNDING. All students can expect to receive 4 years of financial support via research or teaching assistantships (3 years if entering with a Master's degree), plus a tuition waiver and basic health insurance.
THE
A COMMITMENT TO STUDYING THE LIFE SPAN. West Virginia University is recognized as the birthplace of life-span psychology. In their courses, students gain knowledge of the development of fundamental psychological processes across the entire life span. In their research, graduate students typically specialize in a given topical area and age period (infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, aging), but this specialization is grounded in a life-span perspective to understanding development.
WVU & MORGANTOWN. WVU has an enrollment of over 28,000 students, is a Carnegie Research Extensive University and is a member of the Big 12 Athletic Conference. Morgantown and WVU offer a wealth of opportunities for arts and entertainment including plays, concerts, lectures, and symphony performances. Considerable opportunities for sports and recreation are available through WVU's $34 million Student Recreation Center and the rivers and mountains of the nearby Monongalia National Forest. Morgantown is consistently rated one of the best small cities in America and in 2010 was ranked in the top 10 on Forbes' Best Places for Business and Careers. For more information about
MORE INFORMATION. For more information about the Ph.D. program in life-span developmental psychology at WVU, contact JoNell Strough, coordinator of the life-span doctoral program at: JoNell.Strough@mail.wvu.edu.
FACULTY RESEARCH INTERESTS AND CONTACT INFORMATION
Amy Gentzler, Ph.D. (Email: Amy.Gentzler@mail.wvu.edu)
http://www.amygentzler.com/index.asp
Dr. Gentzler's research is focused on emotions and adjustment, with a major goal being to better understand why children and adults vary in their emotional reactions and adjustment. To do this, Dr. Gentzler and her students often study factors, such as parent-child attachment or child temperament, which may affect how children develop preferred emotion regulation and coping strategies. As part of this investigation, Dr. Gentzler and her students have been investigating variation in response to positive events and positive affect. Other directions in the lab include a focus on how emotion regulation may affect students' ability to pay attention and complete cognitive tasks, and how children who are at increased risk for mood disorders may differ in their physiology and ability to regulate emotion and cognition. Overall, Dr. Gentzler's lab integrates various subfields of psychology (developmental, social, developmental psychopathology, and positive psychology).
Katherine Karraker, Ph.D. (Email: Katherine.Karraker@mail.wvu.edu)
http://psychology.wvu.edu/faculty_staff/directory/katharine_karraker
Dr. Karraker's primary research interest is infant social relations. She and her students study such topics as the effects of infant characteristics (like physical attractiveness, gender, prematurity, and temperament) on adults, parent-infant relationships, infant assessment, parenting self-efficacy, stress and coping in infancy, and infant and mother sleep. Current research projects address the development of shy temperament in infancy and early childhood, mothers' transition to parenting, mothers' expectations for their infants' performance on the Bayley Scales of Infant Development, and gender role socialization in infancy and early childhood.
Aaron Metzger, Ph.D. (Email: Aaron.Metzger@mail.wvu.edu)
http://www.wvuadolescentlab.com/
Dr. Metzger's areas of research interests include adolescent social-cognitive development in familial and community contexts. Specifically, Dr. Metzger's research explores social-cognitive aspects of civic development, including adolescents' civic and political reasoning, conceptualizations of citizenship, and beliefs about civic behavior, community membership, and political institutions. In addition, Dr. Metzger examines the developmental impact of adolescents' community service or political activity, as well as the developmental benefits of organized activity involvement. Dr. Metzger was recently awarded a research grant from The John Templeton Foundation to explore associations among developmental competencies, context, character traits, and civic development among rural youth. In his research on family processes, Dr. Metzger investigates adolescent-parent communication about age-normed problem behavior such as alcohol use, risky internet use, and unhealthy eating. This research examines both parental messages to their adolescents and parental knowledge of their adolescents' behavior including adolescents' strategies for managing information shared with parents.
Julie Hicks Patrick, Ph.D. (Email: Julie.Patrick@mail.wvu.edu)
http://psychology.wvu.edu/faculty_staff/directory/julie_patrick
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)
http://jonell_strough.psychology.wvu.edu/
Dr. Strough has two lines of research—one focusing on everyday problem solving and decision making, and the other focusing on gender development across the life span. Dr. Strough's current and prior research focuses on adolescents, younger (emerging) adults, and middle-aged and older adults. In collaboration with colleagues at the RAND Corporation and the University of Leeds, Dr. Strough is conducting research that seeks to understand how people can maintain decision-making competence as they age. Other projects in Dr. Strough's lab examine social and motivational influences on decision making across the life span and interpersonal processes that contribute to effective collaborative problem solving among friends in early and later adulthood. In her research on gender development, Dr. Strough and her students are investigating: (a) causes and consequences of sex segregation across the life span, (b) how gender-typed behaviors vary according to the social context, and (c) gender differences in decision making (e.g., rational and intuitive decision styles, career decisions, financial risk taking).
Professor & Coordinator
Life-Span Developmental Program
Department of Psychology
53 Campus Drive
West Virginia University
Morgantown, WV 26506-6040
http://jonell_strough.psychology.wvu.edu/
email: JoNell.Strough@mail.wvu.edu
Office: 2212 Life Sciences Building
