Biography

Dawn P. Witherspoon, Ph.D. is the McCourtney Family Early Career Professor in Psychology and Associate Director of PACT, a community-university partnership, at Pennsylvania State University. Her research focuses on the ways in which families and youth are shaped by the contexts in which they are embedded, particularly focusing on how neighborhood, family, and cultural factors affect adolescents’ academic, psycho-social, and behavioral well-being. The crux of her research focuses on the neighborhood context and its relation to other proximal contexts for adolescents and identifies positive characteristics in multiple contexts that are related to adolescent well-being. Dr. Witherspoon is on the editorial board of Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology and Developmental Psychology, where she is co-editing a special issue, “Hidden Populations: Uncovering the Developmental Experiences of Communities of Color across Contexts”. Witherspoon has been a member of SRCD’s Ethnic and Racial Issues committee since 2011 and is now the chairperson.

Gabriela Livas Stein, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist and Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology in the Department of Psychology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG). Dr. Stein’s research focuses on Latinx youth and families with particular attention to cultural processes and experiences such as cultural values, racial-ethnic discrimination, and racial-ethnic socialization. Her work is informed by developmental psychopathology and cultural-ecological frameworks. Dr. Stein is the Vice President of Programming for the Society for Research on Adolescence and an Associate Editor for Journal of Research on Adolescence. Dr. Stein is also the past president of SRCD’s Latino Caucus. In 2017, Dr. Stein was recognized as a Minority Access National Role Model; she received this honor for her “exemplary achievements in fields underrepresented by minorities and in advancing underrepresented population groups.” Since 2017, Dr. Stein has been an active member of the ERI committee.

Diane Hughes is professor of Applied Psychology in the Steinhardt School of Culture, Development, and Education and co-director with Catherine Tamis LeMonda and Niobe Way of the Center for Research on Culture, Development, and Education. Her research interests focus on (a) understanding how racial/ethnic dynamics influence individual's experiences across multiple settings including workplaces, classrooms, neighborhoods, and families, and (b) ethnic and cultural differences in parents' socialization goals, beliefs, and practices, especially as these influence children's learning. Dr. Hughes conducts school and community based studies with adolescents and their parents using multiple methods (interviews, surveys, focus groups). In her most recent work. Dr. Hughes, Dr. Niobe Way, and their students followed two multi-ethnic cohorts of NYC early adolescents (and their mothers) from the time they entered middle school through their junior year of high school to understand how varied stressors and supports influenced academic and socio-emotional development over time. Hughes received her B.A. in Psychology and African American Studies from Williams College and her Ph.D. in Community and Developmental Psychology from the University of Michigan. She is former chair of the John d. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's sub-group on Diversity in Mid-Life and co-chair of the 14 member cross-university Study Group on Race, Culture, and ethnicity. Her research has been supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the William T. Grant Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
Website: https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/appsych/

Dr. Margaret Caughy’s research combines the unique perspectives of developmental science, epidemiology, and public health in studying the contexts of risk and resilience affecting young children. She is particularly interested in race/ethnic disparities in health and development and how these disparities can be understood within the unique ecological niches of ethnic minority families. Dr. Caughy has been the principal investigator of several studies focused on how inequities in family and community processes affect the cognitive development, socioemotional functioning, and early academic achievement of young children in diverse race/ethnic groups. Another theme of her research has been methodological, specifically methods related to measuring neighborhood context and the utilization of these measures in models explaining child developmental competence using multilevel and structural equations modeling methods.
Twitter: @DrMOCaughy
Website: www.sdcdlab.com

Suzanne Randolph Cunningham, PhD is Associate Professor Emerita in the department of family science at University of Maryland, College Park, School of Public Health. Upon retirement from academia, she joined The MayaTech Corporation, an applied public health research firm in Silver Spring, Maryland (USA) as Chief Science Officer. She received her bachelor's degree in psychology from Howard University in Washington, DC (USA) and her masters and PhD degrees in psychology (developmental) from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She has chaired the SRCD's black caucus and is recipient of the American Psychological Association Minority Fellowship Program's James Jones Lifetime Achievement Award and the Association of Black Psychologists, Inc.'s Distinguished Psychologist Award. She hails from New Orleans, Louisiana; is married; and in her spare time is a visual artist.
Twitter: @SRandolphMTC
Website: https://sph.umd.edu/people/suzanne-randolph

Catherine S. Tamis-LeMonda is Professor of Developmental Psychology at Steinhardt, New York University, where she co-directs the Center for Research on Culture, Development, and Education. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Society; member of the governing council of the Society for Research on Child Development; and President-elect of the International Congress of Infant Studies. Tamis-LeMonda’s research focuses on infant language, communication, object play, and motor skill, and the ways that parenting and cultural contexts shape children’s experiences and learning. Her research aims to illuminate universal and culture-specific developmental processes, developmental cascades, and early building blocks to school readiness in children from different ethnic and socio-demographic backgrounds in the United States and globally. Tamis-LeMonda’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institute of Mental Health, Administration for Children, Youth and Families, Ford Foundation, Lego Foundation and the Robinhood Foundation.

3-002 - Collaborative Science in the Spirit of 2044: Diversity is Key

Session Type: Invited SRCD Salon

Integrative Statement

Because developmental phenomena are complex, most investigative teams in developmental science include individuals from multiple disciplines and perspectives. Yet, collaborations can be challenging. Given that the U.S. will become a “majority-minority” country with no clear racial-ethnic group being a numerical majority by 2044; it is critical that developmental scientists attend to cultural and contextual diversity in their research. Further, given globalization and immigration and migration patterns, we must include international perspectives in our conversations about diversity.

Hosted by the Ethnic and Racial Issues and Equity and Justice Committees along with the Asian, Black, and Latino Caucuses, this invited salon serves as a companion to the preconference, Conceptualizing and measuring culture, context, race, and ethnicity: A focus on science, ethics, and collaboration in the Spirit of 2044. The invited salon highlights successful diverse, collaborative research teams that have: (1) identified processes unique to diverse populations and (2) executed their research projects with great attention to the ethics of doing the work with underserved and/or underrepresented populations.

Panelists Margaret Caughy, Suzanne Randolph Cunningham, Diane Hughes, and Catherine Tamis-Lemonda will share how they have successfully collaborated on research teams to advance developmental science in the Spirit of 2044. Specifically, they will address challenges and strategies to overcome them, grantsmanship, building interdisciplinary teams, and ethics as well as provide recommendations on ways that SRCD can support collaborative science with diverse teams. This interaction among panelists and attendees will offer practical strategies for building research teams prepared to carefully consider diversity in its’ many forms.

Sub Unit

• Invited Program

Moderators

• Dawn Paula Witherspoon, The Pennsylvania State University

• Gabriela Livas Stein, University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Panelists

• Diane Hughes, New York University

• Margaret Caughy, University of Georgia

• Suzanne Randolph Cunningham, The MayaTech Corporation

• Catherine S. Tamis-LeMonda, New York University