Get to Know Your Representatives

Emerging Scholars Committee Co-Chairs

Carolyn R. Spellings, Executive Council (2010-2014)
Carolyn is doctoral 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 female adolescents, and particularly how that development is impacted by social and political contexts. To that end, she is engaged in projects examining the roles of family, peers, and community in the development of U.S. females, as well as projects analyzing the economic, political, and individual influences on female adolescents’ political activism in regions of the world beset by political conflict. Carolyn can be contacted at cspellings@gmail.com.
 
Josafá Cunha, Executive Council (2012-2016)
Josafá Moreira da Cunha is currently a doctoral student in Education at the Federal University of Paraná, in Brazil. He holds a B.A. (Psychology) and M.E. (Education) degree from the Federal University of Paraná. His research primarily focuses on peer relations, specifically in regard to its influence on school adjustment during adolescence. Currently Josafá serves as the editor of the ISSBD E-newsletter. Josafá can be contacted at josafas@gmail.com.

Emerging Scholars Committee Members

 Jordan Bechtol, Ad-Hoc Emerging Scholars Committee Member (2012-2014)
Jordan is a doctoral candidate in the department of Psychology and Social Behavior at UC Irvine and earned her B.S. from UC Berkeley in 2006. Her research investigates adolescent risk taking, delinquency, and minors' experiences with the juvenile justice system. Jordan may be contacted at jbechtol@uci.edu
 
Ryan Landoll, Emerging Scholars Secretary (2010-2014)
Ryan will receive his Ph.D. in Child Clinical Psychology from the University of Miami in August 2012, having recently completed his dissertation on the role of cyber victimization in adolescents'
internalizing symptoms. He is also a Captain in the United States Air Force, currently completing his clinical internship at Malcolm Grow Medical Clinic at Joint Base Andrews, MD and will be a staff
psychologist in the Mental Health Clinic at Shaw AFB, SC beginning September 2012. In 2009, he received his M.S. in psychology from the University of Miami and received his B.S. in psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2007. His research interests focus on the interplay between adolescent peer processes (i.e., friendships and romantic relationships, peer crowd behavior and peer victimization) and internalizing distress, such as social anxiety and depression. Ryan also serves as the American Psychological Association of Graduate Student’s liaison to the Committee for the
Advancement of Professional Practice. Ryan can be contacted at r.landoll@umiami.edu.
 
Antoinette Landor, Study Groups Committee (2010-2014)
Antoinette Landor is a doctoral candidate at the University of Georgia in the Department of Child and Family Development. Her research focuses on how contextual factors are associated with risk and resilience in adolescence and emerging adulthood. She specifically investigates the ways in which family of origin and other factors predict outcomes such as sexual behavior, romantic relationship quality, intimate partner violence, and educational attainment.  Additionally, her research explores the mediators and moderators between these links. Antoinette’s dissertation examines the differential effects of skin tone on family processes, discrimination, and life chance outcomes.  She recently won the Society for Research on Adolescence’s Student Poster Award and will be a postdoctoral student at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill at the Center for Developmental Science. Antoinette can be contacted at antoinettelandor@yahoo.com. 
 
Shannon Snapp, EARA International Representative 
Shannon received her PhD in Developmental Psychology from Boston College.  She is a Postdoctoral Research Associate under the supervision of Drs. Stephen T. Russell and Adela C. Licona at the University of Arizona (UA).  Shannon is also a member of the Crossroads Collaborative at UA, an interdisciplinary team that is dedicated to advancing research, training, public conversation, and ultimately social change in the area of youth, sexuality, health, and rights.  In her research, she studies sexuality in adolescents and young adults, health and body image among women, and school-based strategies (e.g., inclusive curriculum, exclusionary discipline) that impact students’ rights, safety, and well-being. You can learn more about Shannon by visiting her website: http://web.me.com/shannonsnapp/phd/.
 
Russell Toomey, Finance Committee (2010-2014)
Russell is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Prevention Research Center at Arizona State University. He graduated from the University of Arizona with a Ph.D. in Family Studies and Human Development in May 2011.  Russell’s research primarily focuses on how school, peer, and family contexts affect health and well-being for lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, and transgender (LGBT) youth and ethnic minority youth. The driving force behind his research is to improve the lives of young people by identifying the processes that promote well-being and reduce risk. In addition to his service to SRA, Russell also serves as the Student / Early Career Council Representative to the Equality and Justice Committee for the Society for Research in Child Development.  Russell can be contacted at Russell.Toomey@asu.edu.
 
Julie Maslowsky, Membership Committee (2012-2016)
Julie Maslowsky will receive a Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from the University of Michigan in August 2012. Her research to date has focused on identifying specific developmental mechanisms underlyin adolescent health risk behavior, particularly substance use. For example, her dissertation examined the role of early adolescent mental health problems in the development of substance use, integrating national surveys with in-depth longitudinal data to estimate the risk for substance use associated with early adolescent mental health problems at the population level and among a subsample of adolescents at high risk for substance use due to prenatal alcohol and drug exposure. Julie can be contacted at jmaslow@umich.edu.
 
Kristina L. Schmid, Emerging Scholar Committee Member
Kristina is a fourth-year doctoral student at the Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development in the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development at Tufts University. Her research interests focus on the way in which adolescents construct positive pathways to adulthood. As a Doctoral Research Assistant for the 4-H Study of Positive Youth Development (PI: Dr. Richard M. Lerner), she has become particularly interested in adolescents’ hopeful expectations for the future as an instantiation of adaptive developmental regulations. For her dissertation, she plans to investigate the links between hope and positive developmental outcomes across adolescence. This area of inquiry parallels with Kristina’s interest in theory and methodology that may be used to model development across the lifespan. Kristina received her B.A. in Psychology from the University of New Hampshire in 2006 and an M.A. in Child Development from Tufts University in 2010. Kristina can be reached at kristina.schmid@tufts.edu.

Michelle Wright, Social Policy and Awards Committee (2012-2016)
Michelle is a Ph.D. student in Experimental Psychology at DePaul University. She graduated with a M.S. in General Psychology in 2008 from Auburn University Montgomery and a B.S. in Psychology from the University of Central Florida in 2005. In her research, Michelle focuses on adolescents’ social relationships, including their relationships with their parents, peers, and romantic partners. She is especially interested in understanding factors that influence adolescents’ peer interactions and relationships, such as cultural values, parent-adolescent relationships and conflict, involvement in romantic partnerships, high and low peer status, social information processing biases, aggression (face-to-face and online), gender, and social context (face-to-face versus online). Presently, Michelle is working on two major projects. For one project, Michelle is examining the social goals adolescents generate in their pursuit of peer status. In the second, Michelle is investigating the differences in response decision and evaluation regarding situations occurring face-to-face and online. Next school year, Michelle is launching an intervention program designed to reduce cyberbullying among adolescents. The project will occur over a one year period and it will involve encouraging positive social exchanges among adolescents. Many of Michelle’s projects involve cross-cultural comparisons between Chinese and American adolescents. In the future, Michelle plans to investigate the interaction and influence of various adolescent social relationships (i.e., parents, romantic, sibling) on their peer relationships as well as the development of social goals from childhood into adolescence. Michelle can be contacted at mwrigh20@depaul.edu.

Debbie Capser, Publications Committee (2012-2016)
Debbie is a doctoral candidate in Family Studies and Human Development at the University of Arizona. She has a M.A. in counseling from the University of Maryland and a M.S. in Family Studies from the University of Arizona. Her broad research interests involve adolescent peer relations and the intersection of aggression, victimization, friendships, and antipathies. More specifically, she is interested in the roles that children and adolescents take when enacting aggression both within and between friendship groups along with research methodologies such as meta-analysis. Her dissertation will involve three independent yet related goals: 1) a meta-analysis related to participant roles in aggression, 2) an exploration of the characteristics and dyadic patterns of assisting and defending roles within a larger group context, and 3) the analysis of a new scale designed to measure participant roles specific to relational aggression.  Debbie also serves as the Student Representative to the American Psychological Association (Division 5), Evaluation, Measurement, and Statistics Membership Committee. Debbie can be contacted at dcasper@email.arizona.edu.

Karen Bluth, Nominations Committee (2012-2014)
Karen is a doctoral candidate at the Child and Family Studies Department at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.  Her research interests include the potential role that mindfulness plays in easing the passage of adolescents through this sometimes challenging stage of development. Her interest in mindfulness research is rooted in a life- long mindfulness practice, and her interest in adolescents stems from an extensive teaching career, the last seven years of which was teaching in a middle school.   She is particularly interested in exploring the role of self-compassion as a mediator in the relationship between mindfulness and emotional well-being outcomes in adolescents.  Toward that end, she has recently completed data collection on two research studies; one is a correlational study investigating the relationships among mindfulness, self-compassion, and emotional well-being in high school students, and the other is a mindfulness intervention study which explores the same constructs with middle schoolers. In addition, last year she conducted a study correlating parental mindfulness with parenting effort and child behavior outcomes which culminated in two articles in the Mindfulness journal. Finally, Karen has two adolescents who keep her humble and who teach her the benefits every day of being mindful. Karen can be contacted at bluth@utk.edu.

Jama Shelton, Individual Awards Committee (2012-2016)
Jama Shelton is a doctoral candidate in the Social Welfare program at the CUNY Graduate Center.   Since receiving an MSW from NYU in 2004, Jama has worked in various capacities (direct service provider, administrator, program evaluator) at the Ali Forney Center, a non-profit comprehensive service agency for queer youth experiencing homelessness.  Jama’s current research concerns the experiences of transgender and gender non-conforming youth experiencing homelessness.  Jama can be contacted at jama.shelton@gmail.com.

Jessie Connell, Media and Communications Committee (2012-2016)
Jessie Connell is a Ph.D. student in Family Social Science at the University of Minnesota.  She graduated with her M.A. in Family Social Science from the University of Minnesota in 2011, and her B.S. in Human Development and Family Studies from the Pennsylvania State University in 2008. Her research focuses on ensuring positive youth outcomes through supportive and involved parenting, as well as parent development and parent engagement with various parenting resources.  Her current research examines parents' and adolescents' use of the Internet and other technology and its implications for prevention and intervention.  Jessie can be contacted at: jhc5007@gmail.com.
 
Past Emerging Scholar Representatives